It is hard to deny that this is a pretty common thought these days. I hear a lot of people making sounds in that direction, regardless of their more traditional ideological views.

We'd have to figure out how the nukes are divided up, however. Though what is it they say about possession being 9/10ths of the law...

> how the nukes are divided up

The Lord's our shepherd, goes the psalm When Alabama gets the bomb.

~ Tom Lehrer, "Who's next"

Well, the USSR broke up without too much fuss about who got the bombs; as far as I can see, only Russia was interested. But I can imagine a Divided States of America in which both successor states have nukes. I suspect they'd be reluctant to attack one-another. They might even both choose to disarm, depending on the nature of the break-up.

The USSR was dominated by Russia, and they had the codes anyway. So I guess in the case of the USA it would matter how it broke apart.

> both successor states

Why would there be only two?

> Why would there be only two?

Sure. You could abolish the Union entirely, and just have states. I don't think it's obvious that that would be a terrible thing - either for USAians or for the rest of us. My sense is that a lot of USAians don't really want a Union. I suspect that many USAians think the Union was effectively a coup.

The question remains: how do you spread the nukes around?

My guess is that the residents of Wyoming could do without nukes. They have a lot of land-based nukes, that serve no defensive purpose (for Wyoming); they just make Wyoming a target. I wonder which state might decide that they need nukes, to defend themselves from someone outside North America?

Second question: how you divide up the military equipment that isn't nuclear - ships, tanks, rockets, planes etc. All that equipment carries a heavy cost - it has to be maintained, replaced, tested etc.

The people expressing this thought clearly have spent very little time in other countries to appreciate what y'all have.

Belgium and the Netherlands and Luxembourg were the same country, at least for some time, then split up and are good countries to live in (probably beating the US on most quality of life metrics). Same goes for the Nordics which were at different times in various combos (Denmark-Norway, Sweden-Finland, Sweden-Norway, Iceland was a part of Denmark).

Also a bunch of other examples where the countries aren't necessarily the best to live in, but pretty much everyone is happy they split - Yugoslavia, India/Pakistan, West Pakistan/East Pakistan. Singapore/Malaysia (to be fair Singapore were kicked out).

A split of the US among the crazily politicised duopoly wouldn't be the end of the world. One part would be reactionary as hell and move time back (on social and ecological issues), the other.. who knows.

Fantasizing about the end of the world/country/whatever is a popular pastime in the US. It is reasonable to suspect that the talk is primarily the 1% loudest people and that if anything starts to look like it's getting real, the remaining majority will step on the brakes.

There's a time bomb baked into the conceptualization of mythos of the United States.

The US in many ways legitimizes itself as a government in the traditional of the "western european project," by evoking the ritual, esthetic, ideals, and historical lineage of ancient Greece and Rome. From names and architecture, to values and ritual, there is an establishment of ties, real or imagined to be real.

On one hand, this works fantastically to mentally cement the US in the greatest of greats, but we cannot ignore the visibly obvious - that ancient Greece and Rome declined and fell. By drawing a parallel to ourselves(us-centric obvs) we draw a parallel to our own decline. We we're honest with this comparison, we have to be honest about the demise of these governments too. It's not possible to separate the too.

"End of the Union" is a catastrophically bad idea and it disturbs me that otherwise intelligent people would take it seriously. I find it stunning how people who might otherwise decry things like "racism" can be in a mindstate of not understanding how close of an idea this is to "Maybe we should do the Civil War" again.

> Maybe we should do the Civil War again

There's a fair argument that it never ended; the South was defeated, but never gave in. Or at least, part of the South didn't. Come on, isn't that the meaning of the Confederate flag? Doesn't it mean "Fuck you, Union"?

/me a brit, I don't have a dog in this race. I'd just feel massively more comfortable if the most powerful country in the world knew who it was, what it's policies are, and who it's friends are. If they can't figure that out, and have to break up, that's miles better than the USA being balanced 49% to 51% on every policy and every federal court judgement.

I'd prefer it if the USA split, rather than having a schizophrenic USA, with the biggest army in the world, that can't agree who it is, what it's economic policy is, or what it's foreign policy is. Schizo USA is screwing everyone else up.

That's a pretty fair dog actually.

I like the goal you're looking at, I just don't think that's a viable path from where we're standing; which is to say in reality a broken US gives you more potential chaos, not less?

I've come to believe that "nation" is somewhat of a weird and artificial concept and so that in many ways it almost doesn't make sense to compare e.g. the US and Russia. And so, while "no lopsidedly strong nation" would be optimal, from here I do think that US in its current form is a pretty good hedge against the others, for the most part.

Reconstruction 2.0 it is then. The Compromise of 1877 was a uniquely bad idea.

It's going to be a real bad thing for some people in some of the states. E.g., the last time the Union was split up it was over the "right" to treat people as livestock. Or look at the use of federal civil rights laws in the ending of Jim Crow.

>over the "right" to treat people as livestock

Yes, to me (not from USA) it looks as if would get worse for most USAians if the Union broke up. Especially marginalized people. But I think that for the rest of us, it would be cool if the US government would agree to work together, or agree to divorce. It's shit, being in the blast-radius of a marital crisis that's lasted 30 years.