The Road to Splitsville UN-SANE

The Newsletter for Subscribers to THE SPLIT

For the past 24 weeks we have, in The Road to Splitsville, speculated on the possibility of an actual legal and political separation of the conservative red states from the liberal blue states of the USA.  What real-life events and actually-living people might bring about the sort of E Unum Pluribus mitosis so vividly and hilariously depicted in (the fictional) The Split?

When such a schism--whether by violent secession or peaceful agreement—is posited in real life, it is always by Republicans. Now, you may describe their desire to go their own way as an expression of world-historical pique, and ascribe it to the well-known tendency of spoiled brats, when they’re losing, to take their ball and go home. But we’ve been somewhat respectful when presenting these red-state fantasies. An implicit theme in The Road to Splitsville has been something like, “However impractical and ill-advised we think such a departure from the US might be, conservatives have, by their own lights, good reasons to ponder and daydream about it.”

They don’t like the modern world, you see. They want a country where there are no unions, abortion is illegal (and, ideally, so is contraception), everyone is armed to the teeth, climate change is ignored as a “hoax” but teaching accurate US history is considered a threat, pollution and environmental degradation are simply the costs (that everybody else pays) of doing business, everyone worships Jesus, women make babies and “manage the home,” and the safety of food, drugs, cars, and airplanes is left to the tender mercies of the marketplace.    

Sure, it sounds awful to us, but there’s no accounting for taste. Which is to say, our attitude has been that those members of the Texas Republican Party calling for secession may be a bunch of self-pitying nimrods and short-sighted choads, but they’re not crazy.

But what if we’re wrong? What if the political right is actually bugfuck nutz?

We ask, because here comes far-right influencer/Pizzagate aficionado Jack Posobiec with a new book, entitled Unhumans, written with ghostwriter Joshua Lisec. In the words of the always-excellent New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg,

The book argues that leftists don’t deserve the status of human beings — that they are, as the title says, unhumans — and that they are waging a shadow war against all that is good and decent, which will end in apocalyptic slaughter if they are not stopped. “As they are opposed to humanity itself, they place themselves outside of the category completely, in an entirely new misery-driven subdivision, the unhuman,” write Posobiec and Lisec.

“Apocalyptic slaughter”—uh oh! “Opposed to humanity itself”—that sounds bad! We don’t know whether or not the book includes the words “exterminate all liberals” or “In defense of political cleansing”—and, thanks to Michelle Goldberg (and other fine reviewers), no one with an ounce of intellectual self-respect has to read it to find out—but the last time we heard of a group opposed to humanity itself, it consisted of extraterrestrials attacking Earth.

That’s what we call “unhuman.” And if, say, the aliens from The War of the Worlds tried to conquer humanity itself, we would be in favor of killing them!

Posobiec and Lisec (who markets himself as a “persuasive writing coach”), however, pin that term on leftists. And that’s where things get…concerning.   

You can—and, in fact, should—regard this drek as the hyped-up ravings and attention-seeking hyperbole of a provocateur (French for “asshole”) desperate to remain relevant in today’s crackpot-saturated marketplace. In order to stand out among the swelling mob of maniacs, Posobiec is facing a lot of competition.

Sure, he struck gold with the courageous/demented assertion that child sex trafficking was taking place out of the basement of a D.C. pizza parlor where there was no child sex trafficking and no basement. But that was then. The internet has destroyed many professions; today, in the Age of Trump and Qanon, with its easy access to public platforms, cheap web site creation, and spell-check, it is in the process of making obsolete the job of Raving Lunatic. The nutters are everywhere—loud and proud and swarming over Tik-Tok and Insta like roaches before you turn the light on.

And so it’s come to this: A wingnut can’t publish a book without at least saying that Bernie Sanders and AOC want to destroy humanity. But wait. It’s not all fuming negativity and dire warnings. These guys have heroes! Among the historical figures Posobiec admires—you’ll never guess who’s included—are Francisco Franco and Augusto Pinochet. (“So, nu? Hitler is chopped liver?”) This fascistophilia is presented in what Humbert Humbert referred to as “a fancy prose style,” presumably provided by Lisec as his client frothed.

“Our study of history has brought us to this conclusion: Democracy has never worked to protect innocents from the unhumans,” write Posobiec and Lisec.

Mm. And—speaking of Pinochet--has your study of history brought you to any conclusion as regards the legal, moral, and basic humanistic implications of torture, “disappearing” political enemies, and throwing people out of helicopters?

“Much like the United States founding fathers, Franco and his fellows saw themselves as rebels intended to overthrow a corrupt, tyrannical government that aided and abetted murder and rape as well as other repugnant sins,” write Posobiec and Lisec.

George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, you will recall, ordered 35,000 of their political enemies murdered after they ascended to power. Oh, no, hold on. That’s Franco, who “saw himself” as dissolving the government and ruling as Caudillo for life. We regret the error but it’s understandable—is he that different from James Madison, really? 

So, on the one hand, we have this vile, atrocious (and pretentiously-written) piece of far-right crap. But, you may find yourself wondering, who gives a fuck? It’s just the latest effusion from the reactionary fringe, a whack-job’s attempt to drum up bulk sales to the Claremont Institute’s mailing list. It’s not as though it’s being endorsed by any legitimate Establishment figure, is it?

Well…

Come on down, JD Vance!

God’s Gift to Democrats has contributed a blurb to Unhumans, because why should his intellectual dishonesty be restricted to campaign appearances? Goldberg quotes Vance’s praise for the book:

“In the past, communists marched in the streets waving red flags. Today, they march through H.R., college campuses and courtrooms to wage lawfare against good, honest people,” he wrote. “Jack Posobiec and Joshua Lisec reveal their plans and show us what to do to fight back.”

JD Vance is a fan of good, honest people, and against waging lawfare, which is why he’s doing all he can to help make (bad, dishonest, insanely litigious) Donald Trump president.

So there you have it. The vice-presidential candidate of the Republican Party is helping pimp a book that erases the humanity of leftists by defining it out of existence and praising murderous dictators. That’s—forget “illiberal”—how crazy the right has become. Whether the rise of Trump is the cause or the result of that is a matter for another time.

But it's enough to make us question our most basic assumptions. If we are on the Road to Splitsville, it may not be because a group of rational conservatives seeks to establish a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that everything that’s happened since the New Deal is bad. It may instead be because everyone to the right of Adam Kinzinger is as crazy as two waltzing mice (h/t Raymond Chandler).

Which, now that you mention it, is a pretty good description of the ruling class of our fictional CCSA—the Confederation of Conservative States of America—the country composed of the former red states in The Split.