A rotting, maggot-infested corpse?
A seriously wounded man with a gangrenous leg that will require amputation?
An old woman slipping further and further into dementia?
There are doubtless other metaphors that would work, but all three of the above describe at least partially America 2022.
A dozen or so years back, a historian in Russia said that in the near future, the United States of America would split into four different countries. Folks laughed. Hey, I laughed. But in this horrific year, it’s actually starting to look like something to be desired. The biggest problem will be the same as in some dissolving marriages. Who pays off the credit cards?
Don’t get me wrong. Even a split in two would be terrible.
Take Texas for example. It might be the shining lone star in Red America, but what happens to blue strongholds like Houston, Austin and San Antonio? Nearly every state, with only a few exceptions, has both types of voters.
The map above has some problems. It’s difficult to imagine folks in Idaho, Wyoming and Utah as part of a coalition that would be dominated by liberal coastal states. And I don’t see Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky and West Virginia being all that thrilled either.
And what about national defense? Do we assume that each of the four new countries has at least two new enemies?
National debt? We could stick the South will all the debts run up under Gee Dubya Bush and Donald Trump, but that might create a modern-day Weimar Republic. Then you’d have Trump, Ted Cruz and Ron DeSantis fighting over who gets to be Hitler Junior.
I can think of only one possible solution, and it would require at least one change to the Constitution.
Give more autonomy — and with it more power — to the individual states.
If a state wants to pass sensible laws dealing with guns, let it. And make it clear that anyone bringing guns into that state will go to prison. Yes, I know that “when guns are outlawed, yadda yadda yadda …”, but restricting gun ownership affects plenty of people who aren’t outlaws but simply desperate people.
Your state doesn’t want to educate the young? No sweat, America needs janitors.
Perhaps a humane way of dealing with the upheaval is to set up exchanges. Liberals living in Tickle Me, Idaho, or West Anus, Oklahoma, could exchange houses with conservatives eager to escape Hippy Dippy, California, or Tree Hug, Oregon.
Red States might want to crack down hard on culture war issues, while blue states might want to spend less on the military and more on education.
There would still be functions for a weakened federal government, but someone living in Texas and someone living in California might live under very different laws.
It’s possible this has been inevitable since 1964 and ’65, with laws dealing with civil rights and voting rights, and even more so since 1973 and Roe v Wade.
t’s possible this has been inevitable since 1964 and ’65, with laws dealing with civil rights and voting rights, and even more so since 1973 and Roe v Wade.
There are millions of Americans who wish women would stay home and gay people would stay in that proverbial closet.
They’re never going to compromise either.
So what’s the answer?
Do we bury the corpse, amputate the leg or try to slow the mental decline?
My guess is we need to look for yet another way.