redneckgaijin

So, the first official signs of secessionism are making themselves known in highly unlikely places: specifically, Iowa, where the Republican-run lower house of the legislature passed a bill to nullify the Affordable Healthcare Act.

Now, Iowa is not a state I expect to secede. And in this case, the bill will be DOA when it hits Iowa's Democrat-controlled state senate. But it is definitely a warning sign- that the Republican Party is, more and more, willing to defy the federal government- and possibly to reject it altogether.

This gives me a little extra basis for the nightmare scenario that's been running through my head for a while- possibly a book, if I can bring myself to write it (especially the horrible bits).

Here's the outline- and, bear in mind, this is pretty much what I HONESTLY BELIEVE is most likely to happen.

2012- Obama loses the general election to a Republican who wasn't part of the 2008 race- a state-level or minor federal politician (Tim Pawlenty is a good example, or maybe Rep. Michele Bachmann) who wins the GOP nomination as a dark horse. Obama leaves the country pretty much as he found it: high unemployment, rickety and unstable financial system, mostly deregulated megacorps, with soldiers still in Iraq and Afghanistan and prisoners still being held in Guantanamo with at best kangaroo-court trials.

2013-2015- The new president proves to be a disaster. Everything Obama got passed in his first two years is repealed. The budget goes spiraling out of control while Social Security is privatized, Medicare for those under sixty becomes a voucher program, and S-CHIP and Medicaid are abolished completely. Massive subsidies for megacorps continue, while the last few regulations on their conduct are stripped away. For a brief time the markets boom... until overreach hits just after the 2014 mid-terms, and the Second Great Depression hits in earnest.

2015- Is it wag-the-dog? Was it planned all along? Or was it just a blunder? In any case, the new president launches air strikes on Iran. Iran's massive response throws the world's oil supply into crisis, with one-quarter of the producing wells inaccessible due to bomb damage, fires, etc. Massive armies cross the frontiers into Afghanistan and Iraq, forcing the president to launch a ground war hopelessly unprepared. There are no allies. The draft is reinstated. The nation is put on a total war footing... except that, instead of taxing the rich, a new national sales tax with no exemptions is instituted.

2016- With America committed to war, with everyone now with a family member in the military, and with the economy temporarily boosted due to war industry and the withdrawal of manpower from the pool, voters are just disinclined enough not to rock the boat. The president and Republican majorities are re-elected with the narrowest of margins.

2017- The last pockets of organized resistance are put out in Iran... which, of course, means that the further resistance is unorganized and thus impossible to stamp out. The war economy is stood down, but a large military is kept to prop up yet another puppet government in Asia. With partial demobilization, a reduction in military purchasing, and the continued acute shortage of oil, the economy crashes again in a manner to make the 2015 crash look more like a stumble. Republican reaction? Eliminate the last public works, unemployment, and welfare programs in the nation to economize.

2018- The lid comes off of some truly nasty stuff. It is discovered that the president has ordered the torture of innocents and the wholesale extermination of civilians during the Iran war; that American citizens have been 'disappeared' to Guantanamo and tortured for speaking out against the war; and that the president used the powers of office to sabotage Democratic campaigns so as to win re-election in 2016. This, combined with the economy, finally gives the Democrats back both houses of Congress in a landslide unprecedented in American history.

2019- The president is impeached, convicted, and removed from office. The new Democratic supermajority begins undoing the damage of the past few years- over the objections of the hard-right, unflappable Republican minority who insist that the removed president did nothing wrong, and that the Democrats are restoring the socialist state the country went through so much pain and suffering to free itself from.

2020- The economy begins to recover, thanks to massive emergency programs (including major steps to wean the US off of oil once and for all). A Democrat is elected President... but by nothing like the expected landslide. Quite a few states vote Republican, the campaign saying that the depression was a temporary correction and that the Democratic spending and taxing were wasteful and unnecessary, etc. etc.

With the election of a Democratic president and re-unification of the government under the Dems, the Republican Party, now shorn down to its most rabid social-warrior, tea-party, rule-or-ruin elite, launch a movement to secede from "the coming communist government." Some states secede by popular referendum. A few states stage armed uprisings to overthrow state governments where Democrats control one or both houses. Most seceding states (especially those with outgoing Republican majorities soon to be replaced by Democrats) simply declare states of emergency and take the states out with or without popular support from the states.

2021- A new Confederacy is created. Civil liberties exist only on paper, as the new Confederate president is given broad and unquestionable powers to act to prevent terrorism or domestic unrest. Those of outspoken liberal views or who belong to certain classes of person (open homosexuals, atheists, pagans, Muslims, etc.) who do not flee in the first days of secession are rounded up as "disloyal" and put in concentration camps for "re-education." Some are tortured into confessing to being "socialist agents". A few anti-secessionists- but not many- begin guerilla warfare, leading to bloody reprisals.

Meanwhile, the rump US government, under the Democrats, wrings its hands and waffles, hoping to settle things peacefully, giving the rebel government just enough time to assemble a military force strong enough to make the war, when it finally comes, brief but incredibly bloody. (By a miracle, the rebels aren't able to get any nuclear weapons in operable condition- I just don't see the military allowing that to happen.)

By the end of 2022 it's all over... and America will have been smashed to pieces in the process.

I repeat: I think this a series of events highly likely to occur unless things change, and change radically, in our political system.

Here's a map of which states I expect to secede. (I may be wrong about Montana, and I strongly suspect I'm wrong about Mississippi, but that's where my number-crunching led me.)

Here's the spreadsheet I used to pick the states. Basically, any state that voted for McCain by more than a 20% majority is going to remain Republican whatever happens. Any state that currently has 60% or more Republican majorities in both houses is going to secede unless their state is strongly against it (hence, for example, Florida staying in and Indiana going out). And, finally, a combination of the two factors might be enough for the state to secede, too.

This is the direction I see this country headed. I don't see the Democrats doing enough to stop it. (I see some Democrats who would GO ALONG with it.) I don't see ANY Republicans standing against it. I don't hear any voices in the media (off of cable, that is) standing up and saying, "THIS IS WRONG."

It's happened before. It can happen again.

And when it happened before, it happened just like this.