The word of the day seems to be “secession.” That, or some other specimen of national break-up. Which is every bit as futile a notion as the fantasy that the massive and completely successful 2020 election fraud will miraculously be righted via courtroom maneuvering or other peaceful means.

Ain’t gonna happen, folks.

The nation’s current divide is partly geographic but mostly cultural and juridical. The Texas-led states, despite including parts of the former confederacy, now stand for the rule of law and the civil rights protections of the 1868 14th Amendment. The California-led states now seek to undo over 150 years of human rights laws so that they can override the suffrage and petitions of a “suspect class” (Republicans).

Polling indicates that neither side is budging on the question that best serves as a litmus test: whether the election of Joe Biden is legitimate. About half the country believes it was not because they share Texas’s understanding of what citizen rights are and what constitutes evidence. Half the country believes the election was legitimate because they share California’s understanding of citizen rights as framed by context and by goals, with any means being justified by the right goals, depending on the group involved.

For the first time in anyone’s living memory, we have to contend with the real possibility that the United States will split into separate nations. The split will not look like the 19th century Civil War and may not even be a war at all. Looking at history, I’ve come upon the following possible precedents in history that may help us understand the potential outcomes.

Follows, three historical examples going all the way back to the Roman Empire. Normal American runs down a few scenarios himself before proposing the only one I’ve seen yet that’s even a wee mite plausible:

There is an alternative. An October column here endorsed co-existence through radical federalism: “Longer term re-stabilization could devolve power from Washington, D.C. to state governments. California could ban pickups and mandate abortions, while Texas could do the opposite. Nobody would love it, but the republic would survive.”

An American Mind article from November 30 proposes radical federalism through a constitutional convention. The result would be one currency, one army, mostly separate, somewhat united. Most federal functions would vanish, with state courts becoming “the final word on the right to bear arms, free speech and abortion.” That avoids the difficulty of the U.S. Fourth Fleet in Florida operating a few miles from Naval Submarine Base Kings Bay in hostile territory previously known as Georgia.

Sadly, no evidence suggests that the left will compromise. It is emboldened. Our self-appointed rulers are calling President Trump and his supporters “maggots” who “must be prosecuted and convicted and removed from our society.” Democrat operatives are talking up “guillotines.” Instead of lowering tensions this week, Joe Biden’s senior aides are cursing opponents. Plus federalism is racist.

Even under such a plan, the Defense Department, the State Department, intelligence agencies, federal law enforcement, and the Federal Reserve will continue. Those account for millions of jobs and nearly a quarter of today’s federal budget. The deep state creatures denning in these agencies will not agree to reductions in their authority any more than a colony of paper wasps will agree to the destruction of its nest.

A second American Mind article was published this week as a rebuttal to the first. The left will not tolerate co-existence, wrote Edward Erler, an emeritus professor of political science. “Like all domineering partners who abuse their consorts, they want to rule.”

A commenter at the American Greatness article above forcefully reiterates that home truth:

The only flaw I can see to the “separate ways” argument is a fatal one.

No matter what you do, no matter what you try, do you really think these people will leave you alone?

A major part of the draw of American leftism is the false sense of moral and intellectual superiority it confers to its devotees. But what good is that if you don’t have a captive audience of people into whose faces you can rub your superiority? If you can’t reach them, then how can you lord over them? Tell them how to live? What to eat? When they can leave their homes? Whether they’re permitted to worship? How can you censor them, take away their right to self defense, and punish them?

How can you keep humiliating them and mocking them with sham elections that serve to reinforce their helplessness before your power?

We lost the culture wars because every time we gave in to what the leftists demanded and asked, “Now will you leave us alone?” they attacked another institution.

They will never leave you alone.

So you might as well fight them where you are. This is our country. Our Constitution, our Republic. Not theirs. Why cede it to them? Fight.

Sadly, the very next commenter plunges face-first into the fog of Pretend War, emphasizing the crucially crucial importance of “attending city government meetings, attending school board meetings, running for local government” and, one can only assume, VOTING VOTING VOTING! Aesop puts paid to that happy horseshit with a bucket of cold-water reality to the face.

It’s nice to dream (by which I mean it’s free, pleasant, and makes one feel happy), but you aren’t going to dream your way out of what’s coming.
You can’t dream your way out of socialism.
And history demonstrates, over and over, that you cannot vote your way out of it either.
So unless you’re 10 years old, and planning on outliving it, eventually, when you’re 95, the only way out of socialism is either to flee it (to where?), or to fight it.

Yup. And when some of us more practical, historically-literate types say “fight,” we are NOT talking about verbal complaints, smoke signals, angry letters to the editor, or allegorical puppet theater, either.

Like it or not, whatever “split” is going to happen in America already did—a philosophical, ideological, and cultural divergence that severed Lincoln’s “bonds of affection” in all but the strictly physical/geographic sense—and that’s as far as things are going to go without bloodshed. I repeat: FederalGovCo will never, ever, EVER peaceably agree to cede its power over half the country by partitioning it off and just letting all that territory, all that infrastructure, all those military installations, and all those taxpayer dollars stroll away unmolested. In fact, now that we’ve taken the final steps towards Commie dictatorship with the recent fraudulent “election,” I’d say the bloated, illegitimate central government’s iron grip is far likelier to tighten than to relax.

We fought one Civil War over secession already. Does anybody really want to try arguing that—after a century and a half of consolidating its might, expanding it, and carefully sweeping up the remaining scraps of Federalism and States’ Rights—the government is MORE likely to shrug its shoulders and allow it to occur without a murmur now? Although I wouldn’t necessarily be opposed to a national split myself if it would mean out-and-out war might be avoided…well, frankly, I just can’t see anything of the sort actually happening, that’s all.

More Lincoln, just to put the cherry on top.

Physically speaking, we cannot separate. We cannot remove our respective sections from each other, nor build an impassable wall between them. A husband and wife may be divorced, and go out of the presence, and beyond the reach of each other; but the different parts of our country cannot do this. They cannot but remain face to face; and intercourse, either amicable or hostile, must continue between them. Is it possible then to make that intercourse more advantageous or more satisfactory, after separation than before? Can aliens make treaties easier than friends can make laws? Can treaties be more faithfully enforced between aliens, than laws can among friends? Suppose you go to war, you cannot fight always; and when, after much loss on both sides, and no gain on either, you cease fighting, the identical old questions, as to terms of intercourse, are again upon you.

The sand in the gears is that the TWANLOCs can in no conceivable way be considered “friends” any longer, either of Real Americans or of Constitutional governance itself. As “aliens” go, they’re the worst possible variety: hostile ones. Lincoln is correct when he contends that “you cannot fight always.” But you absolutely MUST fight until your enemy is vanquished. And this war will not be won until the Left is crushed utterly, the pugnacity and power-lust stomped out of them.