America: Stick a Fork in it It’s Done

 

I have lived in the United States and met many fine people there. I think bourbon and southern barbeque are marvels. Things like the blues and jazz loom large in my imagination and what would I be without Melville or Whitman or Hart Crane’s The Bridge? I could go on and on about the America of my mind but now I have to deal with a new, though not quite unexpected fact. The America of my mind will soon be only in my mind for the real one has a decade left at best if it is lucky. I mean this as literally as possible: perhaps a bit later but perhaps shockingly soon there will be three countries. One will be on the East coast and the other will be on the West. In the middle will be a ‘rump’ America. These three states will have to work out all kinds of issues in a climate of profound hostility and suspicion like how to divvy up America’s vast military establishment. This will be the true start of the ‘new century’ exactly as the breakup of the Soviet Union was the true end of the last. The winner will be China which will exert hegemony over half the globe in a fashion which will meet and surpass the very worst aspects of American hegemony. Two of the American entities may (or may not) retain some form of democracy but Rump America will be a one party state whose leader will be picked by God as the Byzantine emperors of old. After all, if the president is anointed by God, as the new Caesaro-Papists say he is, then an election is a mere formality. Can the people say no to God’s anointed president? What would it even mean to NOT ratify the divine choice?

There is a reason I say this and that is that a nation state is founded on the notion of legitimacy and if legitimacy is up for grabs there is no state and new political entities will have to form to construct new institutions more to their liking. Further, once the spell of legitimacy is broken there is no getting it back for it is, for a large part of the electorate, held in the implicitness of feeling and under the impact of unstated norms. Absent this legitimacy is up for grabs and if it is up for grabs there is no reason for one contestant to bow to the will of the other or to accept the rule of the other. For instance, Rump America is a theocracy. If the rest of America votes against theocracy in a free and fair election that does not illegitimate the principle in any way shape or form. In fact, it delegitimatizes democratic politics if the people choose wrong. This is why Rump America will back the coming coup. If God’s president is voted out of office that must be rectified by any means necessary: in this case having a Rump America supreme court throw out all the mail in ballots or stop the count on election night. The president has already said OPENLY that this is what he expects of his new appointee who the ‘Centrist’ Democrats will likely not oppose because a Rump court is good for their donors. When this happens voters in blue states that are large and wealthy will not be passive. They will decide that the Rump court does not represent them or their interests. They will regard its rulings as illegitimate, just as the pastors regard an election that does not confirm God’s choice. They will regard it as a fake court just as Trump voters say they will consider a Biden presidency as a fake presidency. Of course, if you reject the highest court in the land as illegitimate one is no longer part of the land. When the Rump court overturns Roe v. Wade that will be the icing on the cake. New Yorkers and Californians will at that point no longer regard themselves as owing loyalty to American institutions and will secede. Will Rump America be stupid enough to launch another Civil War as Lincoln did? I don’t know and I don’t care to find out.

At any rate when it becomes obvious that one has not one country but two, and a crisis of legitimacy is the thing that MAKES that obvious, the best thing is a velvet divorce. Alas, that may make it the least likely scenario. If what the ‘South’ really wants is an Evangelical theocracy that is what it will get by hook or by crook. If NY/CALI want something more pluralistic and less invasive they will get that too ONE WAY OR ANOTHER. Neither desire can be accommodated within the same polity which makes me rueful but nothing lasts forever but the earth and sky to quote a great American band.