Non-Fiction

matt819

(10,749 posts) Mon Sep 28, 2020, 10:57 AM Sep 2020

Books about the break-up of the US

I was going to post this in GD, but I figured there'd be a largely "you're fucking crazy" response.

I don't think we're having a serious enough discussion on the prospect of an American break-up. It's undemocratic, maybe seditious.
Fucking nuts. We're the United States of America, you moron.

Why do we think we're so special that we can't break up? Sure, I can point to much of Europe, including Russia and the rest of the former Soviet republics, and the response would be that we're nothing like them. WWII. The Cold War. Toppling of dictators (I'm looking at you, former Yugoslavia). So stipulated. But so what? The circumstances here may be different, but the past 40 years have demonstrated that we're not all that united, so maybe it's time for a divorce.

In any case, my post in non-fiction is for recommendations for good books about the issue. There are remarkably few, it seems.

There's a new one by an Evangelical conservative, David French, which has favorable comments from liberals. There's another one by Richard Kreitner about secessionist movements in our history (not so few and far between, it seems). Then there's the one a few years back by Colin Woodard about the eleven nations/cultures of North America. If you search online, you come across these as well as "predictions" by a Russian foreign policy analyst. Some bias there, I think.

A search on DU reveals a number of posts on the issue over the past decade, but I didn't notice any references to books on the issue.

So. . . does anyone know of relatively recent books on the subject, preferably from a more or less liberal perspective? Not looking for shrill screeds or predictions of doom and civil war, but rather rational, intelligent analysis of where we are and what now.

Thanks.

3 replies

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Books about the break-up of the US (Original Post) matt819 Sep 2020 OP

Who and under what scenarios gets control of the Nuclear arsenal.... Pachamama Sep 2020 #1

This country has been circling the drain since the Florida recount in 2000... Moostache Sep 2020 #2

Have long thought a country this large could never hold it together forever lettucebe Sep 2020 #3

Pachamama

(17,008 posts)

1. Who and under what scenarios gets control of the Nuclear arsenal....

Reply to matt819 (Original post)

Mon Sep 28, 2020, 11:03 AM

Sep 2020

Moostache

(10,135 posts)

2. This country has been circling the drain since the Florida recount in 2000...

Reply to matt819 (Original post)

Mon Sep 28, 2020, 11:19 AM

Sep 2020

No one likes to admit it, but that decision fractured the country's faith in the Supreme Court as an impartial body dedicated to the law and morphed it into the political hatchet outfit it is now.

The Florida recount simultaneously compromised the Presidency and the Supreme Court; and Gingrich and his bomb-throwing crazies had already make the House of Representatives a joke. Since the GOP took the Senate and installed McConnell as the self-described grim reaper, that body too is compromised and pretty much ineffectual as the founders envisioned.

We are left with a "unitary executive theory" installed by a minority-elected POTUS.
We are left with a 6-3 permanent conservative split on a SCOTUS so politicized that the only way to fix it is to start over...
We are left with a Senate that does not represent the will of 15 Million Americans by giving outsized import to small states with large land mass and no populations.
We are left with a House that is simply toothless in the legislative arena and has been neutered by the President and the Senate's willingness to break the law and flout the oversight of the House on the Executive.

NOTHING works the way it was intended to any longer. Citizen's United turned cash into speech and Corporations into people. That in turn made it entirely possible AND PROTIFABLE to buy the United States Senate. The loss of oversight has made it clear that financially owning the POTUS through debt is also 'no big deal' and that covering it up is 'just liberals bein mad still'.

There is no functioning United States at this moment.

lettucebe

(2,339 posts)

3. Have long thought a country this large could never hold it together forever

Reply to matt819 (Original post)

Mon Sep 28, 2020, 12:07 PM

Sep 2020

The country is so divided now, but when you think about it, how are you going to get big groups to move out of states? Not easily, indeed, so there will likely be these divisions for years and years.

I'd love the United States to break up, but cannot see it happening in my lifetime (next 20 years anyway). I'd be willing to lay a bet it will happen though.

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