Two Nations, Under God, Incompatible

I don’t why I always have to be the one to solve these things, but after contemplating that fractious US election and seeing the lingering acrimony on both sides, it occurs to me that there is one way to make just about everyone happy: divide the US into two nations.

Seriously. Separatism gets a bad rap, and every politician makes noises about uniting the people, one nation indivisible blah blah blah…but there really are two Americas in the metaphorical sense, so why not have two Americas in the literal sense and be done with it?

It’s not just a red state, blue state phenomenon, either—even the reddest of states starts shading to blue in its urban centers and the blue states begin to redden once you get into the counties where you can see the stars at night. It’s more of a city mouse / country mouse divide. And if there’s one thing we’ve all learned from watching re-runs of the Beverly Hillbillies and Green Acres, it’s that city folk and country folk just don’t cotton to each other.

It’s easy to oversimplify and resort to stereotypes, so let’s do it. Potato farmers in Idaho don’t vote for pointy-headed intellectuals, any more than they compare drapery swatches or attend gallery openings. And self-styled Manhattan sophisticates would rather miss a month’s worth of Pilates lessons than vote for a troglodyte like George Dubya. The “one big happy family” ethos may have worked in the early, formative years of the country (that civil war thing notwithstanding), but the time has come to admit that there are now irreconcilable differences, so let’s stop keeping this marriage together for the sake of the kids and just divvy up the real estate and the flatware right now.

So I give you President John Kerry and the United States of Urbania, a vast community of metropoli, united by a common love for refurbished lofts, a common passion for Woody Allen films, and a common need for six-dollar lattes.

And for those of you who prefer your countries with a little more earthy brio, we have George W. Bush’s United States of Freedonia—the breadbasket of breadbaskets, the heartland of heartlands, where the men are as straight as their shooting, the womenfolk are pure, and God has a seat at every table, including the Cabinet table.

Think about it: each side gets the government that truly represents them, both sides get to keep their prejudices, and neither side has to worry about meddling outsiders trying to tell them what’s what. There would still be visiting rights and trading—the Urbanians would still need to get their organic free range carrots from somewhere, after all, and the Freedonians can’t very well make their own porn—but the important thing is that each nation will truly be united in its values and world-view in a way that this current cock-up of constituencies never will.

Sure, these proposed nations are not geographically tidy, but people in Nebraska rarely venture out of their own personal acreage anyway, and today's urbanites are already a community of air travelers and internetters, so it’s not like these boundaries will pose many practical problems. Anyway, organizing nations by physical proximity is so pre-21st-century.

Speaking of which, next week I’ll solve the Middle East crisis using only a map, a pair of scissors, and some library paste.