The Road to Splitsville BREXIPHILIA!

The Newsletter for Subscribers to THE SPLIT

Granted, the idea that the red states would voluntarily—even enthusiastically—elect to separate from the blue states and create their own country is, as John Stuart Mill might have put it, “fucking nuts.” But is it? Really?

Okay, yes. It is—or, rather, it is to us normal, sensible people, who know Trump is a monster, Vance is a creep, and the GOP is a fascist cult looking for its Hitler. Leaving the US would be an economic and cultural disaster for the red states—which, as everybody and their dog knows, receive more money from the Federal government in subsidies, grants, Federal contracts, construction projects, and whatevers, than they pay out in Federal taxes. The assistance of FEMA alone should be enough to convince the most Dixie-philic red-stater to sit down, shut up, and stay in the Union.

But that doesn’t mean we aren’t possibly on The Road to Splitsville, because the most Dixie-philic red-stater is, not to put too fine a point on it, an imbecile. He thinks with his emotions—which is to say, he doesn’t think at all. She is manipulated by appeals to her most primitive instincts: pride, fear, and resentment. How else can you explain, at this late date and in the face of abundant evidence of his deterioration, their continued loyalty to Donald Trump?

When we were planning The Split, we often discussed how the event—the historical Split, and the campaign to realize it—was much like Brexit: hyper-wealthy people with certain vested interests, manipulating and lying to the masses, to con them into voting for something that would predictably benefit the few at the expense of the many. And how has Brexit worked out? It’s been a disaster. Voila.  

For most of this century, the UK was the biggest beneficiary among the 27 countries in the EU. Measured by gross domestic product, GDP per capita growth, unemployment and superior debt, equity and currency valuations, Britain was the perennial leader. All of these superlatives ended with “Brexit” almost eight years ago. The EU since then outperforms the UK, whose listless economy is now little more than an also-ran.

And there you have it: a real life (economic, as opposed to political) Split, a weird, unthinkable thing that actually happened. This is science fact, not science fiction. And all it took was a concerted effort by the greedy and the soulless to persuade, threaten, entice, and bamboozle millions of the credulous, the ignorant, and the “patriotic.”

Sound familiar? “Why, yes, Ellis and Steve. It sounds like today’s Republican Party, and its campaign to re-elect Donald Trump.” Does it ever. Except we seem to have entered a new phase, in which persuading or tricking people into voting for Trump has been deemed passe, too 2020, and has been replaced by an exciting new strategy.

The GOP and Trump have given up trying to get people to vote for them. The party has no platform. They literally have no policies, apart from tax cuts (for the wealthy), mass deportation, Trump’s idiot misunderstanding of tariffs, and “drill, baby, drill.” What they’re campaigning on, instead, is name-calling, xenophobic fear, racism, and the fascist-adjacent promise to make America great “again.”

It sounds piss-poor because it is piss-poor. So how do they expect to actually win? Funny you should ask.

As outlined by the excellent Brian Beutler here, Trump has literally begun to tell crowds, “Don’t bother voting. We have enough votes.” In the context of a popular election this is, of course, insane—unless you have a plan to win which doesn’t require a majority of the votes. And so they (Trump; his cult; and the gang of traitors now doing business as the Republican Party) do.

The idea, in brief, is to gum up the electoral works, not by suppressing votes (although they’re trying), or by fraudulent voting (the vanishingly small number of duplicate votes in the last presidential election were all made by Republicans), but by simply refusing to certify the vote totals. Beutler:

Trump loyalists don’t necessarily need Trump-loyal judges to validate their baseless allegations of impropriety. They just need to run out the clock. They would be perfectly happy to see liberal voters take to the streets in, say, Atlanta, only for the results in Georgia or elsewhere to remain uncertified as of the deadline. At that juncture, with no candidate having received at least 270 electoral votes, the question of who becomes president can only be answered by a contingent election in the U.S. House, where each state delegation gets one vote. 

Regardless of the results of this year’s election, and even if the Democrats re-take the House, currently there are more Republican delegations. Thus, under those extreme circumstances, the election could go to the loser both of the popular vote and of the (uncertified) Electoral College vote.

Will it work? Can it work? No one knows. Presumably the Dems are aware of this scheme and are taking steps to counter it. And there are still eight weeks to go—eight weeks in which JD Vance can find new ways to offend the female half of the human race; eight weeks in which Donald Trump can visibly and audibly lose what few marbles he has left; eight weeks in which Kamala Harris and Tim Walz can inspire a Blue Wave big enough to swamp that election-certification skullduggery.

Let’s say Trump’s scheme fails, and Harris wins. The question then is, What next?

This is what keeps us thinking we may indeed be on the Road to Splitsville. Because what will MAGA do then? Form a single line, file past us, shake hands, say “good game,” and go home? As if. No, they’ll feel (as always) resentful. They’ll see themselves (as always) has having been victimized. They’ll believe (as always) any and every Lie, Big or Small, that Trump and his retinue of plug-uglies disseminate. They’ll be all het up with nowhere to go.

Is it so inconceivable that, sooner or later, some coterie of billionaires will regard the 30-million-man orc army of MAGA loyalists and see, in it, a means to power not necessarily tied to bothersome, inconvenient US electoral politics? Might they look at Brexit itself and think, “Hmm…”?

You will note that the few recent occasions on which some far-right lunatic group (e.g., the Texas Republican Party) has openly flirted with secession did so during either the Obama or the Biden administrations. When Trump was prez, the US was worth staying in, no matter how fucked-up things got. A Harris victory, especially if accompanied by the Dems taking the House and the Senate (it could happen!) would rekindle anew that precious flame of freedom and self-determination that burns, bravely and indomitably, in every stupid MAGA brain from sea to shining s. To paraphrase David Bowie, “They did it over there/So, hey, let’s do it here/ CLAP CLAP/ Ooooh-oooh fascist.”

In other words, of course it’s crazy, self-destructive, deluded, and ill-advised. But look at these people.