Another Matthew White Creation
What is the most fragmented that North America could have been? There are several plausible scenarios (some based on different patterns of settlement from Europe, others on different fracture lines) but I chose 1787 as the point of divergence from real history. In this alternate reality, the westward expansion of the Anglo-American people proceeded pretty much as it did in our reality, but the United States government just couldn't keep up. Every national identity crisis resolved itself in favor of the separatists instead.
I can also recommend Perotista Revolution! American Civil War of the 1990s--What if the anti-government forces of the 1990s had risen in rebellion...
The most likely outcome of a war between the Feds and the extreme right is that the extreme right is crushed like bugs, even before the network news anchors can move their mobile newsdesks, satellite link-ups and tactical hairdryers out to the battlefield. To make it more interesting, however, let's suppose that there are enough rebels to make it drag on awhile.
Laci, great post...I write a lot of fiction and the idea of the balkanization of America has become a sort of theme I have been exploring for quite a while. Though you write of it here as a historical alternate reality, I see it as an all too real alternative future....
ReplyDeleteIt's not a what if...it is a real projection of the dysfunctional present constitutional reality and the fractured regionalism of the aging and compromised operating system of the Republic.
The Christian Heartland Commonwealth already exists in the fantasies of many who live in Kansas, Oklahoma and Nebraska and perhaps Texas....
Which is really my point, some people have this idea about rebellion, but it is probably too fragmented a movement to succede.
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