Who Needs Six Flags When Two Will Do Just Fine?

[Anthony '58]

Make no mistake about it: The Second Civil War - or some crazy "Grand Compromise" to avert it - is coming in 2025.

What follows is a plausible synopsis of what the latter might entail.

The two flags of the title are, of course, the flags of two totally separate, sovereign nations - the New Union, and the New Confederacy.

Since I couldn't find a link to an image of a Confederate flag with 20-some-odd stars, consider what appears below as a proxy for the flag of the New Confederacy (of course without the word "Arkansas" or the four blue stars in the center) -



A cross - symbolizing the New Confederacy's hyper-Christianity - can be placed in the center.

(This flag can also be used as a replacement for the Confederate flag if no civil war breaks out, especially if the cross in the center is added - see Mississippi's new state flag, which features a magnolia blossom with the motto "In God We Trust" underneath it).

The flag of the New Union would also have 25 stars, although the actual number of stars for both flags may differ.  This is because "horse-trading" will be necessary to make the New Union coterminous - namely, a "Blue Corridor" consisting of the northernmost tier of counties in North Dakota, Montana and Idaho, thus linking Minnesota with Washington state.

Obviously the New Confederacy will demand something in return - and that "something," based on the 2020 Presidential election map, would clearly be Georgia; and if the Republicans "re-flip" Georgia in the 2024 election, Virginia is next in line (thanks to the result of last month's gubernatorial election in that state) - or the New Confederacy also gets New Mexico as well as Arizona if the Republicans "re-flip" Arizona in 2024 (as recently as 2004, Republican George W. Bush carried New Mexico).

One of the major virtues of such an arrangement is that the New Confederacy's Canadian border would be completely eliminated (and I'm sure that they wouldn't object one iota to that) - and if the Republicans do not re-take Arizona (and population trends say they won't), the New Confederacy's Mexican border would be confined exclusively to the Rio Grande, which could then be dredged to create a deep "moat" - a prospect that would no doubt please the New Confederates no end.

To connect the two parts of the New Union fully, both an interstate highway - the number I-98, which all-too-conveniently fits into the numbering format (in that 98 is an even number, reserved for highways that run east-west, with the numbers of interstate highways increasing from south to north) is still unassigned - and a high-speed rail line paralleling it, both running between Duluth and Spokane (which each end bearing northward so that they enter the "Blue Corridor" at the current Minnesota-North Dakota and Idaho-Washington borders) - could also be built.  That will pose no problem at all - either fiscally or logistically.

The new Minnesota-Washington border would be at a location mutually agreed upon by the two states (creating super-sized "panhandles" for both).

While there would be significant population exchanges, given how far to the left the New Union would go, and how far to the right the New Confederacy would go, now free from the burden of opposition from the other side, it probably wouldn't even match the Greco-Turkish population exchange of 1923 - let alone the chaotic, and occasionally deadly, Indian-Pakistani population exchange of 1947.