For this to happen, the US population is probably too old on average, and too overweight.
Civil wars and the like are usually based on youth bulges, as they need a lot of breathing bodies to fight it out. Preferrably slightly hungry bodies, as hungry people are easier to provoke into fighting.
What is more likely is that significant portions of rural America break off and the part that's left doesn't feel it's worth it to take it back by force.
A lot of rural area across the country have movements to break states into pieces, or join other states. I don’t think most are very serious but at least two of them are serious enough.
One, there are a few counties on Oregon that want to redraw the boundary so that they become part of Idaho. This, I think, is only mildly serious.
The second is the border of Indiana and Illinois, which is serious enough that the Indiana state legislature has voted to create a commission to work on it. It was a bipartisan vote, too. Because there are a number of rural counties in Illinois that would like to join Indiana, and two urban counties in Indiana that say if the option is on the table they’d rather be part of Illinois. Such a thing would need both states to agree and then send it on to Congress, but ultimately I don’t think anything will come of it.
When you look at state funding, these urban counties are sending more tax dollars to their respective state capitols than the states are spending in their counties. In the case of these rural Illinois counties, the state is spending between $5 and $6 per tax dollar collected. Does Indiana really want to take on such welfare queens? And give up some of their few donor counties in exchange? It seems hardly likely!
That’s the rub all across the US. The urbanized areas are subsidizing the rural areas. Are the rural areas prepared to do without such subsidies? They can say “the cities can’t live without the food we grow”, but the entirety of human history shows that the cities always come out ahead in these transactions.
The Jefferson area of CA seems about as serious as Oregon.
With out current structure of governments, as we get around/over 80% urbanization, the rural areas will just get steamrolled and want to break away due to a lack of agency. If you study people in the "western Idaho" area and on the Oregon coast, it would be easy to see that they are two different nations.
Also,do you have e a source for the 5x tax collected number? The 5x seems really high. I couldn't find one for Indiana, but Illinois shows it's <2x.
Right. So anyway, if various states (or the whole country) breaks apart based on urban/rural divides, the urban areas have very little incentive to try to reunite. It’s a losing proposition for the rural areas.
My personal opinion is that our state and nation legislatures have way too few members given our current populations. For example, the US House should have some sort of dynamic membership count: the smallest odd number such that when you run the apportionment algorithm the smallest state has 3 members. That’s probably somewhere around 1100 members (just spitballing).
Economics aren't the only factor, so the rural areas may not care so long as they are free. That also assumes the rural areas keep the same service levels and regulations. It's possible they could create conditions to lure some industries to them. They would also have to raise food prices to deal without subsidies. It's likely many services would see reductions, such as road maintenance, anything heavily relying on grants, and possibly schools. Certainly the colleges in the article would be closed.
Decreasing the ratio of constituents to representatives won't really work. It may work at the margins, but you will still have the mismatch in proportions between urban/rural.
California has multiple times brought up splitting out into multiple states, its made it as a prop a few times too. I think most people want it to happen, its just tough to figure out what the best split would be
Despite all the 2nd Amendement talk, it mainly comes down to the military.
The military have the tanks, the air support, the logistics, the surveilence net, the miscelaneous support equipment, and all the training to use everything.
A split within the military, that gets real ugly real fast.
I think any civil war would have a split within the military, because in your premise that they're using tanks and aircraft, some people are not going to want to bomb the place where their mother or child lives, not to mention the supply chain of all that fancy stuff relies on a somewhat functioning domestic society to make and deliver much of the underlying goodies and support.
Yes, almost certainly. But I meant more of a split between those on opposing sides; not between those who refuse to fight at all because they had just been asked to fight the very people they signed up to defend, vs. those who will follow any order.
And then, because there were demonstrably some absolute sadists demonstrably present in the armed forces during my lifetime (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hooded_Man), perhaps the conscientious objectors will be convinced to fight anyway, to stop the sadists.
It also matters what such a civil war be about — Is it between those who would seize power and those who would prevent it? Is it the same borders as the old Civil War? Is it city-vs-rural?
If there is one (still an if), and if it is Trump vs. the constitution… it's still not impossible for such a conflict to be without a single shot fired. Conversely, if it's between two groups of cities neither of which will consent to the other's choices for president, it could have every major city in the US reduced to radioactive debris.
The youth are also of poor quality these days. It was one thing in 1860 when a given 18 year old was built like an ox from hauling bales of hay or whatever else. Today most 18 year olds are sedentary. We don’t even do the mile run in gym class anymore.
Well, looking into really old draft records, you will find a lot of disqualified recruits with bad health - tuberculosis, parasites, or general bodily problems caused by malnutrition.
But yeah, there also was a lot of physically strong young people to choose from.
Yes, exactly. Some of the federal farm subsidy and low-income nutrition programs we have today came out of findings in WWII that many potential recruits who had grown up during the Great Depression were literally malnourished: too weak and underweight to be combat effective. While the new HHS secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is kind of wacky and has terrible policies in many areas, he at least recognizes the serious state of youth obesity and poor nutrition.
Has there been a single HHS secretary that did not acknowledge the youth obesity problem?
Our expectations are so low that we ignore the real things that qualified people have done, to pretend that an anti-science wacko has some semblance of sanity.
Don't forget school lunch programs were pushed by the military in the 1946 National School Lunch Act (America's Great Age to MAGA) to improve the fitness of potential recruits. Programs the Republicans now attack as 'woke' nonsense.
Gen Z are a lot fitter and drink and smoke less than my Gen x peers afaict. What’s more, the 90th centile Gen zer is a -lot- fitter. Not everyone needs to join up…
Civil wars and the like are usually based on youth bulges, as they need a lot of breathing bodies to fight it out. Preferrably slightly hungry bodies, as hungry people are easier to provoke into fighting.