Neil Howe: 'Civil War Is More Likely Than People Think'

[pbrower2a]

(02-17-2019, 04:36 PM)TnT Wrote:

(02-13-2019, 01:57 PM)Tim Randal Walker Wrote: Three suggested outcomes:

1.  Conciliation

2. Gridlock

3.  Civil War

Because the USA is structured as a federation, another possibility comes to mind-decentralization.  Things are loosened up enough that different regions are free to pursue their own visions.

There's an old book, The Nine Nations of North America, by Joel Garreau, published 1981, that outlines a rough model that could work:

A rough description -

Quebec
New England
The Foundry (PA, OH, MI, IN)
Dixie
The Breadbasket (the great plains states)
Mexamerica (parts of TX, NM AZ & southern CA, and Mexico)
Ecotopia (Pacific NW)
The Empty Quarter (Rocky Mountains & much of western & northern Canada & Alaska)

For an old book, I think he divides us up rather nicely and it fits much of the present polarization.  One can also see natural alliances forming between various ones of the areas.

I saw faults with this division. First, I recognize a huge difference between the Mountain South and the Deep South.Appalachia and the Ozarks are dead-ringers for each other, and they can be connected through southern Indiana, central Kentucky, and south-central Ohio. It is worth remembering for sophisticated northern urbanites even if they are from the three C's of Ohio (Cleveland, Columbus, and Cincinnati): get more than 20 miles east of I-71 while south of I-76, and you are in a foreign country. But the Mountain South is itself very different from the Deep South.

Second, the urban-suburban-rural division is huge. Cleveland and Atlanta have far more in common with each other than they do with rural areas outside their suburban sprawl. A city like Chicago or Denver is very dissimilar from its surroundings and is tolerated despite its difference from the much-more reactionary rural areas that depend upon farming, ranching, or mining. Greater Chicago does about everything other than farming and mining in Illinois; it transports and processes the grain, turns the coal and local limestone (with some Minnesota iron ore) into steel and in turn machinery -- and it processes the notes that farmers pay. That is a stark contrast to "Downstate Illinois" with few parallels elsewhere.