It’s a boon in that people still want law and order and have a means to pursue it.

But the collective action, unimpeded by conflict, of 150-300 million people is a huge factor in what has made the US so prosperous for 80 years. We are giving that up.

My personal guess is the tipping point comes when the 2026 elections are either brazenly fraudulent or disregarded by the sitting majority leaders. If that doesn’t happen, then my next bet would be on the 2028 elections tearing us apart like those of 1860.

I will admit, my guesses have some big caveats around international relations. The Trump administration has shown disinclination to stand up to China or Russian, and have all but said they won’t defend Taiwan against China. Their calculus may change if they believe participating in a world war will help them cling to power I guess? Trump is kind of a Russian pawn though, and Russia would much prefer the US be torn apart in Civil War than jump in to defend Europe or democratic Asia.

I don’t see why we have to contrast the US and China so that one is a good guy and one is a bad guy. Has the US exploited the rest of the world since WWII for our own financial interests? Yes. Do we have an increasingly authoritarian government seeking to eventually crush internal dissent? Yes.

None of that makes China good.

If you don’t want to talk about Tiananmen Square, talk about China forcefully relocated migrant workers ahead of the Olympics in 2008. Talk about China sending Uyghurs to reeducation camps and forcefully sterilizing some of them. Talk about how China forced women to abandon/ abort babies for 30 years throughout vast swaths of their country. Talk about how people residing in China can’t actually talk about any of these things, to the point where citizens of Hong Kong fought back with violent protests and many fled to resist their encroaching authoritarian hand.

Did China raise more than a billion people out of brutal poverty in a single generation, and was it one of the most impressive and important developments of the last century? Yes, absolutely. Is an authoritarian technocracy better able to deal with the issues facing humanity in the near future like climate change? Potentially.

That doesn’t mean China’s citizens enjoy civil liberties.

I have listened to part of the It Could Happen Here vision for what could go down, but I’m on the fence. In the 2020 election and Jan 6th, I could see that version of things more: militias creating general lawlessness with a weak federal government that can’t maintain peace.

But since Trump arrived on the scene, people have been increasingly geographically sorting themselves by political affiliation. Additionally, we are seeing blue state coalitions form around vaccines and climate change. And now we are seeing folks band together at the state-level and pressure their state governments to take stands against the federal government. Additionally, we are seeing more punitive behavior between states (busing of migrants from Texas, financial punishment of blue states, trying to criminally charge ObGyns providing abortion services across state lines, red states offering Trump their national guard to punish blue states, redistricting based on the actions of another state).

Regardless of how people feel about the federal government, they seem to still see legitimacy in their local governments, and are increasingly using those local governments as vehicles for negotiation.

Just because red states have blue cities and blue states have rural red areas doesn’t mean we won’t divide down red state / blue state lines. States and their respective sides weren’t homogenous during the first civil war either. Texas took a vote on whether or not to secede, and something like 1/3 of the state voted to stay in the union. Maryland considered seceding, so the federal government immediately occupied it so that DC wasn’t cut off from the union.

We are already seeing balkanization with states forming coalitions on climate change action and vaccination guidance. What I’m still unclear of is whether blue states will secede or whether they will attempt to root out an illegitimate regime.

The Maryland DC suburbs are some of the nicest parts of the country.