The Future of US: Civil War or National Divorce?
Despite the current political polarization in the United States, ever-growing animosity between the Left and Right, most Americans are quick to dismiss the idea of a national divorce or a civil war. But remember, America was founded because of irrevocable religious differences between Europeans. There were competing sects of Christianity, which forced those not in power to leave Europe and come to America in order to escape tyranny and gain the freedom to practice their own religion.
The progressive liberal social justice worldview today, also known as wokeness, is essentially an atheistic religion. Its beliefs are religious in nature, in that they are based on faith alone and have no grounded evidence in truth or reality (i.e. "a man is a woman"). They have their own set of rituals, such as abortion, and their own holy figures, like Martin Luther King. However, this woke religion is diametrically opposed to traditional Christianity because it does not believe in God or salvation. Progressives literally celebrate each of the classic Seven Deadly Sins (pride, greed, wrath, envy, lust, gluttony, and sloth) as “ackshully good.”
It has been theorized that wokeness itself spurred from Christianity, as an offshoot of Calvinist Protestantism, which took the social justice parts of Christianity but abandoned all the other stuff like forgiveness and redemption. But the traditional Christians truly believe "all the other stuff," which is incompatible with the heretical woke sect.
Current America is actually in a similar situation to Europe following the Protestant Reformation in the 15 and 1600s, with extreme political and religious strife between people living on the same land. They have these worldviews that are religious in nature, so they cannot be changed by reason, and the ideologies are incompatible with each other. When faced with such a situation, there are really only two options: war or separation.
In the war option, those two opposing groups must fight each other so that only one remains--either kill their adversaries or force their religion onto them. In the separation option, one group must leave the area for a new land where they can each practice their faith in seclusion without affecting the other.
Which brings me back to the possibility of civil war or national divorce. Those are the options America faces today. And again, many are dismissive of another American civil war, claiming that people are too soft today to physically fight. Plus with new technology like nuclear missiles and autonomous drones, a hot land war likely won't happen again. There may be some truth to that, but you never know, and violence can erupt out of nowhere quite unexpectedly and become uncontrollable as it spirals into a full-out war. That is something I think both sides should be able to agree on wanting to avoid. If there's one thing these incompatible groups can agree on, it should be that they do not want to fight a civil war with each other.
And so that leaves us with the other option, national divorce. This seems obviously preferable to a civil war. The dismantling of the Soviet Union proved that such balkanization can be done peacefully, without mass violence, and that is what everyone should want in such a scenario. Obviously this would be a very complicated process, as there are red people in blue states and blue people in red states. It's not as easy as just cutting the country in half. But a stronger system of federalism, that is increased states' rights and shrinking of the federal government, could be the start. This is something we should already be doing now.
With stronger states' rights, each state in the US could become more unique, developing laws and customs that better suit the people who live there. Each state will become more progressive or conservative based on the "religion" their citizens believe in. With time, people will naturally gravitate to the states that best fit their worldviews. We already started to see this happen during Covid with people moving from blue states to red states. With stronger states' rights in the future, we could see that happen more often. Potentially, if states' rights expand enough, there may not need to be a national divorce at all, with the independent states remaining united under a less powerful federal government (as the Founders intended). Each state would almost be like a country in its own right (as were the original 13 colonies).
Otherwise, there can be a more explicit separation where two new federal governments are formed, between the Red States and the Blue States of America. The details are complicated and difficult to predict, but some kind of decentralization of the United States seems both necessary and inevitable.