Disturbing Discussions

 From Borepatch at the end of a discussion of secession:

And so if reform is not possible, exit is the obvious result.  The Republic has large parts what are tired of having a left wing ideology rammed down their throats - and an ideology that enriches Wall Street and the big banks, at that.  These people have played the game the way it has been laid out, by the rules that were what everyone had been told were just - one man, one vote.  And that vote clearly is a waste of time.

Raconteur Reports disagrees:

Exit is impossible, and the idea is beyond retarded.

Don't get me wrong: the rationale for wishing to do so is as sane and sensible as the day is long, but wishes are not horses.

In 1860, you had clearly defined geographical lines of fracture. And even then, VA lost 1/43 of its territory, and the rest of the border states were similarly split and hamstrung.

You have nothing - absolutely nothing - as neatly and cleanly divided now.

Texas is going to wipe out Austin. Pfft. Sh'yeah.

Georgians will exterminate Atlanta. As if.

The rest of VA will obliterate the counties bordering on DC? Yeah, okay, pull the other one, it has bells on it.

The whole country is purpling up nicely.

You simply can't have secession when it would be the family on Main St. versus the couple around the corner, or the folks in Apt. 1B fighting with the guy in 3C.

Anything like Civil War 2.0 won't be North vs. South, or even city vs. country; it's going to be Bracken's "Bosnia x Rwanda". Think Beirut times 50 cities, and Hutu vs. Tutsis in 50 states. Even so-called "blue" states like NFY and Califrutopia are, at best. 60/40 propositions, and would be every bit as bloody an urban slaughter as you'd get if it was St. louis vs. the rest of Missouri, or Chicongo vs. Illinois. So who's going to secede from whom?

My take:

Secession is unlikely.  One reason that most people do not think about is that many people retired from Blue states to Red states.  Many of those retirees are dependent on their Social Security checks and Medicare.  For me, this loss would hurt, but it would be bearable.  For most retirees, it would not. 

There is no legal obligation to pay SS checks.  Back in the 1950s, Congress prohibited payments to retirees in Communist countries.  The Court upheld that law.

Any settlement of Civil War 2 would require transfer of funds that DC does not have to the newly independent nation.  The best we could hope for is exchange of oil and grain for those checks.  I suspect the USSA would rather not have the oil (global warming) and would buy the grain from Canada, just to spite us.  (Although the prairie provinces are already pretty upset at Trudeau--they can leave far more lawfully than we can.)

I think the idea in that second blog is mistaken.  While there are Blues in your neighborhood, there has been significant self-segregation already.  I think eastern California, eastern Washington and eastern Oregon would pull a West Virginia. 

There would be horrible things done in some states equivalent to the savagery of Missouri during the Civil War, maybe worse.  Big cities everywhere would do a Bosnia, as Antifa promoted race war.  There would be inevitable retaliation that would not be narrowly tailored to the real enemy.  Reductio ad genocidam.  I think California's Blue cities would quickly starve as growers in the Central Valley refused to supply food out of ideology, or fear, to enter those cesspits.

A revolution is the only realistic way out, and I shudder to think of the deaths and barbarism that would accompany this.  As good as a shooter is at hitting the bullseye at 500 meters, when the crosshairs are on a person, all but the most sociopathic are going to have a hard time pulling that trigger. 

Defensive uses will likely not be a problem.  Make the Democrats draw first blood.

All of this is pretty sobering.  Whatever Che Guevara/Battle of Lexington romantic ideas you might have, a real revolutionary war will be far uglier in reality.