An Early Spring Fantasy

In the last decade this country has seemed to be more profoundly divided than at any time in a good while. The divisions have only become deeper, more obvious, and more contentious during the first years of the present administration in Washington. For the first time in a very long time people are talking about splitting the country into two nations - joking usually, but sometimes with a wistful hint of actual desire.

The notion is not as strange or outrageous as it probably first appears to most people. Dissolutions happen. Quebec got to the point of a referendum on leaving Canada. When the British rule in India ended, irreconcilable differences over religion led to splitting the subcontinent into (then) two nations - Moslem Pakistan at the west and east ends separated by largely Hindu India in the middle.

So, just for fun, let us imagine what a division of the United States into two countries along the present political and cultural divisions might look like. The heart of the first new country would be the progressive, leftist, metro-everything areas of the Northeast running from the District of Columbia through Boston. At a first glance it might seem natural simply to include all the states in that strip along the East Coast in the new country. However a closer look reveals that this approach would not quite work. Several northeastern states, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and New York in particular, have counties in their hinterlands that are far more like Georgia or Indiana than Georgetown or Manhattan. However a careful study suggests a sensible, historically relevant solution. The boundary could be drawn along the fall line, the place of furthest inland navigability of the various rivers along the Atlantic between DC and Boston with exceptions made to include all of New Jersey, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut and the part of Vermont from Route 2 south. A glance at the map shows this might work pretty well for the eastern piece of the new nation. The western part would be much easier. It would contain two segments, one in the north and one in the south. The southern part would include everything in California between Los Angeles and the San Francisco bay area west of I-5 (including Sacramento). The northern part would encompass a similarly defined strip west of I-5 from Portland to Seattle inclusive. That would just about do it for the “blue” country. Everything else in the lower 48 would remain with the “red” country. Alaska and Hawaii could pick where they wanted to go by plebiscite. The only glaring exception would be Chicago which clearly would belong with its coastal brethren. It would have to be set up as a geographically disconnected outpost of the new coastal country, just as the Konigsberg area on the Baltic is of Russia now.

Both sides of the current divisions might be happy with the results. The “blue” country would include Georgetown and the rest of the District of Columbia, Philadelphia, Manhattan and the rest of New York City, Boston, Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard, the Hamptons and the rest of Long Island, Harvard, Yale, Berkeley, the University of Chicago, Hollywood, Marin County, all of Seattle, and in short just about every place its more influential residents think matters. The “red” country would contain none of these, which might make its residents happy as well.

There would of course be some practical matters to iron out. The first might be the nomenclature. Here it seems that, since progressives tend to be embarrassed by the United States and ashamed of its history and traditions, it would be natural to call the “red” country the United States of America, and let the blue country select a new name, as a placeholder for which one could use Progressistan. Questions of national defense might be resolved easily. Since virtually all existing military installations would be in the new United States, and since most of the people who serve in the armed forces come from there as well, and given the disparate “red’ and “blue “ attitudes on the subject, it could satisfy both sides for the American armed forces to be assigned in total to the new United States. As this would leave Progressistan without military or naval forces, it would be appropriate for the armed forces of the United States to guarantee the borders of Progressistan against Canada, Mexico, and other powers for twenty years or so after the treaty of dissolution. (One messy consequence of an otherwise quite fairly clean division would be that both the Military and the Naval academies would be in the territory of Progressistan rather than that of the United States. However, it would be a fairly simple matter to move both institutions, perhaps even brick by brick, to new locations.)

Then there is the national debt. It could be divided between the two new nations in proportion to their citizens’ total incomes in the decade before dissolution, a solution that is both simple and progressive. Various other commitments of the federal government such as pensions of federal employees could become liabilities of Progressistan as a partial offset to the United States shouldering the burden of continental defense.

There is also the fact that some people in each country would prefer to live in the other. To manage the transition, there would need to be an eighteen month or so period during which any citizen of either country could migrate to the other freely and establish citizenship. After that issues of immigration could be managed by treaty.

Finally the new United States would need a capital since its old one would be in a foreign country. This is a matter that should be given very serious thought. It should be selected carefully to support a tiny administrative bureaucracy and a congress that in peacetime meets only for sixty days or so every other year. It should be located in the desert Southwest, if the sessions are in the summer, and in the northern woods if in the winter. Whatever town is selected should be both remote and lacking in facilities. There are plenty of places in eastern New Mexico or northern Minnesota that would fill the bill nicely.

That would just about take care of it – just a fantasy. The sad thing is that for a lot of people on both sides of the divide, it would be an appealing one. We are in unusual times.