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Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), whose husband of 27 years divorced her in Dec. 2022, is thinking big now. She wants a national divorce. We really tried to avoid this story, but Greene just won't let it go, and she's making a lot of headlines. She said the red and blue states have irreconcilable differences—the same grounds as her own divorce—so they should separate. Then each country could have its own national laws on education, commerce, religion, energy, cultural values, elections, school prayer, and views on government size and spending, etc.
It's not exactly "the South will rise again," because this time states as far away as Utah and Idaho would join the New Confederacy, but yes, she wants to split the country into two parts, with blue states and red states going their separate ways. Would this entail a new Civil War? Well, that depends. If the blue states said: "Good riddance," then no. Some people in the blue states are just hoping those in the red states all get raptured, solving the problem for good. Of course, one problem would be that the blue states in the Midwest and East would be separated from the blue states on the West Coast by a couple of thousand miles of hostile territory, possibly with immigration and customs checkpoints. Here's what the map might look like:
Perhaps each state legislature would get to decide which country to join. Alternatively, the red states could just secede and hope that the blue states would be happy to see them go. Or maybe the blue states would merge with Canada to provide a connection, like this. Then, the name of the National Hockey League would finally be accurate.
Greene has even gotten into some of the details about how it would work.
Other details include: Americans who emigrate from blue states to red states would not have the right to vote in their new home for 5 years, red states could openly discriminate against LGBTQ+ people, woke teachers would be fired, and parents would choose the school curriculum.
Sean Hannity endorsed the plan. But not all conservatives cheered Greene on. Conservative Tom Smith, the assistant attorney general of Texas, tweeted "How disgraceful to Pres. Lincoln & the 1000's buried all across America who fought to preserve our nation to throw up our hands [and say] 'we can't make it work anymore.' So weak." Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) called her plan "insanity."
The two countries would be very different. Red states would get Texas cattle ranches and Oklahoma oil fields. Blue states would get Silicon Valley and Wall Street. Blue states would have many more people with college degrees. Red states would have many more people dying from COVID-19, drug abuse, and obesity. Red states would have more land but blue states would have twice the population. GDP would be much higher in the blue states.
How would that work? For starters, the blue states heavily subsidize the red states (e.g., farm subsidies), so the red states would either have to raise taxes or, more likely, cut their already meager services even more. With the exception of Texas and Florida, most job production is in blue states. The red states would have all the civilian guns but the blue states would have the F-22s because they belong to the United States government, which the red states want to effectively abolish. But there are a ton of difficult problems to solve. How would the federal debt be apportioned? What about the interconnected electric grid. Would foreign treaties apply to both countries? And so much more. The European Union and the U.K. are still not done working out the details of Brexit, so imagine how much harder this would be.
Oh, and not everybody would be in the country they want to be in. When the Indian subcontinent was partitioned into India and Pakistan in 1947, some 15 million people moved and somewhere between 200,000 and 2 million died in the process. Many Black people in Redistan would probably want to switch sides and white supremacists in Colorado might prefer Wyoming. For some people, their only asset is their house, which they would have to sell at a fire-sale price.
And change happens. North Carolina and Georgia are getting bluer. What if they initially chose Redistan but in 10 years enough old people had died and young people became voters and the majority wanted to secede from Redistan and join the other team? The sequel might not work out any better than the first time around. (V)