How easily two weeks can turn into three months!
When Greymantle posted Part One of ‘Fear the S-Word’ back in late May, he felt certain that Part Two would be available for readers no later than June 15. But twelve weeks later, the chagrined editor returns to his blog humbled by the unpredictable happenstance of life.
Sadly, a serious illness in the family proved to be a major distraction during the months of June and July, and August virtually collapsed under the weight of various kinds of catch-up that naturally follow in the wake of a three alarm fire and its attendant chaos. With the family member in question out of immediate danger, Greymantle is back at his blog.
FIRST, A BRIEF RECAP
We concluded our prior discussion of contemporary American secessionist movements with a summary of four state-level movements seeking to separating several counties from their home states.
The states in question are Illinois, Minnesota, Oregon and Virginia, and the movements are in favor of amalgamating the breakaway counties with the neighboring states of Idaho, South Dakota, Indiana and West Virginia, respectively.
Our conclusion was that these four movements have only a modest chance of success given the high procedural and legal hurdles each must overcome to achieve their ends. Approvals by both the current state legislatures and target state legislatures are themselves a high bar to surmount, as would be ratification of any such approval by the U.S. Congress.
However, we did not count any of these movements out. Any or all of them could succeed in their aims given time, aided by sufficient voter support, passion, and money. Political chaos and opportunism at higher levels of government could also play a role.
To put it succinctly, if enough members of Congress and an occupant of the Oval Office believed it benefited their political fortunes to allow 16 counties to break away from one state and join another, then a future Congress might approve with a future President signing the separation into law.
After the Trump Presidency, who are we to argue against the dictum that ‘anything is possible’?
Nevertheless, at the present time, only the Movement for Greater Idaho appears to have anything greater than a snowball’s chance in hell of succeeding, despite no surfeit of passion swelling the sails of the other three secession movements.
In our second and final post on the topic, we turn to what the re-emergence of secessionism in contemporary discourse means for broader political currents in the United States, and how a further upsurge in such sentiments might affect the trajectory of U.S. politics.
HANDS TICKING TOWARDS MIDNIGHT
When Greymantle was a boy, the Cold War was in full swing and the strategic dictum of ‘Mutually Assured Destruction’ very much in vogue. The U.S. and the U.S.S.R. both possessed vast arsenals of nuclear warheads, each pointed at the other. How close the superpowers were to actual nuclear conflict was represented by the hypothetical ‘Doomsday Clock‘ set with its hands spinning past the hours slowly, as on the face of a schoolroom clock.
The closer the hands of the clock got to midnight, as assessed by various strategic experts and members of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, the closer the world got to nuclear war. Assessments were based on the superpowers’ relations with one another and the number of nuclear weapons in existence.
The U.S. and Soviet Union were two minutes from midnight in October 1962 at the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis as the rest of the world watched, breathless, to see if/how the stand-off would be resolved.
I’ve often wondered in recent years whether a group of canny observers of inter-state politics might be able to design a similar doomsday clock to gauge the tension level between the so-called Blue States and Red States, each more or less dominated by one of the two major parties. The Domestic Doomsday Clock would be set to gauge the distance to a midnight marked by the onset of a second U.S. civil war.
Experts could speculate as to certain ‘lines in the sand’ that, once crossed, would take the U.S. closer to the break of dissolution. For example, more than three impeachment trials within 20 years would bring the U.S. to five minutes to midnight. An election won by actual (rather than fake) fraud would move the minute hand to three minutes. The vote of a single state legislative majority to take its state out of the union would move the hand to 11:59pm – one minute to midnight.
I raise the issue of the Doomsday Clock as a way of implying that growth in the number of secession movements at the county and state levels is the type of development that moves the minute and hour hands of our clock closer to midnight. Such movements are red flags of mounting instability.
ZERO-SUM GAMES AND THE MEANING OF SECESSION
The resurrection of secession as a term of serious political use in the U.S. points to the growth of social and political issues which may be described as ‘zero sum’. One side wins, and the other side loses completely – or believes it has sustained an unmitigated defeat. Zero sum situations can exist in the mind of the perceiver, but are no less real for that. If someone believes they have been beaten and are unlikely to achieve redress or satisfaction, then this will guide their future behavior.
Issues relating to climate change and the mitigation efforts connected therewith, legalized abortion, same-sex marriage, and the conduct of military operations against real and suspected terrorists (the so-called ‘War on Terror’) have all tended to polarize opinion. Each sends supporters from the ‘pro’ and ‘anti’ camps into opposite corners from which it is virtually impossible to extract them for the purpose of conducting more mundane policy discussions and government business.
For voters convinced of the reality of global, human-driven climate change, the issue is one of apocalyptic urgency. Existing industries must be taxed and regulated in ways heretofore unimagined with some pushed out of existence to make way for ‘clean energy’ alternatives that are still in their infancy, or exist merely on the drawing board. For voters not convinced of the reality of global climate change, the opposing side is a group of wild-eyed zealots who are placing the U.S. economy at grave risk to combat a problem that doesn’t even exist. How can one reason with such people?
RED LINES KEEP BEING CROSSED
For voters convinced that a woman’s right to a safe abortion is akin to the right to vote and other central political and legal rights (e.g. habeus corpus), any restriction of abortion rights is an unacceptable infringement on the rights of the individual. For voters on the opposite side, abortion is, and always will be, the taking of an innocent and helpless human life. To compromise on the issue would be to betray the unborn for generation after future generation ad infinitum, unless the practice be completely outlawed.
For voters convinced that marriage should be a contract between any two consenting adults, even if they are of the same sex, a reversal of the recently-acquired right of same-sex marriage is seen as analogous to a return to Jim Crow or the pre-1920 era before passage of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution gave women the right to vote. To deprive gay Americans of the right to marriage would, in the eyes of the “marriage equality” camp, be a giant leap backward in time.
For voters on the opposite side of the same-sex marriage issue, the right of marriage given to gay couples through a 5-4 Supreme Court decision in the 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges case was both a farce and a grave injustice perpetrated by a group of out-of-touch elites on the country as a whole, where support for same-sex marriage was lukewarm. The Court took upon itself the decision to push through a dramatic revision to the legal definition of marriage despite a complete lack of political consensus. The decision should be overturned until a durable consensus can be achieved.
WHEN POLITICAL TRUST COLLAPSES, COMPRISES BECOME IMPOSSIBLE
With the ideological divide created by these issues so great and an environment of trust lacking, how are good-faith compromises possible?
This is the political climate in which the S-word has once again reared its ugly head: a climate of mutual mistrust and antagonism that is not conducive to passing legislation aimed at addressing pressing national needs, but one that lends itself to ramping up existing levels of distrust.
In Greymantle’s view, this is the real meaning of secession controversies when they are introduced in the current environment. They are a symptom of the social distrust and zero-sum-game politics that both feed into and result from the current social climate, and a result of these conditions. The particular danger presented by secession movements and their rhetoric is that secessionism has a very specific set of associations in U.S. political history, with very specific baggage.
LIGHTING A FUSE
Prior to the U.S. Civil War of 1861-65, elected representatives from the American South variously raised threats of secession in order to pressure northern members of the U.S. Congress to agree to their political demands, including the expansion of slavery west of the Mississippi River.
The years between the adoption of the Missouri Compromise of 1820 and the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 (which effectively overturned the prior legislation) were marked by north-south political tensions that came short of flaring into open warfare. This was due to the relatively durable nature of the Missouri Compromise and the influence of charismatic political leaders from both Northern and Southern states who were intent on preserving the Union (e.g. Henry Clay, Andrew Jackson, Daniel Webster).
The adoption of the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854 and the Supreme Court’s Dread Scott decision in 1857 effectively jettisoned prior compromises and ratcheted up the level of political and social conflict within the U.S. As northern civic organizations and elected leaders pushed back against the legislative and legal victories won by the pro-slavery party in the mid-1850s, Southern congressmen and governors increasingly adopted secessionist rhetoric as a way to intimidate Northern leaders.
“Surely, the clever merchant class of the North and their political representatives won’t push too far if we threaten to secede”, they reasoned. “The costs of secession will be too great for Northern factories and banks to bear. This will lead them to back down.”
BETTING THE OTHER GUY WON’T BLINK
Secessionist rhetoric was always a gamble: a wager that the other guy won’t blink. However, it stirred up deep emotions and conjured dreams of an independent South throughout the Southern states. These dreams took on a life of their own. A body of Southerners started to see the rhetoric as more than a political tool, but a tangible alternate reality.
Ultimately, secessionist rhetoric lead to actual secession from the Union in 1861 and four years of civil war.
The issue with secessionist rhetoric in 2021 is the same as it was in 1861, namely, that what begins as a rhetorical ploy can quickly devolve into an actual crisis once emotions are hot enough.
A TACTIC USED BY THE WEAK
The use of this kind of language by those on the political right reveals the same underlying reality in early 2020s America as it did in the late 1850s: the Right has won several major political and legal victories (i.e. six conservative Justices and major court rulings in favor of the Right), but believes nevertheless that it is the weaker Party.
As a social, economic and cultural force, the Right has been losing ground for years. Democrats outnumber registered Republicans by a wide margin in the most populous states. Younger voters and naturalized citizens favor the Democrats. The centers of elite academic, technological and cultural power in Boston, Los Angeles, Silicon Valley, and New York are firmly in the hands of the Left. Democrats outnumber Republicans in the fastest-growing cities and suburbs – even in the Sun Belt.
What the Right fears most of all is a calamitous defeat, followed by political and cultural marginalization that could last for decades. Set against this grim possibility, secession functions as a kind of “nuclear option” for the American Right. It’s a form of blackmail with a well-understood history. A final line in the sand that the other side dare not cross for fear of causing a downward spiral of conflict.
But as was true then, so now events have a way of moving faster than the political actors can understand. Once the genie is out of the proverbial bottle, it is hard to put it back inside. Once the fuse is lit, there is going to be an explosion – sooner or later – even if the fuse is a long one. Blowing out a lit fuse is about as hard as putting a genie back into its bottle.
WHAT COULD BE THE TIPPING POINT?
Envision for yourself two broad scenarios for the United States. In the first, a politically savvy and successful President Biden succeeds in smoothing over the Republican Party’s ruffled feathers, is able to reach out to and secure the trust of a portion of Donald Trump’s base and, helped by a booming economy and rising personal income levels, is re-elected in 2024 in a landslide and presides over a broad realignment of American politics. The Right licks its wounds in defeat, but learns to live within the new era.
In the second, the U.S. descends slowly into a prolonged period of political instability that lasts for 30 years. Along one tributary lies a constant see-saw of shifting office-holders with little progress made on pressing issues, and wide social unrest. Along a second tributary lies actual armed conflict.
What would cause the latter?
Assuming the idea of secession gains traction and moves beyond the intra-state level over the next three years, Greymantle can imagine three sparks that tip the nation into another secession crisis.
COUNTDOWN TO 2024
The first would be an inconclusive 2024 election due either to Donald Trump or another much-loathed Republican winning a narrow Electoral College victory while losing the popular vote by nearly 10 million, leading to a spontaneous ‘color revolution’ by the Left.
The flip side of that scenario is Joe Biden being re-elected in a clean, but close, election that Republicans won’t accept as legitimate due to a concerted disinformation campaign by foreign actors. The legacy of the disputed 2020 election would also play a role here, with widespread hysteria sweeping the foot soldiers of the Right as a result and more than any one tangible event. The result is a popular revolt by Republican voters that proves unstoppable.
Either version could lead to popular pressure on state governors and state representatives to begin holding discussions on seceding from the Union, a replay of the state secession conventions of 1860-61.
FAREWELL, DEAR LEADER
A second spark, less likely than the first, but not inconceivable, could be the sudden death of Mr. Trump under circumstances that his followers believe suggest foul play. The demise of Mr. Trump might be due entirely to natural causes, e.g. a heart attack or stroke, or a common household accident like a fall, but the mood of his base is so strained that the death of their “Dear Leader” causes a kind of grass roots revolt and leads to demands for an independent commission of inquiry.
Followers of charismatic leaders develop profound emotional ties to such leaders that continue beyond the leader’s death. The successors to that power base will want to play to those emotions, to validate them in order to claim the mantle of the next leader. That dynamic could become explosive if Mr. Trump’s base simply wants to believe that he was the victim of a plot. Catering to that sensibility might drive events out of control and, if coupled with other contemporaneous political stand-offs, lead to a crisis.
What “independent commission” can satisfy a hunger to believe generated by magical thinking? What independent report could win the trust of the public if those writing the report are denizens of “the Swamp”?
WHICH SIDE WOULD STAND DOWN?
A third and final spark for a full-blown secession crisis could be caused by the federal government being forced to intervene in one or more states’ election results. This would be more likely if a state legislature empowered under 2021 legislation to override the judgement of local election officials rejects several thousand ballots of the opposition party so that a member of their party wins election. Opposition legislators cry foul.
If a state election were clearly fraudulent, and in particular if the political action coincides with a presidential election, then there might be profound temptation on the part of a sitting president to call in federal agencies to investigate the dispute. This could be the FBI, the Justice Department, or some other federal agency. When the presidency is in the hands of one party, and the state legislature(s) in question in the hands of the opposite party, it is easy to see how the situation could become explosive.
The election dispute soon degenerates into a game of ‘they said this/we say that’, and if the election outcome is somehow annulled or overruled by a federal court or by action of the U.S. Congress, it is easy to see how an aggrieved state legislature or governor might start drawing up articles of secession. If parallel disputes have been ongoing in other states, then one can see how a spark can quickly become a full-blown prairie fire.
Greymantle is neither a fatalist, nor a pessimist, nor a betting man, so I will not lay odds on any of the aforementioned event occurring. Nor will I say that I believe any of them are destined to occur. The world defies logic or easy predictions concerning the future.
What I will say is that using the S-word is a bit like opening Pandora’s box, or ignoring a Stop sign. The more people there are who start doing it, the likelier the chance of some terrible mishap.
Until next time, I remain…
Greymantle
