The Road to Splitsville IF NOT IF, BUT WHEN, THEN WHAT?

The Newsletter for Subscribers to THE SPLIT

Excuse us while we indulge in a spot of existential panic. We have suddenly been struck by the fear that, for the past thirty editions of “The Road to Splitsville,” we’ve been too tentative, too namby-pamby, too…what’s the word? Oh, yeah: conservative.

See, all along, we’ve been gathering and summarizing and (sorry; this will be our last use of the most pretentious, over-used word allowed in the US this year) curating articles about real-life events, people, and phenomena that might foretell of a separation of the red states and the blue in a national divorce/severance/split. Note the use of the conditional tense, if that’s what “might” constitutes. We’ve been careful. We’ve been measured. Our attitude has been, “Don’t dismiss the possibility. Look at all these idiots, liars, and villains. This could very well happen.”

Recent events, however, have made such a split seem, not merely possible, but in-fucking-evitable.

Take, for example, a recent display of imbecilic mendacity and mendacious imbecility on the occasion of the great state of Tennessee being utterly clobbered by Hurricane Helene. As soberly described (on September 29 of this year) by the estimable historian Heather Cox Richardson, in her v. popular blog “Letter From an American,” the behavior of that state’s Republicans, both in the aftermath and in the, uh, math (?) of the storm’s arrival is enough to beggar the comprehension of normal people, which is what we so proudly are. Behold:

Late Friday night, Tennessee House Republican Caucus chair Jeremy Faison posted “President Biden has finally approved [Tennessee governor Bill Lee’s] state of emergency request,” making it sound as if the delay in federal support for the state during the devastation of Hurricane Helene was Biden’s fault. In fact, while Alabama, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina all declared emergencies and requested and received federal approval of those declarations before the hurricane hit, Governor Lee did not. 

Instead, in keeping with an April joint resolution from the Republican-dominated Tennessee legislature calling for 31 days of prayer and fasting to “seek God’s hand of mercy healing on Tennessee,” Lee proclaimed September 27 “a voluntary Day of Prayer & Fasting.”

Lee did not declare a state of emergency until late on September 27, after flash flooding had already created havoc. President Biden approved it immediately.  

Okay, but wait. They fasted for 31 days? Did anyone die of starvation? Or did they fast by day but eat at night? If so, don’t tell the good Christians of Tennessee this, but that’s what Muslims do during Ramadan. Did God think the Tennesseeans thought He was Allah? Is God Allah, and vice-versa?

Such questions are beyond the scope of the present discussion, and miles outside the ken of our humble newsletter. In any case: a month of fasting and of asking God politely to be nice to Tennessee—asking for mercy, for Christ’s sake—and this is the thanks they get? Five months later, and after another special, last-minute call for fasting and prayer, floods of Biblical proportions?

Or maybe God was as offended as we are by the spectacle of a state legislative body officially promoting prayer (and thus violating the principle of the separation of church and state), not to mention issuing a call for fasting, which would (eating at night notwithstanding) be bad for the state’s grocery and food-service industries.

True, responding to that with a record-setting hurricane, preceded by three days of ground-saturating rain, seems a bit harsh. But you know God. He can be rather touchy.

And then, because there is no disaster that Republicans cannot make worse, the Republicans proceeded to make this disaster worse. Tennessee House Republican Caucus chair Jeremy Faison couldn’t not say that Biden “finally” approved the state’s request for emergency aid, whereas, in truth, the state’s governor didn’t ask for it until the damage had begun, and received it at once.

As Richardson notes, it’s yet another example of

…the Republicans’ attempt to create a fake world to motivate their base with fear and anger while leaving Democrats to come up with real world solutions. And since those solutions are popular, Republicans are claiming credit for them. 

In the past two days, Republican lawmakers who just days ago voted against funding the federal government and who have railed against government spending have been out front claiming credit for getting federal disaster relief.  

--as they do even when it’s not an emergency. You are as tired as we are of Republicans voting against this or that program, only to take credit for it when the program (often passed exclusively by Democrats) brings money and jobs to their districts.

“But that’s politics,” some pseudo-wise numbnuts will say.

Actually, no. That’s Republican politics. It includes, but is not limited to, the pettiest kind of lying, flagrant and shameless hypocrisy, and an embarrassingly brazen display of religiosity—all in the service of creating “a fake world to motivate their base with fear and anger.” Why? Oh grow up. To obtain political power in order to serve the economic interests of the wealthy, silly. As if you didn’t know.

Our point, and the cause of our new-found anxiety over having been too timid in our suggestions that a union-cleaving split might not be probable but merely possible, is that if a red state’s governor’s response to urgent, credible warnings of an impending calamity is to call for fasting and prayer, what else is he capable of? If a swath of conservative legislators are, with a straight face, able to vote against Federal aid, and then, when it arrives, seek credit and applause for it, what other forms of shamelessness might they perpetrate?

Put Dems in the White House and in control of Congress, enact sensible, humane legislation that even the most bought-and-paid-for Supreme Court couldn’t overturn, and why wouldn’t such a Republican Party (in obedience to its wealthy donors and manifestly insane leader) begin a campaign of lies to convince its pious/impressionable/dumbbell constituents that what’s good (life in an enlightened, secular society in which the worst parts of capitalism are mitigated by government action) is bad, and what’s bad (exiting this liberal, rational nation and forming a grim theocratic dystopia, like the one in The Split) is good?

Admittedly, that’s the longest sentence either one of us has ever written. But that shows how important it is! If you have to, read it again. Feel free to rewrite it if you must. And then, let us ponder the next essential question: If, in our new, wised-up state, we believe a split is inevitable, how can we make a buck on it?