Splitsville GET UP! STAND UP!

The Only-Slightly-Shopworn Newsletter for Subscribers to THE SPLIT

Look, we are sick and tired of—

But let’s stop there. We are sick and tired. Who isn’t? But don’t worry. Like what’s-his-name in the Samuel Beckett book (Malone? Malloy? Malarkey?), we can’t go on. We’ll go on.

For months, now, we’ve been saying that the U.S. is Splitsville, i.e., two separate nations occupying a single set of geo-political borders. But even we received something of a slap in the face when we read Jonathan V. Last’s essay last week at The Bulwark.

Last, like everyone at The Bulwark, is a Republican, or a former Republican, or a not-at-the-moment Republican. In any case, he’s a Never Trumper, and last week’s essay—a grim read, by any measure—makes a disturbing point.

I don’t think there’s any way to read yesterday except as President Trump deciding that with the Republican party fully subservient to him, he can subjugate the other remaining power centers in American life.

He can finally be a wartime president. It’s just that he’s going to war against America.

Last goes on to detail whom and what Trump is waging war against: The courts, the bureaucracy, Blue states. In freeing the Jan. 6 Capitol rioters, Trump is sending an unofficial battalion of militias and freelance stochastic terrorists out into the streets to spread fear and intimidation. As noted, he has at his command, not only the cowards, traitors, and assorted garbagio morons currently doing business as “the Republican Party,” but the seething, blood-lusting orc army known as MAGA.

This is a much more bellicose version of Splitsville than we originally had in mind. Of course it’s not entirely unfamiliar: We, you, they, “Hollywood”—everyone has pondered the possibility of a new “civil war,” however fancifully or fearfully. What’s new (to us, at least) in Last’s description is the idea of a targeted imposition of Trumpian reactionary policies against Blue cities and states.

We have reports that Trump’s deportation raids are slated to target Chicago, Boston, and New York—Democratic cities in Democratic states.

The inherent tension in Trump’s deportation regime is that if he followed through on his promises and deported several million immigrants, he would hobble the national economy. To take just one example: A red state like Texas would experience huge problems in the construction industry, which relies heavily on immigrant labor. Either housing construction in Texas would slow—raising housing prices. Or construction wages would climb—also raising housing prices.

But there is a way for Trump to have his cake and eat it too: If he targets immigrants in blue states, he can create a drag on local, blue-state economies while satisfying the anti-immigrant desires of red-state voters.

It’s a twofer. Trump can hurt businesses and make life more expensive for consumers in New York and Illinois—and then attack blue state mayors and governors for these problems and maybe even help Republican candidates win in those states. Meanwhile, Fox will run B-roll from the raids on a loop, satisfying Trump voters in Texas and Arizona—whose economies will continue to benefit from immigrant workers.

So. According to at least one observer, we’re at war. (You can’t get more “split” than that!) It’s as good a metaphor as any, to describe the current struggle between the Trump administration and decency itself. Just as, during the Biden administration, imbeciles on the right (such as Marjorie Taylor “Three-Toes” “Cavewoman” Greene) fantasized about a “national divorce,” so do we—the last defenders of democracy, knowledge, truth, justice, and the American way—find ourselves compelled by the idea of a Split-like split. Let the red states have the Nazi hellhole nightmare of their dreams, where Trump is Leader for Life, Tommy Tuberville is considered a sage, Culture Czars Kid Rock and Kanye West determine what gets produced and published, and everybody, sooner or later, ends up in an iron lung.

We’ll take a different route. Or we’ll go down trying. Until then, somebody please check on the Minority Leader of the House, who seems to be either shell-shocked into paralysis or comfily asleep. Here’s what Hakeem Jeffries tweeted (literally; on X) this past Tuesday:

Presidents come and Presidents go.

Through it all

God is still on the throne.

The only way this homily can be of any use is if its author intends “the throne” to be understood as a familiar euphemism for “toilet.” In that sense, yes, God is still on the throne—as he was during the L.A. fires, 9-11, the Holocaust, the Indonesian tsunami of 2004, the Crusades, the Lisbon Earthquake, and every other occasion of mass suffering throughout human history. (Sure, several hundred thousand years seems to us a long time to be on the throne. But He’s God, and has a Metabolism we cannot imagine.) This tweet would then offer a succinct explanation of why so much evil has been allowed to prevail up until, and including, the rise of Donald Trump.

Whether that’s what Jeffries meant or not, it’s clear that God isn’t helping. And neither is Jeffries. Nor, for that matter, are Chuck Schumer, Dick Durbin, and almost all of the other bigwigs (and littlewigs) in the Democratic caucuses in the Senate and House. Jeffries should read Last (and Splitsville! And The Split, goshdarnit!), and awaken to the fact that we are, for all intents and p., in a war.

We don’t need inspirational pseudo-haikus posted on X. We also don’t need, as we recently received, an email from “Team Schumer” asking us to sign a petition. This is a particularly ridiculous waste of electrons. Such a document would be nothing more than a list of people who already appreciate the severity of the current crisis. It would have absolutely no effect upon anyone to whom it was handed—other than possibly to alert our enemies as to who we are and where to find us.

Instead, we need Jeffries, Schumer, and all Dems, to loudly and relentlessly proclaim what Trump is doing, why it’s loathsome, why it’s illegal, why it’s unconstitutional and un-American, why it’s un-Christian and immoral, and why he and the GOP are utterly abhorrent. The point is not to convert MAGA; they’re empty-headed cultists and, like all good cultists, will follow their leader over the cliff and into the Kool-Aid. No, the point is to awaken the MAGA-adjacent, the center-right, Republicans on the margins, and centrist Dems who “don’t follow politics.” The message needn’t, and shouldn’t, be subtle. Trump (and the servile GOP) is a catastrophe for everyone except the wealthy (and even they will suffer from his policies). But Jamie Raskin, Jasmine Crockett, Jared Moscowitz, and AOC can’t do it all by themselves, and we can’t just rely on Colbert and Kimmel and SNL to be the only outlets for criticism.

If the Democratic leadership can’t lead a robust, sharp, unceasing, and loud campaign against our enemies, they should step aside and be replaced by people who can. There are a thousand great communicators in L.A. and N.Y.C. who would gladly help. (And you know where to find us.)

Because this is not your grandfather’s, or your father’s, or your, or even fucking our Splitsville, where two sides agree to disagree and hate and make fun of each other. Jonathan Last is right: It’s a war, and it’s only just getting started. We’d better rise to the occasion, and fast.