Ed. here. Speaking of the Deep South (see previous post), Walt has sent along this photo, which may explain his absence this weekend...or not.
Some people will not forget, no matter how much brainwashing the Deep State and its lickspittle media subject them to. "Save your Confederate money; the South will rise again!"
Way back in 2011 -- note the date carefully -- Colin Woodard, a writer/historian/journalist from Maine, wrote American Nations -- A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America (Viking). Part history, part sociology and part ethnography, the book traces the formation of Yankeedom, the Deep South, the Left Coast, etc from the 17th century to the early 21st century.
Since the cultural revolution of the hippy-dippy 60s, the fault lines between North America's regional interests have been growing ever wider, resulting in the division of America into left and right, blue and red, and urban and rural "nations". In the decade since the book was published, the split has been almost 50-50, as witness the elections that brought President Trump and Crooked Joe Biden to power. What happens next?
In the Epilogue, Mr Woodard reveals his liberal bias. He wants to see the US of A held together as a "liberal democracy". But he wonders if that's possible. Here are two key excerpts, with Walt's contrarian comments.
Once the great exporter of innovations, products, and financial capital, the United States is now deeply indebted to China, on which it relies for much of what its people consume and, increasingly, for the scientists and engineers needed by research and development firms and institutions.
Its citizenry is deeply divided along regional lines, with some in the "Tea Party" movement adopting the rhetoric of the eighteenth-century Yankee minutemen, only with the British Parliament replaced by the federal Congress, and George III by their duly elected president. Its military has been mired in expensive and frustrating counterinsurgency wars in Mesopotamia and Central Asia, while barbarians have stormed the gates of its political and financial capitals, killing thousands in the surprise attaches of September 2001.
Add in the damage to public confidence in the electoral system caused by the 2000 election [the 2016 and 2020 elections were even worse!], the near-total meltdown of the financial sector in 2008 [and the near panic of last month!], and extreme political dysfunction in the Capitol [and that was in the Prez's first term!], and it's clear the United States has not started the century auspiciously....
One scenario that might preserve the status quo for the United States would be for its nations to follow the Canadian example [Eh? Trudeau's Canada?] and compromise on their respective cultural agendas for the sake of unity. Unfortunately, neither the Dixie bloc nor the Northern alliance is likely to agree to major concessions to the other.
The majority of Yankees, New Netherlanders and Left Coasters simple aren't going to accept living in an evangelical Christian theocracy with weak or non-existent social, labor, or environmental protections, public school systems, and checks on corporate power in politics.
Most Deep Southerners will resist paying higher taxes to underwrite the creation of a public health insurance system; a universal network of well-resourced, unionized, and avowedly secular schools; tuition-free public universities where science--not the King James Bible--guides inquiry; taxpayer-subsidized public transportation; high-speed railroad networks; and renewable energy projects; or vigorous regulatory bodies to ensure compliance with strict financial, food safety, environmental, and campaign finance laws. [This prescription for a better America might have been written by Bernie Sanders!]
Instead, the "red" and "blue" nations will continue to wrestle with one another for control over federal policy, each doing what it can to woo the "purple" ones to their cause, just as they have since they gathered at the First Continental Congress.
Another outside possibility is that, faced with a major crisis, the federation's leaders will betray their oath to uphold the U.S. Constitution, the primary adhesive holding the union together. In the midst of, say, a deadly pandemic outbreak [Written in 2001. How did he know?!] or the destruction of several cities by terrorists, a fearful public might condone the suspension of civil rights, the dissolution of Congress, or the incarceration of Supreme Court justices.
One can easily imagine circumstances in which some nations are happy with the new order and other deeply opposed to it. With the Constitution abandoned, the federation could well disintegrate, forming one or more confederations of like-minded regions.
Chances are these new sovereign entities would be based on state boundaries, because state governors and legislators would be the most politically legitimate actors in such a scenario. Sates dominated by the three Northern alliance nations--New York, New Jersey, and the New England, Great Lakes, and Pacific Northwest States might form one or more confederations. States controlled by the Deep South -- South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana -- might form another. The mountain and High Plains states of the Far West would constitute an obvious third.
The situation might be more complicated within often-divided Greater Appalachia or the "nationally mixed" states of Texas, California, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Arizona. It's not impossible to imagine some of the resulting coalitions extending into Canada, or, in the case of El Norte, Mexico.
If this extreme scenario were to come to pass, North America would likely be a far more dangerous, volatile, and unstable place, inviting meddling from imperial powers overseas. If this scenario of crisis and breakup seems far-fetched, consider the fact that, forty years ago, the leaders of the Soviet Union would have thought the same thing about their continent-spanning federation.
Mr Woodard's preferred scenario is clear enough, but is that how things will play out, or is the US of A headed for another civil war? Stay tuned.
BBC News reports today that the chief executive of NBCUniversal, Jeff Shell, has left the US media and entertainment giant over an "inappropriate relationship" he had with a woman at the company.
The announcement comes after the firm conducted an investigation over a complaint about Mr Shell's conduct. "I'm truly sorry I let my Comcast and NBCUniversal colleagues down," he said in a statement.
That's all ye know, and all ye need to know. Click here to read more by and about Doctor Sowell.
Victor Davis Hanson is an American classicist, military historian, and political commentator. He has been a commentator on modern and ancient warfare and contemporary politics for the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, National Review, The Washington Times and other media outlets. His clear thinking has been reposted on WWW; plug his name into the search window to find earlier posts.
Yesterday, Mr Hanson's latest thoughts on the decline and fall of the Disunited States of America were published on the American Greatness website under the headline "America’s Decline?". Subhead: The remedies are agreed upon, but the needed medicine is feared more than the disease. Because today, the government is the cause of our many crises. Here's the first part of his commentary.
Our largest cities are becoming uninhabitable—dilapidated, dangerous, and dysfunctional. The challenge is not just rampant crime, but the realization that if you, the citizen, are stabbed, shot, or beaten up on the street, the perpetrators may well be exempt from most punishments. And the victim either will be forgotten in his misery or, indeed, blamed for bringing such violence upon himself.
Urban schools are not places of instruction anymore. That fact is accepted by teachers’ unions, whose operative principle seems to be that the more hopeless the idea of educating urban youth is understood to be, the less burdensome the workload, and the greater their hazardous duty pay.
Urban chain stores are closing down on the principle that if police cannot or will not stop consumer violence and theft, then consumers there should not have any store to buy anything, anyway. If there is no store, how can it be looted or shop-lifted? [That's called "reparations shopping"! Ed.]
The only mystery remaining is how long these Democrat-controlled, racially charged, and corrupt municipalities can sustain their budgets and pension commitments with increasingly declining revenue. One can tax the well off, and perhaps even gouge them as California does. But one cannot insult and ridicule them in the process. Being highly taxed is one thing, being highly taxed while hated is quite another.
How eerie that medievalism—defecting, urinating, fornicating, injecting in the street—is relabeled “homelessness—as if the problem is merely a shortage of apartments or tent cities. Somehow cities developed the notion that it was crueler to be told not to pull down one’s pants and defecate in the street than it was for a pedestrian to step into infectious human excrement.
In the next five years, either cities will seek new governance to reduce taxes, break up municipal unions, mandate charter schools, restore police funding and manpower, recalibrate pensions, and prosecute criminals and corrupt officials—or Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, Portland, Minneapolis, and a score of others will become Detroit. [And let's not forget Chicago! Ed.]
One of the strangest phenomena amid our current debility are the millions of affluent leftists and liberals who have fled their unworkable, now unlivable blue-run, but naturally beautiful cities like San Francisco or Portland. They seem to lack an abstract recognition why they are leaving, or why and how their new chosen destinations are so different and therefore so inviting to them. Is their motto, “I am fleeing what I created, but I still hate those who created what I want”?
Mr Hanson is not one to post a jeremiad without suggesting some solutions, and he does so in the latter part of this article. Click here to read the whole thing. But will Mr Hanson's sensible solutions be enacted? Walt says there are two chances... slim and none!
