Make Your Own Country
A reader sent in a link to this website that lets you make your own nation composed of US states.
By way of context, the rhetoric continues to escalate on the Republican side around topics such as a second civil war and national divorce. Far right figures such as Alex Jones and Marjorie Taylor Greene are openly calling for a armed conflict and national divorce, with predictable results.
Once again, Heather Cox Richardson has an excellent summary of the situation. The last paragraph of the article really caught my eye...
Here’s another way in which that era might inform our own. In the 1860s, southern leaders’ posturing took on a momentum of its own, propelling fire-eating southerners into a war. As MAGA Republicans are talking tonight about fighting the federal government and as Trump calls for “all willing States to deploy their guards to Texas,” I think of those elite southerners in 1861 for whom threatening war was all a rhetorical game.
My suspicion is that as a) Trump becomes the Republican nominee and b) the avalanche of financial and legal consequences continue to drop on Trump between now and the election, the increasingly desperate Republican leadership will continue rhetorical escalations to attempt to deflect attention.
I think that armed conflict is unlikely for a variety of reasons, but it's always possible for things to escalate. In my estimation, the most likely flashpoint would be armed conflict resulting in fatalities between armed forces with conflicting orders. Imagine federal troops sent to Texas with orders to secure the border and armed Texas troops ordered to resist. One side fires a warning shot, and the other reacts with direct fire.
Fun times.
I continue to hope that over the next few years things will change to improve the situation. I still hope that in lieu of armed conflict diplomacy can win out. I genuinely have no idea if Republican rhetoric will (somehow) deescalate. But in the meantime, all I can do is try to think of alternatives to war.
On that note, back to the website from the beginning of this note...
I went ahead and created a map based on the the six nations listed in the book (the site is limited to five nations but you can tweak as you see fit with a few clicks).
I also went ahead and created a map based on this article showing the states with Republican Governors that back Texas over the border control jurisdiction conflict. My suspicion is that if Texas really did attempt to secede the alliance would look a lot more like the original Civil War map. Armed conflict involving either of these maps would have catastrophic consequences for both the citizens of the United States and (in an age of increasing authoritarianism) the world.
All the best, and stay safe out there.
