Open Thread time
I’m of the opinion that we should always have an Open Thread in the list of 10 Recent Posts….
"This is the Voice of Moderation. I wouldn't go so far as to say we've actually SEIZED the radio station . . . "
russell – Maybe we need some kind of regional entity, smaller than the whole country, but larger than a single state, and then devolve a lot of what are currently federal responsibilities to those. It would be a hell of a lot easier to get a workable consensus about a lot of stuff in, for example, New England or the upper Midwest or the mountain west, than it is when the whole country is involved.
That sounds to me something like The Hansa. Germany had its Holy Roman Empire and its lords, but the emperor was weak and the lords were more independent. That’s something like what we would have if federalism weakened under the dysfunction of competing authoritarianism, leaving states to pick up the slack. It’s kinda where King Leer is pushing things right now with his withholding of federal monies to states he hates.
Germany also had powerful cities with guilds, whose economic power bought them a measure of independence from their lords – again, think blue cities in red states. The cities form leagues and arrange favorable exchanges, and use those associations to allow for mutual aid and for more liberal social policies. Such an arrangement could work as a counter to weak federalism.
I imagine that places like L.A. and Silicon Valley might use their economic power to go the Italian city-state route rather than the league route. They already do where the California governor is concerned. Nevertheless, the other big cities could well affiliate to compete with the megacities for influence over the state.
The United States could remain, and could hold elections, but lacking enough federal power to enforce central control over its territory it would lose sovereignty, and the centers of power could well become regional and associational, rather than territorial.
“United” States with power more devolved to the states and formal associations between states and cities to create regional compacts that regulate shared resources and mutual aid.
It’s one of the ways the world could have gone in the Renaissance – a less universalist vision than the nation-state. Pockets of prosperous liberalism within illiberal territories, all working within a much reduced form of national sovereignty.
Not with a bang, but a whimper.
A couple of partition issues that would have to be addressed:
How many pieces are acceptable in the outcome? For example, Michael’s map lumps together the mountain west with the Pacific coast states. Are they different enough to warrant splitting them up? How about Texas and the southern Great Plains? In short, how finely do we need to chop things up?If we can break the nation into regions, could we do the same with individual states? For example, upstate New York might prefer to divorce New York City (and its suburbs). Does that including splitting up individual counties? Do the new regions have to be contiguous? Not just the obvious cases (which region, if any, do Alaska or Hawai’i attach to?). But can you have a bunch of urban islands belong to one region while the surrounding rural area belongs to another? If so, how does that work in practice? If not, what’s the philosophical argument for that restriction?
To say that the devil is in the details is putting it mildly. I could see an agreement in principle to split up, followed by years of debate over what regions there will be and who is in which one. Not to mention the other grubby issues. Brexit still has details being fought over, and the UK was part of the EU for barely a generation. Not to mention the EU even now being less integrated than the US is.
GftNC: I understood the point. It’s not wrong that there are things these groups hold in common that transcend doctrinal differences. Yes, Trump is one of those things, judging by past elections. There are a lot of other things. And I recognize the apparent contradiction in support of Trump and purported Christian principles. It’s understanding that apparent contradiction that is often ignored by my liberal friends or waved away with a simple “hypocrisy!” And I just think it goes off the rails when we start talking about a shooting war. YMMV.
bc: Ah, thank you. It’s true, I (and probably most liberals) find it hard to reconcile the strong judgementalism on sexual and moral issues (in which latter I include cruelty, dishonesty and lack of empathy for vulnerable e.g. poor people – see Jesus’s teachings passim) with tolerance for the clear display of any of these failings (or “sins”) in favoured rightwing politicians, religios, judges etc. As for your reservation about the chances of “a shooting war” I very much hope you’re right. But alas, examples like the violence in Minneapolis, the deaths in “illegal immigrants’ detention centres”, the clear disregard for the necessity to protect Americans’ health (vaccinations etc) and the obvious and rampant corruption, leads me to believe that it’s not all that far fetched to speculate that large scale violence and subsequent retribution may result.
For example, Michael’s map lumps together the mountain west with the Pacific coast states. Are they different enough to warrant splitting them up?
Random thoughts…
My friend the anthropologist says that the suburbs of major metro areas west of the Great Plains (ie, Denver and farther west) are more alike than they are like anything east of the Great Plains. In support of that, now that the Census Bureau supports built-area density calculations, it turns out that western suburbs average almost twice the population density of suburbs in the other three CB regions.
The coastal and interior West share a synchronous electric grid, with minimal connections to the Eastern grid and none to the Texas grid. The coastal cities/states import lots of electricity from the interior. There are two major long-distance power lines under contruction — Transwest Express and Sunzia — that will increase that. Large pieces of both of those lines are HVDC — they really are intended for no purpose other than moving gigawatts of Wyoming wind and New Mexico wind and solar from the western edge of the Great Plains to switch yards close to Southern California.
Reliable agriculture requires irrigation in all the western states. Land with irrigation rights in the Willamette Valley in Oregon is much more expensive than land without because despite the annual averages, it doesn’t rain there during the crucial months of July and August. Plus other sorts of water issues: California is concerned about Colorado snowfall, Oregon and Washington about eventual discharges of nasty stuff from the INL into the Snake/Columbia, etc.
Both coastal and interior states have recalls, initiatives, and heavy vote by mail. There are nine state legislative chambers in the US where 50% or more of the seats are held by women, all in western states, both coastal and interior (the Progressive Era lives on!). All of them have a long-term distrust of the federal Bureau of Land Management and Bureau of Reclamation.
Playing with the cluster analysis — based, recall, on people moving between states — and proceeding to more regions, the two that break up last are the West and NY/New England. That suggests tighter “binding” than in Greater Texas, the Southeast, and the two Midwest chunks.
I see a lot of different imagined scenarios here of what a “shooting war” might look like in our hypothetical futures. I’ll clarify what I was imagining when I used the phrase…
Imagine it is twenty years on and the federal government continues its deep dysfunction in the legislative branch, its anti-regulatory, anti-labor, pro-oligarchic, christian national stance in the judicial branch, and its competing authoritarian trend in the executive. Most of the federal management has been crippled and those responsibilities have devolved to the states.
The tensions between the coastal PNW cities and the eastern side of WA/OR have escalated. ID has continued its evolution towards being a haven for White Christian Nationalists, and there is a growing network of Active Clubs along the west coast that are working with the Idaho nationalists, going to paramilitary training and whatnot, supported by a network of WCN donors across the US.
The Active Clubs show up to protest in liberal cities whenever there is a Democrat in the White House, and to counter-protest whenever there is a Republican there and the residents of Portland/Seattle come out to protest the feds.
This is no different from today, really.
But with the FBI and the Justice Department crippled by two decades of competitive authoritarianism, these Active Clubs can start to attack the power grids of the liberal cities (using drones and small guerilla units to sabotage substations, etc.) and in places like Spokane these groups stage Malheur-style takeovers and standoffs. The use of drones means that the Active Clubs can attack any state enforcement efforts.
All of this is making the more eastern side of the states unsafe for anyone that does not fit the demographic ideals of the American Redoubt.
It’s a shooting war, but on the level of The Troubles, not of The American Civil War. No one is putting units on the ground and fighting openly for territory. That’s an obsolete vision of war.
I read this conversation as “If this were going to happen, how might it go down?” more so than “Oh, no! This is what’s going to happen!”
I don’t think any of it is ridiculous to consider as being possible.
Looks credible to me:
It’s a shooting war, but on the level of The Troubles, not of The American Civil War. No one is putting units on the ground and fighting openly for territory. That’s an obsolete vision of war.
As for the following, me too:
I read this conversation as “If this were going to happen, how might it go down?” more so than “Oh, no! This is what’s going to happen!”
I don’t think any of it is ridiculous to consider as being possible.
No one is putting units on the ground and fighting openly for territory. That’s an obsolete vision of war.
/looks at Ukraine.
But considering that we are frequently talking about reactionaries here…. (The kind of folks who think that a battleship is a step forward.)
cleek – /looks at Ukraine.
Exactly…
Think of Russia as the federal government. Putin sees Ukraine as a separatist state of what is historically (to his mind) Russian territory. He tries to invade, but gets bogged down. The battle lines harden and it becomes a war of attrition. Advantage Russia.
That’s the old war.
Ukraine, meanwhile, desperately needs to find a way to preserve their limited population and not spend it foolishly taking on Russia’s material advantage. They put up obstacles to territorial progress and settle into a strategy of dispersal, using drones and SigInt to locate, map, and bleed the Russians. They spend $5000 a drone taking out Russian weapon platforms that cost millions to produce, and use anti-personnel drones to kill the crews that serve the Russian weapons. $15000 to cost Russia $10m or more and kill more troops than Russia can replace, all with no further territory gained and controlled.
That’s rapidly becoming the new face of war across Europe.
Troops on the ground is a fools errand when the people don’t want you there. Especially when what you really want is to bring those people back under your control.
Troops on the ground is a fools errand when the people don’t want you there. Especially when what you really want is to bring those people back under your control.
Well, there is the caveat that, because part of Putin’s real goal is to eradicate Ukrainian culture, he is OK with a result which merely eliminates all the Ukrainians. It still isn’t working out for him. But it does to give him more options than if he wanted to take them over alive and subjugate them.
The “Troubles” in NI is a bad fit, because much of the violence was between antagonistic groups, side-by-side INSIDE of moderately dense urban communities.
In the USA, it’s much more “urban” vs. “rural”.
If the armed MAGA rurals try to invade similarly armed cities, they’ll get slaughtered. Urban warfare gives a big boost to the defenders.
Armed urbans launching raids into rural areas? Not as clear.
Snarki – Fair. I was thinking more in terms of scale, intensity, and duration than in methodology or geography when I mentioned The Troubles. I have yet to find a reliable historical analog for the current US.
>That’s the old war.
well, it’s the current war.
and Russia would own Ukraine by now if it wasn’t for the help of Ukraine’s allies. the drone war is the latest stage, but it wouldn’t have happened at all if Ukraine hadn’t been able to stop Russia’s attempts to march through. and that was possible in large part thanks to aid from the US and the EU (and others).
but nobody would send artillery shells to the Dakotas if they decided to do something stupid. nobody would donate F16s to help Wyoming. they’d be overwhelmed, if it came to a ground invasion. they’d never reach the drone war stage.
cleek – We’re starting from such different assumptions about starting conditions that it’s no wonder we are envisioning different conflicts.
So it goes.
Urban warfare gives a big boost to the defenders.
Armed urbans launching raids into rural areas? Not as clear.
I’m thinking that a suburban environment is different from both. Drones would be far more effective, for both sides, than in an urban environment. But less so than in a rural area with long sightlines.
“Armed urbans launching raids into rural areas? Not as clear.”
I don’t really see a significant level of interest among urban people to invade rural areas. And to be honest, I don’t really see a significant level of interest among rural folks to invade cities.
We have seen Trump try on invading blue cities under the banner of immigration enforcement, and the generally horrified reaction of people in general has forced him to scale that way back. He was able to pull that off using ICE and CBP but I don’t think the actual military would stand for it. Not so far, anyway.
What is likely, because it’s already here, is free lance ideological violence. It’s likely to continue. Some of it is disgruntled individuals, but some of it is more organized. The latter is more concerning, and could actually lead to something like the Troubles.
What I really wish is that the feds would crack down on the militias, who are basically unaccountable private armies. It’s astounding to me that they have been allowed to exist. They’re mostly clownish but even clowns can shoot. But I think any attempt in that direction would result in real violence a la Timothy McVeigh, mostly directed toward federal institutions, but possibly more generally.
Cutting off the food supply of cities would be more effective for the rural rebels than going in and trying to conquer by street fighting. Depending on location spoiling the water supply would be even more effective.
Cutting off the food supply of cities would be more effective for the rural rebels than going in and trying to conquer by street fighting. Depending on location spoiling the water supply would be even more effective.
Most of the food actually eaten by rural people in the US is shipped from huge warehouses in metro areas. If the farmers say, “We’re not going to harvest this fall,” the cities respond with, “We’re not going to ship canned and frozen goods to your local grocery starting today.”
The economies of rural and urban areas are intertwined to an enormous degree. In principle, rural areas could just shift back to subsistence agriculture. Except that agriculture today is highly specialized. You can get corn in Kansas, but if you want lettuce or tomatoes or avacado you mostly have to get it from California. And vis versa.
Also, the refineries which make the fuel for farm equipment are at least on the edges of cities. Pretty much zero farmers today are prepared to do farming without powered machinery. Even if there were horses to work the (no longer available) old fashioned farm equipment. For that matter, the whole transportation system depends on those refineries.
The other detail is money. At this point, money changing hands in the US is almost entirely electronic. And the data centers which process those transactions are in urban areas. Money was invented for a reason. Using barter is possible for an occasional interaction. But for general use? Not viable any more. Especially since you are necessarily dealing with people far away who you have never even met.
We’ve already (re-)discovered, thanks to the Trump tariffs, how intertwined our economy is with the rest of the world. Internally, it is far more integrated. Unless you are willing to personally die slowly and painfully of starvation, just to make some kind of political or philosophical point, you’re stuck. And when push comes to shove, how many people are that fanatical?
It does not have to be a long term solution. How long does it take to starve a modern large city (in particular, if water supplies can be cut off too) and how long in comparison can the surrounding rural area keep up the siege? This would not be a siege of Leningrad, I presume.
Open thread… Over the last couple of months I’ve been reading some of Juliet McKenna’s Green Man urban fantasy. For certain values of urban, like lots of very rural England. Along with a variety of English folklore, I’ve learned that downs are a very specific sort of geology. Also, that while I cook a variety of recipes involving beans, after looking at online videos I think I’ll pass trying beans on toast.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/may/19/trump-irs-settlement-tax-returns
I’m not sure the “forever” authority exists, but either way … wow. It was bad enough already and now this.
My friend Chris Harden has won the Democratic primary for Georgia’s 11th Congressional District. Given the location of outstanding votes the margin between the number of Republican vs. Democratic primary voters in the district will close, but at last check it was 74k to 47k. On the positive side, in the statewide primaries for Gov, Lt. Gov, and Senate, D votes outnumber R votes, and that’s with Ossoff running unopposed. The two Supreme Court races that are nominally non-partisan, so not primaries, didn’t reflect that, although in one of them the margin is less than 3%, with a lot of Fulton County (main part of Atlanta) yet to report. Which is extremely rare for these races, the only indication on the ballot is (I) for incumbent. There hasn’t been an open election for a seat in a long time, the practice since Republicans have held the governor’s office has been for a justice to retire after filing deadlines for an election to have passed, allowing the governor to appoint a replacement, who subsequently enjoys the benefit of incumbency.
Priest, if you’d like to do a front page post about Harden, let the kitty know!
Bad as this is, and it is horrible, I don’t think it’s the worst part of the “settlement.”
The worst part is Trump, via his Attorney General, agreeing to give Trump a billion dollar slush fund, out of our tax dollars, to spend on essentially anything he likes. Primarily rewarding any of his followers who break the law at his behest. But decisions on who gets how much are made entirely by a panel he, as a private individual, appoints.
Sure, but the slush fund was already known, at least to me, before the tax-audit immunity. So, bad as it was with just the slush fund, it’s even worse when you add the tax-audit immunity on top of it.
once upon a time, Republicans were opposed to slush funds.
https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/trump-justice-department-settlement-slush-fund/
Not sure I can accept a $1.8 billion slush fund, funded by my tax dollars, as “just a slush fund.” At some some point a difference in magnitude becomes a difference in kind.