Are red and blue America headed for a split?  Lately, Dan Bongino has discussed the possibility on his daily podcast and radio show.  Glenn Beck has mentioned it, too.  It’s a focused topic of David Reaboi, whom Bongino cites.  Reaboi suggests that a “national divorce” should be discussed.  He sees a split more as a matter of when not if.  The hope is for a civil, if not amicable, separation.

What may surprise readers is the convergence that’s happening about the need for a national divorce. 

As the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia discovered in its recent polling and data analytics: “roughly 4 in 10 (41%) of Biden and half (52%) of Trump voters at least somewhat agree that it’s time to split the country, favoring blue/red states seceding from the union.” 

It’s conceivable that the percentage for a separation would be higher among Biden backers had Donald Trump won reelection.  And the percentage lower among Trump-backers if the 2020 outcome was different.  Nonetheless, the poll does reveal broadening agreement.     

Why a civil divorce won’t happen -- if a divorce comes at all -- is that it fails to account for the opposition; that is, the hard left -- Mark Levin’s aptly described “American Marxists” -- who’d regard a friendly national divorce (or any divorce) as contrary to who and why they are.    

This hard-left cohort is ascendant in the Democratic Party and among “progressives.”  That’s been the case for a while.  It’s they who would have to be reckoned with in any drive to separate the country.      

There’s ample history, dating back to the Russian Revolution, that Marxist-Leninists (or variations, like Maoists and fascists) are never about subtraction.  They’re about addition.  They’re about power acquisition -- often through violence.  They crave domination.  They seek to impose their wills on the unwilling.  Need we look any further than Xi Jinping’s China today? 

And, please, let’s not hear that American Marxists are cut from a different cloth.  They’re unsurprisingly and drearily like Marxists elsewhere.  It’s dangerous to be naïve about who we’re up against. 

American Marxists hunger for control.  They desire to expand their franchises.  That isn’t just a matter of doctrine, it’s a matter of personality type.  In fact, it can be argued that “controllers” create authoritarian and totalitarian models as a means of fulfilling their deepest needs. 

This insight from PsychCentral:

But controllers are out there. They want to micromanage what you say, how you act, even what you think quietly in your own mind. It could be your boss, your spouse, or even your parent. You can’t be yourself around them. They insist on being your top priority and want undue influence over your life. They might push your buttons to get an emotional reaction out of you because they want to exploit it as weakness. They have no respect for you or your boundaries.

The left consists of controllers and followers.  Leftist followers are people who gratefully cede control over their lives.  They trade freedom for perceived security -- and not just materially.  They want liberation from the day-to-day struggle of thinking critically, making decisions, and taking responsibility for their lives. 

In leftist constructs, followers are necessary but incidental.  Power concentrates in elites.  They decide fates.                              

Yes, too, there are cynics who catch rides on whatever belief system or doctrine that permits them to acquire status, wealth, and power, though their power-hunger doesn’t derive from a compulsion to rule lives but, instead, enrich themselves.  Might that describe, in part, the would-be oligarchs who collaborate with and underwrite the Democratic Party and leftist causes?      

The left, universally, insists on aligning society with their worldview and further insists that all submit, agree or not.  Conformity to their norms is compulsory.  Dissent is prohibited, and dissenters face cancellation, to use the modern parlance. 

Cancellation, in its mildest forms, entails ostracization, loss of reputation, and loss of livelihood.  “Milder” cancellation harkens back to the Nazis' early treatment of Jews.  Eerily, it’s being replicated by the left here now – except that anyone who dares run afoul woke culture risks being targeted. 

Concentration camps and gulags are harsher forms of cancellation.  Today, consider a million Uyghurs, China’s Muslim Turkic minority, many of whom are confined to “reeducation camps” and brutally treated.  Ukrainians starved to death by Stalin were canceled by genocide.  A war of conquest was Hitler’s attempt to cancel -- aka, erase or subjugate -- whole peoples deemed inferior.  This was pursued for the benefit of the “Master Race.”       

The left -- the “vanguard” -- isn’t much about splitting differences.  It’s aggressive and seeks paramountcy over the United States, not just portions of the East Coast and the whole West Coast.  The left doesn’t see itself as merely ruling the Democratic Party and blue America, but the country as a whole. 

The left managed to depose President Trump, installing a declining, frail puppet in the White House.  Its coalition stretches into schools, corporations, the mainstream media, big tech, pro sports, and the arts and entertainment industries.  Via Democrats, the left secured longer-duration, freedom-crushing lockdowns in blue states.  The left’s muscle -- BLM and Antifa -- stoked riots in cities.  The U.S.-Mexican border is being dissolved.   

Though congressional Democrats have been stymied, they doggedly push a flagrantly statist legislative agenda, which would end any chance at honest elections and kill our prosperous, free economy via the “Green New Deal.”  The Constitution -- and our rights enshrined therein -- becomes a doormat should Democrats prevail.    

So, the left is on a power trip.  That’s not to suggest victory is in its grasp.  Conceit -- it overflows among leftists and their moneyed, connected, and credentialed allies -- almost inevitably leads to hubris.  There are hopeful signs an unraveling has begun.      

As Roger Simon wrote for the Epoch Times, October 9:

They [leftists and fellow travelers] are not, moreover, the people that built this country. Those who built the country are from the folks de Tocqueville saw when he wrote “Democracy in America,” the independent, self-starting citizens that formed so many non-governmental, patriotic organizations for the betterment of all.

Those people, thankfully, and here’s the good part, have not gone away. The ideological war is not over. The Fat Lady hasn’t even begun to sing. She hasn’t opened her sheet music.

By all means, an amicable divorce is better than violent separation.  Better if sober minds on both sides negotiated equitable terms.  Better to say, “Goodbye” with handshakes than bayonets and bullets.   

But history is abundant in its lessons about the left.  It aims to seize, not surrender, in whatever sphere it operates.  If a national divorce proves the goal, the left won’t be brought to the negotiating table through sweet reason and a desire to end years of intensifying divisions and conflicts.  The left not only thrives on division and conflict, but it also instigates both.  Read Marx, study Lenin. 

And might it be premature that we patriots signal a willingness to cede portions of the nation to cohorts that are manifestly authoritarian in policy and governance… and who, inevitably, will grow their rule into a monstrous totalitarianism?  Why surrender any portion of the country to forces that will only establish a hostile power on this continent?    

Perhaps we should be bolder in our vision of America?  Perhaps we should proclaim our commitment to the outright defeat of this leftist scourge and a restoration of liberty, a moral society, and honest government across this land -- a restoration that will astound a watching world.

J. Robert Smith can be found regularly at Gab @JRobertSmith and occasionally on Parler, again @JRobertSmith.  He also blogs at Flyover.

Image: Angr

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