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Tuesday 17 November 2020

The Divided States of America?

 Time for red America and blue America to part ways?



How to split the USA into two countries: Red and Blue

Progressive America would be half as big, but twice as populated as its conservative twin.

How to split the USA into two countries: Red and Blue
Image: Dicken Schrader
  • America's two political tribes have consolidated into 'red' and 'blue' nations, with seemingly irreconcilable differences.
  • Perhaps the best way to stop the infighting is to go for a divorce and give the two nations a country each
  • Based on the UN's partition plan for Israel/Palestine, this proposal provides territorial contiguity and sea access to both 'red' and 'blue' America

If more proof were needed that the U.S. is two nations in one, it was offered by the recent mid-term elections. Democrats swept the House, but Republicans managed to increase their Senate majority. There is less middle ground, and less appetite for compromise, than ever.

To oversimplify America's electoral divide: Democrats win votes in urban, coastal areas; Republicans gain seats in the rural middle of the country. Those opposing blocs have consolidated into 'red' and 'blue' states decades ago.

Occasionally, and often after tight-run presidential elections, that divide is translated into a cartographic meme that reflects the state of the nation.

Jesusland vs. the U.S. of Canada

Canada annexes the entire West Coast and borders Mexico.

Image: Strange Maps

In 2004, this cartoon saw the states that had voted for Democratic presidential candidate John F. Kerry join America's northern neighbor to form the United States of Canada. The states re-electing George W. Bush were dubbed Jesusland.

Trumpistan vs. Clintonesia

Trumpistan is a perforated continent, Clintonesia is a disjointed archipelago.

Image: The New York Times.

In 2016, these two maps disassembled the U.S. into Trumpistan, a vast, largely empty and severely punctuated land mass; and Clintonesia, a much smaller but more densely populated archipelago whose biggest bits of dry land were at the edges, with a huge, empty sea in the middle.

Soyland vs. the FSA

Following state borders, a line separates 'red' America (in the south) from the 'blue' half of the country.

Image: Jesse Kelly

Writing in The Federalist, Jesse Kelly in April this year likened America to a couple that can't stop fighting and should get a divorce. Literally. His proposal was to split the country into two new ones: a 'red' state and a 'blue' state.

On a map accompanying the article, he proposed a division of the U.S. into the People's Republic of Soyland and the Federalist States of America (no prizes for guessing Mr Kelly's politics).

It's a fairly crude map. For example, it includes Republican-leaning states such as Montana and the Dakotas in the 'blue' state for seemingly no other reason than to provide a corridor between the blue zones in the west and east of the country.

Mr Kelly admitted that his demarcational talents left some room for improvement: "We can and will draw the map and argue over it a million different ways for a million different reasons but draw it we must," he wrote. "I suspect the final draft would look similar (to mine)."

Partition, Palestine-style

A county-level division between red and blue, with contiguous territories for both.

Image: Dicken Schrader.

"No, this map won't do," comments reader Dicken Schrader. "It's too crude and would leave too many members of the 'blue' tribe in the 'red' nation, and too much 'red' in the 'blue' state."

Agreeing with the basic premise behind Mr Kelly's map but not with its crude execution, Mr Schrader took it upon himself to propose a better border between red and blue.

Analyzing election maps from the past 12 years, he devised his own map of America's two nations, "inspired by the original UN partition map for Israel and Palestine from 1947." Some notes on the map:

  • To avoid the distortions of gerrymandering, it is based on electoral majorities in counties, rather than electoral districts.
  • As with the UN partition plan for Israel/Palestine, all territories of both states are contiguous. There are no enclaves. Citizens of either state can travel around their nation without having to cross a border.
  • The intersections between both nations are placed at actual interstate overpasses, so both states have frictionless access to their own territory.
  • In order to avoid enclaves, some 'blue' islands had to be transferred to 'red', and some 'red' zones were granted to the 'blue' nation. "This exchange is fair to both sides, in terms of area and population".
  • Both nations have access to the East, West and Gulf Coasts, and each has a portion of Alaska.

​Red vs. blue

Washington DC would remain part of 'blue' America, and its capital.

Image: Dicken Schrader

Some interesting stats on these two new nations:

Progressive America (blue)

  • Area: 1.44 million sq. mi (3.74 million km2), 38% of the total U.S.
  • Population: 210 million, 64.5% of the total U.S.
  • Pop. Density: 146 inhabitants/sq mi (56/km2), similar to Mexico
  • Capital: Washington DC
  • Ten Largest Cities: New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Phoenix, Philadelphia, San Antonio, San Diego, San Jose, Jacksonville

Conservative America (red)

  • Area: 2.35 million sq. mi (6.08 million km2), 62% of the total
  • Population: 115.4 million, 35.5% of the total
  • Pop. Density: 49 inhabitants/sq mi (19/km2), similar to Sudan
  • Capital: Dallas
  • Ten Largest Cities: Dallas, Austin, Fort Worth, Charlotte, Nashville, Oklahoma City, Louisville, Kansas City, Omaha, Colorado Springs.

What about the nukes?

The partition would not create enclaves, but allow citizens of either nation frictionless access to the entire territory of their state.

Image: Dicken Schrader

'Blue' America would be roughly half the size of 'red' America but have almost double the population.

In terms of area, 'blue' America would be the 13th-largest country in the world, larger than Mexico but smaller than Saudi Arabia. 'Red' America would be the 6th-largest country in the world, larger than India but smaller than Australia.

In terms of population, 'blue' America would now be the 5th-most populous county in the world, with more population than Brazil but less than Indonesia. 'Red' America would be the 12th, with more population than Ethiopia but less than Japan.

For those who think this divorce would end the argument between both tribes, consider that both countries would still have to live next to each other. And then there's the question of the kids. Or, in Mr Schrader's translation to geopolitics: "Who gets the nukes?"

--

Many thanks to Mr Schrader for sending in this map.

Strange Maps #948

Got a strange map? Let me know at strangemaps@gmail.com.

Yes, more and more young adults are living with their parents – but is that necessarily bad?

Having grown kids still at home is not likely to do you, or them, any permanent harm.

 
Photo by Parker Gibbons on Unsplash

When the Pew Research Center recently reported that the proportion of 18-to-29-year-old Americans who live with their parents has increased during the COVID-19 pandemic, perhaps you saw some of the breathless headlines hyping how it's higher than at any time since the Great Depression.

 Keep reading

What ended the Black Death, history's worst pandemic

The bubonic plague ravaged the world for centuries, killing up to 200 million people.

 

A man dresses as a plague doctor at the Bannockburn Live event on June 28, 2014 in Stirling, Scotland.

Photo by Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images
  • The Plague was the worst pandemic in history, killing up to 200 million people.
  • The disease spread through air, rats and fleas, and decimated Europe for several centuries.
  • The pandemic eased with better sanitation, hygiene, and medical advancements but never completely disappeared.
  •  Keep reading
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    Saturday 1 August 2020

    Prophet of the new gods?

    How Much of Today’s Anarchic Nihilism Can Be Laid at Darwin’s Feet?

     David Klinghoffer

     

     

    There’s a pervasive sense afoot that something has gone wrong, in a very serious way, in our culture. Just in 2020, problems that were of, let’s say, an outpatient nature in their gravity have gone to full-scale emergency — a cytokine storm of trouble, is one way of putting it. But why? I’ve watched the once-beautiful city where I live, Seattle, pummeled by violent protests, the police undermined by those above them in the government. The city watches endless chaos as the mob rampages, and no one in authority seems willing to stop it. Neighboring Portland is worse. Such things are happening across the country. It is anguishing. 

    What Is Going On?

    We’ve seen things that were previously unheard of. A random example: as others have pointed out, you may have noticed from the videos of urban anarchy that it’s now women, not just young men, who are assaulting police officers and otherwise creating mayhem. It used to be that males had a monopoly on protest violence. Not anymore. What drives the astonishing anarchism, the nihilism of the young? What has drained the confidence of the adults, who should be the ones acting to assert order?
    That there might be something unique, exalted, and worth defending about human lives, about our traditions of moral and spiritual belief, about institutions like marriage or the family or about property, about our freedom or our equal dignity, about our privileged place in the cosmos — all these ideas, once agreed on across the culture, are eroding, with a gathering speed, before our eyes.

    A Powerful Myth that Shapes Us

    Of course I’m not saying everything can be laid to Darwin’s feet. But see how much nihilism has been justified and advocated by some very smart and influential people in the name of evolutionary theory. This is not just a scientific theory of biological origins. It’s a powerful myth. That observation alone doesn’t make Darwinism false science. A myth could be true. It only means that Darwinism conveys a vision of reality that can’t help but shape us deep within. The malignancy of it has been building for more than a century and a half. Something wrong in the way Americans are shaped reached a critical threshold this year.
    If you want to understand how that happened, because you want to know how it could be reversed, it’s not possible without considering the role of evolution advocacy, which begins in school and continues to bombard us into adulthood. Take three minutes and see if you agree with me.