Is America Breaking Down?

 According to Michael J. Lee's Secession is here: States, cities and the wealthy are already withdrawing from America, the answer is yes.

His background and knowledge on the subject seems impeccable:

I have studied secession for 20 years, and I think that it is not just a “what if?” scenario anymore. In “We Are Not One People: Secession and Separatism in American Politics Since 1776,” my co-author and I go beyond narrow discussions of secession and the Civil War to frame secession as an extreme end point on a scale that includes various acts of exit that have already taken place across the U.S.

I am not even sure, I have a cogent argument against Mr. Lee's thesis, as much as I find it uncomfortable.

From this wider perspective, it is clear that many acts of departure – call them secession lite, de facto secession or soft separatism – are occurring right now. Americans have responded to increasing polarization by exploring the gradations between soft separatism and hard secession.

These escalating exits make sense in a polarized nation whose citizens are sorting themselves into like-minded neighbhorhoods. When compromise is elusive and coexistence is unpleasant, citizens have three options to get their way: Defeat the other side, eliminate the other side or get away from the other side.

I have only one question, has this sort of withdrawal always been part of our history and politics? There were separatist communes in the mid-19th Century. There were the Mormons going out to Utah. We sent the Native Americans to Oklahoma. Whites redlined Blacks. I do not think the rich ever wanted to associate with the poor. Oh, yeah, we interned Japanese-Americans in WWII, sent Mexican-Americans back to Mexico, and blocked immigrants from countries we did not like. 

Maybe the real issue is if we can survive our current separationists. 

sch 5/25