American Civil Wars

"American Civil Wars" is a short essay by Karl Jones.

American Civil Wars

Before Wyoming (or any other state) secedes, we need to deal nuclear weapons and other military assets.

"If Wyoming were a nation, Warren AFB in Cheyenne would make it one of the world's major nuclear powers."

https://www.wyohistory.org/tags/nuclear-missiles

Setting aside the question of our survival (or not) under the nuclear Sword of Damocles we are even now perfecting with our orbital weapons programs, let's consider the past.

The American Civil War split on roughly geographic and economic lines — Northern Industrialism versus Southern Agriculture (notably cotton, which generated overseas revenue). Agriculture lost: you can't grow cotton in the North, and the South couldn't make enough railroads and rail cars.

But now we have Industrialism in every state of the Union, and Post-Industrialism in every computer and cell phone and television set.

We have grown and urbanized and gerrymandered ourselves from two big geographical competitors to hundreds of millions of geographically intermixed competitors.

Sure, Wyoming is more Red because rural America is more Red, while San Francisco is more Blue because urban America is more Blue.

But I can't see any dividing line for a New Civil War that don't involve the ethnic cleansing of neighbors. I expect a New Civil War will involve the ethnic cleansing of neighbors, and I expect secession to evolve into war.

Of course, we might have secession without war, that's possible. We might have peaceful secession. I find it hard to imagine; in fact I imagine terrible widespread violence. But I have been wrong before.

Fiction cross-reference

• Gnomon algorithm
• Gnomon Chronicles

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