The United States Breakup

In the astounding melange of articles, some insane and others quite informative, that appear in great profusion on the Far-Fetched News Service, also called "Les Dessous de L'information Mondiale" or the "Downside World News," I found an article called "When America Fell to Pieces the Shouting Was Outrageous." This article features a Russian professor named Igor Panarin, who proposes that the U.S. is in a process of breakup into at least six pieces, and he claims to have foreseen this as long as 10 years ago.

But maybe because he is a professor in the frozen wastes of Russia instead of, say, in the heat of Memphis, Tennessee or any other place in these United States, he doesn't present the clearest naming of the parts into which he says the U.S., like an Arctic ice floe in a year of global warming, is busily separating, of course not geographically but demographically, to become new nations of their own. But, as nearly as I can make out, those six are, first the Pacific Coast, and next a section vaguely called "The South," and then the one state of Texas, the Mid-Atlantic, and finally two unnamed areas in the nation's central plains and mountains.

Maybe because the article was in the form of an interview, Panarin got cut off before he could finish this list, but conspicuously missing was all-important New England and the rest of the Northeast, unless to him that is all part of the Mid-Atlantic. He also overlooked Hawaii, but he did manage to drop in with amazing nerviness the statement that meanwhile Russia will "require" the return of Alaska, because all along it has merely been out for rental.

As a longtime geography and even a geo-political buff, I see all sorts of things wrong with this appraisal, which is what made that mess so entertaining to read.

Panarin implies, first of all, that the Pacific Coast will become some kind of Chinese colony, on the strength of saying that San Francisco is already 53 percent Chinese. But I doubt that statistic, and in any case San Francisco is just one enclave, and not the largest, among many on the West Coast and nearby.

Next, he doesn't say what he means by "The South," aside from suggesting that it will be taken over by the Mexicans and others. Is he talking about just San Diego, Arizona, and New Mexico? What about all those loud, salty, and rascally states that make up the southeastern United States and are generally referred to in the U.S. itself as being "The South?"

A number of its Euro-derived inhabitants. who have dominated that large area from the start, at gunpoint, are already having many violent things to say about being replaced. Once they had to worry about the Rainbows, but now they're busily tooling up against the Spanish speakers, i.e. "illegal immigrants,"and they can never be counted on to accept a takeover of their blood-srained territory by anyone, graciously or in any other wise.

But a Russian professor with a neo-Soviet agenda might not appreciate that.

It's true that there has often been talk of Texas breaking loose, and if that were to happen (hopefully taking Oklahoma with them), I am not too sure that, unlike as in the Civil War, this time there wouldn't be a great many who would view that particular detachment with just that.

Now that its oil is largely depleted, along with the supply of reckless young guys that, along with Brooklyn, it formerly supplied in such disproportionate numbers to the military, before, along with Virginia, and most likely Oklahoma, Ohio, and other such places, it apparently decided that more profits could be made by warehousing them in prisons, in recent years the main export of Texas to the rest of the country has often seemed to be a severe poisoning of the political discourse. However, Steve Bates assures us in no uncertain terms that that is changing. And that's possible, considering the heady though long-gone days of the great Lone Star politicians like Henry Gonzales, Barbara Jordan, and Lyndon Johnson -- the latter having been an outstanding domestic President who, however, fell victim to inhaling too much of the Vietnam opiate.

That leaves, of the sections that Panarin mentioned, only the two central areas. These he seems disposed to hand to Canada, at least in their northern parts, though that country is always indeed in danger of itself breaking apart, into two or even three sections, with the French-speaking regions, mainly Quebec, remaining a big threat to Canada's intactitude.

If Alaska could be given to anybody, it should be to Canada and not to the Russians. Alaska is far too distant from the Russian soul and heartland, and that was why they sold it to Secretary Seward in the first place. But pure geography would argue that it really should be part of Canada instead, because it is joined at the hip and everywhere else to the Yukon, and it is no less remote from D.C. than it is from Moscow.

And besides, if the Russians were to come striding over to Alaska, muttering something about a rental having ended, the U.S. is full of good ol' boys who, no matter how scarce the dollars had become, would immediately drop everything and march up there barefoot to dispute that claim with maximum prejudice. After all, some of them go up there regularly to hunt bears. I personally knew one guy here who did that, despite all the bears that we have walking around here -- something I also know something about, from personal experience.

As for the lower parts of the U.S.'s central sections, the professor mentions that that's "where the Indians live," thereby suggesting that those regions will return to their guardianship, though here he goes off the deep end almost as bad as with Alaska.

For just one thing, the Sioux and the others haven't been at all diligent about building their numbers back up from the 10 million they used to have. Those were scattered all over the place and not just in what is now the U.S., and today the barely more than one million that they might be able to scare up wouldn't be enough to stock a decently-sized big city, much less the vastness of almost all the middle of the U.S., and the days of a hundred horses per brave are long over.

Panarin should come over here and drive around. I think he would find that the little secession talk that you hear is just bluff designed to gain some kind of relatively little thing.

To get back to Texas -- which for some reason I always seem ready to do, though I have been there only once and then didn't really set foot on it, though what Texas fanciers can't understand is how their state presents, on its exterior, the aspect of a huge housecat with which no opportunity should be missed to violate their congenital aplomb by tweaking its tail or ears -- it is a great example. Texas is not about to go anywhere, when it can get much more from the rest of the U.S. than it gives.

Or, to put this another way, we could be tempted to adapt a now often-heard statement that that quintessential Texan, LBJ, made about J. Edgar Hoover, the late, unlamented FBI director, and say it's better to be "inside the tent, pissing out, than it is to be outside the tent, pissing in." Though, on further thought, one might also want to ask what it is about either of those actions that would make one so superior to the other.