The Road to Splitsville THE REICH STUFF

The Newsletter for Subscribers to THE SPLIT

Robert Reich (no, not pronounced as in “Third Reich,” but, rather, as “rysh”) worked in the Ford and Carter administrations, was Bill Clinton’s Secretary of Labor for four years, teaches at Berkely, and is an author, an online political commentator, a video presenter and, in the process, a political cartoonist. As a smart, funny promoter of the liberal cause he is indefatigable. Go on, try to defatigate him. You can’t do it!

So when, just last week, he posted a Substack entitled “America’s second civil war? It’s already begun,” we took notice. Actually, we took more than notice. We took it as confirmation of everything we’ve done in The Split, in The Road to Splitsville, and in our whole entire lives. Even though his first sentence negates his title (“Despite the popularity of the recent movie ‘Civil War,’ we’re not on the verge of a second one.”), everything else in the post could, or will, or already did, qualify for discussion in this very newsletter.

Per Reich, red states:

·         have passed laws making it almost impossible for one out of three women of childbearing age to get an abortion

·         are making it easier to buy guns

·         are banning diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives in education

·         are suppressing votes

·         are banning the teaching of America’s history of racism.

·         are making it harder to protest

·         are making it harder to qualify for unemployment and other forms of public assistance

·         are making it harder to form labor unions

·         are passing “bounty laws,” offering rewards to private citizens for filing lawsuits on issues ranging from classroom speech to abortion to vaccination

·         are investigating parents for child abuse if they provide certain medical treatments to their transgender children

Meanwhile, various blue states:

·         are codifying a right to abortion

·         are helping cover abortion expenses for out-of-staters

·         are enacting laws making the state a refuge for transgender youths and their families

·         are coordinating policies that red states reject (such as, e.g., during the pandemic, purchasing agreements for personal protective equipment, strategies for reopening businesses as Covid subsided, even on travel from other states with high levels of Covid)

Reich writes, “More than 4 in 10 voters believe that a second civil war is likely within the next five years, according to a Rasmussen Reports poll conducted April 21-23.”

You may think, as we do, “Well, yeah, but look—it’s Rasmussen, which skews right. Since ‘right’ is now the equivalent of ‘insane,’ it can be ignored. Either forty percent of all voters really don’t think a shooting war between two armed ‘nations’ will begin by 2029, or forty percent of right-wingers do believe that, but look at them! They’re nutz!” 

After noting that red ZIP codes are getting redder and blue ZIP codes are getting bluer, Reich says:

Surveys show Americans find it increasingly important to live around people who share their political values. Animosity toward those in the opposing party is higher than at any time in living memory. Forty-two percent of registered voters believe Americans in the other party are “downright evil.”

Which brings us to what even intelligent, fair-minded Robert Reich doesn’t say, and which hardly anyone says when discussing how much Americans are “polarized.” Read the above paragraph in italics again. It cites “political values.” But the people we’re talking about in red states don’t have political values. They have social prejudices. They have resentments. They have irrational “beliefs” about everything and everybody from climate change to the consciousness of a fetus, from God to George Soros to Trump.

Political values express what one thinks government should and shouldn’t do, and who should pay for it. But the people on the right think government should do nothing except two things: kill commies and terrorists, and own the libs by oppressing minorities (including women, which is the only minority that’s a majority). Of course, they relent a little when their community is hit by a hurricane or a flood or a tornado or an earthquake or a wildfire or a pandemic (the term of art for which is, hilariously, “acts of God”), but that, to them, doesn’t count.

Why is this the red state position? Because red staters—let’s call them “Republicans”—have been brainwashed, bamboozled, gaslighted, and lied to about government, the libs, and even about commies and terrorists. Their conception of the world is not “different from that of liberals but equally valid.” It’s simply false. They believe things that aren’t true, and they don’t believe things that are true.

Reich concludes:

…rather than civil war, I see a gradual, continuous separation — analogous to unhappily married people who don’t want to go through the trauma of a formal divorce.

America will still be America. But it is fast becoming two versions of America. The open question is the same as faced by couples who separate: Will the two remain civil toward each other?

It’s hard to imagine what “two versions of America” would be like, and how that might be consistent with “America will still be America.” Maybe he’s thinking of an America combining the North-South conflicts of the first Civil War and the public turmoil of the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and the young-old unrest of the Viet Nam War era. Those, at least, are scenarios around which we can wrap what remains of our minds. Of course, if, by some nightmarish turn of events, Donald Trump wins in November, all bets are off. Forget…you know…America. What we’ll be living in will more and more resemble a nauseating Venn diagram intersection of The Handmaid’s Tale, Atlas Shrugged, and Idiocracy.

It’s also hard to imagine what would ensue if the two stopped being civil toward each other.

We’re cheered by his invoking both divorce and separation, since we employ aspects of both in The Split. But Reich glosses over one important fact: In divorce, and even in separation, somebody moves out. Without a physical separation between the contending parties, it ain’t happening. What we’re saying is, we may indeed be on the road to Splitsville, and it might be a good idea for Robert Reich to read The Split. Would one of our dear, dear readers in the Berkeley area please tell him about our dystopian satire?