Two Americas: Why red states must be allowed to secede

As the US government entered its third day of shutdown following the inability of the two principal parties to work out a deal on raising the debt ceiling, a larger question looms: is America really one country? On the surface it seems as if a few extreme Right-wingers in the Republican Party - the so-called Tea Party cabal - are holding the Republican leadership and the country to ransom in order to pare down Obama’s healthcare reforms. Obama said as much after cancelling parts of his Asia tour in the wake of the shutdown: “They’ve shut down the government over an ideological crusade to deny affordable health insurance to millions of Americans. In other words, they demanded ransom just for doing their job.” The Republicans don’t necessarily see saving Obamacare as their job, but even they don’t deny taking hostages in this confrontation between Left and Right. Henry Paulson, who was Treasury Secretary in George W Bush’s administration when Lehman went bust, had this to say: “These guys (the extreme Right) may threaten to take their mother hostage, but they’ll never hurt their mother.” [caption id=“attachment_1152519” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] The Republicans don’t necessarily see saving Obamacare as their job, but even they don’t deny taking hostages in this confrontation between Left and Right.. Reuters[/caption] That remains to be seem, but media commentary in the US certainly seems to suggest that the Right-wing loonies are doing great damage to the idea of America. Tom Friedman writes in The New York Times that the Right is effectively trying to undo the loss of the last national election by resorting to unfair means. He wrote: “What is at stake in this government shutdown forced by a radical Tea Party minority is nothing less than the principle upon which our democracy is based: majority rule.” But, I suspect, that the Americans are equally unable to see the truth about themselves that they often clearly to see in others. And this truth is simple: America is really two nations forced to cohabit the same country. The fault lines have always been there, but they are getting sharper as America gets more diverse and threatens the old WASP (White, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant) hold on power. Evidence of there being two Americas is everywhere. This is clear even from the way America votes: there are red states (Republican-dominated) and blue states (Democratic-dominated). Despite scores of elections, red states have largely voted red and blue states blue - it is the crossover states, which are sometimes red and sometimes blue, that decide who becomes president or rules Congress. This is, of course, an oversimplification of America’s deep ideological divide, for there are surely Republicans who are to the Left of their party and closer to blue positions on some policy issues, and vice-versa. However, there is no doubt that geographically red and blue are clearly visible even from the moon: the blues rule the populated west and north-eastern peripheries of the US and the reds dominate the big middle, running from north to south (see electoral maps of red and blue states here ). The values and opinions that divide the two Americas are in fact geographically sharper than what is merely red or blue in terms of formal political affiliation. For example, Democrats in the American south tend to be more conservative than Republicans in, say, New York or California. Even sharper is the economic and racial divide. Red values – largely conservative White, Christian values – include small government, belief in god, the work ethic, right to carry guns, opposition to gay marriage and pro-abortion laws, less doles to the poor, etc, etc. Blue values are not exactly the opposite, but the stereotype would not be wrong. Conservatives (often, the red states) want America to remain largely WASP, and they are chary about diversity – though this is changing in border states like Texas and California, where Mexican immigration is radically altering the demographic composition and White farmers like having the advantage of cheap labour from beyond the border. Conservative values are battling economic reality, but the divide is clear. Broadly speaking, there are about 20-25 red or reddish states; the rest are blue. In terms of population demography, the blues clearly carry the day – but the territory under red rule is large and distinct. Demography is in favour of blue; geography favours red. In short, America is ripe for secession. The Conservative Right is unable to stomach the Liberal-Left majority that now rules America. It wants its own kind of country. The red states and red-state politicians are already building a moat around themselves and their values. Friedman lists at least two things they have done to separate themselves from the rest of America: gerrymandering, and the creation of a separate media universe to reflect values that they feel the liberal mainstream does not reflect. Quoting author Charlie Cook, Friedman says that the “2010 election gave Republican state legislatures around the country unprecedented power to redraw political boundaries, which they used to create even more ‘safe, lily-white’ Republican strongholds that are, in effect, an ‘alternative universe’ to the country’s diverse reality….According to Cook, the number of strongly Democratic districts decreased from 144 before redistricting to 136 afterwards. The number of strongly Republican districts increased from 175 to 183. In other words, there is little risk of political punishment for the Tea Party members now holding the country hostage.” As for the media, channels like the Fox News now cater to red values – distinctly and unabashedly. This mental separation between red and blue America can only grow since, in their minds, the red states have seceded. They feel they have no stake in the blue universe. Hence the willingness to shut down America. There is no point in asking who is right or who is wrong. Surely, after a while, the Tea Partyists will give in and let the country return to normal. But the divide will remain, waiting for the next rupture. The last time America faced such a divide – over the abolition of slavery – they settled the issue through war. The North defeated the South, which wanted to secede. This time, as the cliché goes, it is different. The issue of deep divide cannot anymore be settled by the gun. Maybe the best option is for a federation of right and left America, where each part of the federation stays in a united US but is able to apply different laws to itself. This is the solution Americans would happily propose to any group that wants to secede elsewhere – from Bosnia to East Timor to Yugoslavia to Russia. Time they applied this logic to themselves.