By Carlos Esteban
One would think that, after the 620,000 dead in the American Civil War that ended in 1865, Americans would have forever put off the desire to divide the country into smaller countries.
Still, many think the “incompatibility of characters” between the two real nations, Democrats and Republicans, is too great to stay together.
According to a recent poll conducted by Ipsos after Georgia Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor-Greene openly declared that the country cannot remain one any longer, 20% want it, 66 million.
The ones who want it, above all, a quarter of Republicans, can’t stand another day of what they conceive as a woke tyranny.
Still, even among Democrats, who control the White House and most of the media, 16% can’t stand any more nation sharing with that bunch of Trumpist rednecks still reluctant to obey the UN and maintain borders.
That one-fifth of Americans who want to split the country is still a minority with numbers that are far from determining the fate of the Union.
However, it is the highest proportion since the Civil War and has grown steadily in recent decades.
The leading spokeswoman for that opinion, Taylor-Greene, launched the battle cry after Biden’s surprise visit to Poland and Ukraine, a declaration of intent by the US Executive on its determination to maintain the war with Russia at any cost, including, tacitly, a nuclear world war.
“We need a national divorce,” tweeted Taylor-Greene from her social network account.
“We need to separate the Republican states from the Democrats and shrink the federal government,” she insisted.
“Everyone I talk to says so.”
She continues: “From the problems stemming from a sick and disgusting culture imposed on us to the Democrats’ treacherous America Last policies, we’ve reached the end.”
The Ipsos poll reveals that those most eager to sign on to divorce are males, people earning US$50,000 or less each year, and those living in the South and West.
In Washington, the possibility of secession doesn’t even enter the political radar, but at the state level, it’s another matter.
In Oregon, for example, a campaign for the state’s rural east to effectively secede from the rabidly Democratic state and join a more conservative Idaho is gaining momentum, with politicians in both states expressing support for the border change.
In Texas, just this month, a congressman has introduced a bill to establish a referendum and have voters decide whether the state should explore the possibility of seceding from the United States, a move known as Texit.
After all, in Texas’ case, it would be a return to lost independence.
But even if the idea were to continue to grow into a majority, no one knows quite where to stick the scissors. The last secession, that of the South in 1861, was relatively clean because it involved two differentiated territories with sufficiently distinct economies and cultures.
Today, on the other hand, the division is not only and especially not between one state and the other, but between the big cities and the rest of the country.
However, the social and political fault lines in the United States are more than visible, and it is unlikely that the announced arrest of former President Donald Trump will do anything but exacerbate them.
With information from LGI