The Road to Splitsville

The Newsletter for Subscribers to The Split

THE DRAIN OF BRAINS IS PLAIN AND WILL REMAIN

Look, we’re not saying a Split-like separation of the red and the blue states into two distinct nations is inevitable, or even likely. What we are saying is, if anything like it were ever to happen, we will have lived with warning signs and precursors of it for years now.

For example, consider the phenomenon of the “brain drain”—the departure of educated professionals—and just plain smart people—from the red.

We wrote this yesterday, on Super Tuesday, when fifteen states (and one territory) voted in their presidential primaries. Here is what those voting for the Republican front-runner, Donald Trump, believe:

·         Corporations are people.

·         Blastocysts and zygotes and clusters of cells in a petri dish are people.

·         People (men, women, children) seeking asylum in the US are “vermin.”

·         The American people are guaranteed freedom, but pregnant women are not allowed the freedom to control their own bodies, so pregnant women are not people.

·         America is a Christian nation, so non-Christians (which to some includes Catholics) are not Americans.

·         Science is a hoax, perpetrated by greedy, selfish liars, but the gun industry consists of patriots who simply want to ensure Americans’ right of self-defense, both against the government (which may “come for” them), and against any or all of the other Americans who have ready access to guns. Not to mention the vermin swarming across the borders.

·         America has the greatest health care system in the world, which is why the US ranks 47^th in life expectancy—two places behind Puerto Rico, yes, but one place ahead of Antigua and Barbuda!

·         Historians who research and publish the facts about America’s past have a “woke agenda” to push, but the politicians who want to restrict them are disinterested champions of parental choice.

·         Homosexuality, which has existed in all cultures all over the world for all of history, is a recent and perverse invention of godless liberals.

·         Donald Trump, who every day babbles nonsense at rallies (about whales, windmills, water, and “nuclear”), and who has been documented as having told over 30,000 lies during his administration, “tells it like it is.”

·         Jesus Christ, who summarized his own preachings as being “love God,” “love your neighbor,” and “love your enemies,” particularly blesses homophobes, anti-Semites, and xenophobes because of the correctness of their hate.

·         God, Who is omnipotent, and who so loved the world that he sent us his only begotten son and gifted us with 350,000 species of beetles, has His reasons when He allows (or causes) babies to die in earthquakes, floods, hurricanes, wildfires, and religious wars.

This—and worse—is what they believe, and what they’d like to enshrine into law, in red states. Is it any wonder, then, that educated, accomplished professionals (teachers, physicians, professors, others) are fleeing those places for the more enlightened blue states?

As Timothy Noah said in The New Republic last November, “…with the sole exception of Texas, red states are bleeding college graduates.” To the surprise of absolutely no one, the states where abortion has been made illegal are seeing an exodus of OB-GYN’s, resulting in some rural areas becoming “medical deserts.” This is good news for pious non-pregnant people who believe every zygote has a soul, but bad news for happily expectant mothers.

Teachers, whose salaries are not exactly lavish and who are spurred by dedication as much as anything else, find they can be hauled on the carpet (or clapped in irons) for teaching Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, and decide, “You know what? Fuck it.”

These two trends come together in the case of medical schools. Noah writes:

But nowhere was morale worse than in Florida, where 47 percent said they were seeking positions in another state. “I’m a professor,” one Floridian who called himself “Brodman_area11” posted on Reddit in late September. “My university is like watching all the rats escape from the sinking ship. My department alone has lost two pediatricians, and we can’t seem to be able to recruit any qualified replacements. It’s going to be a diaspora.”

Noah affirms that the states that have shown the biggest net gains in population are red ones like Texas and Florida. But by and large those transplants are people without college degrees, in search of states with a lower cost of living. In contrast, the states with the largest number of arriving college grads are blue, welcoming people who are happy—or at least willing—to contend with a higher cost of living in exchange for the intellectual, cultural, and healthcare freedoms afforded by liberal places.

One irony in all this is the fact that, while conservatives often bleat about favoring small government and minimizing its interference with people’s personal choices, they have no problem barging into your bedroom, school library, and doctor’s office to tell you what you can and can’t do. It’s almost like they’re big fat hypocrites or something!

And so we’re undergoing a great sorting process: liberals and progressives and social democrats over here, conservatives and reactionaries and theocrats and fascists—self-described “real” Americans—over there.

As many have pointed out, this division, or, um, split, may not so much be strictly a blue state/red state deal as an urban/rural (high-population-density/low-population-density) deal. Each side repels the other. Each side demonizes the other. Each side otherizes the other. And it appears to be self-perpetuating.

Who’s to say that, sooner or later, the idea of a national divorce won’t start to seem not-so-nutty?