Thread by @Hippokleides

This is a sane explainer worth reading if you're interested in the recent "National Divorce" chatter.

A National Divorce absolutely will not happen in the sense currently discussed. The US will only split as a result of extended, terminal decay in central power, or war.

https://twitter.com/Stalin_Frog/status/1481112582136025093

The US is an imperial state supported by a massive military establishment, arms industry, intelligence agencies and foreign policy blob. Its divison would directly threaten the existence of these institutions and many careers. They will not sit back and let the US split up.

Furthermore, divorce is rarely amicable and divorce of states even less so. The US would be dividing because its liberal and conservative cultures detest each other. Yet any legal, agreed split would require a massive untangling of the legal, political and economic framework.

Brexit nearly broke Britain's political establishment and took ~3.5 years to come to reality. That happened within a far looser, more recent union and was not initiated by the kind of political hatred presently seen in the US. The process, though, *created* bitter polarisation.

Even if an agreement to "divorce" was reached, the detailed process would be highly likely to lead to hardening of positions and attitudes. Given where the unhappy position the US would be starting from, it would quite likely slip into at least localised violence.

Basically "national divorce" is an expression of the depth of present polarisation and distrust. The very discussion of it of course heightens these differences but it is not a realistic proposal, or intended as one.

One final thought: the United States has a long and illustrious history of being, well, united. Once the dust settled on any theorised partition, before long it is likely that someone would started trying to pull the territories together again.