Rest assured, we ARE separating. It’s already in the works. Sane people are fleeing the blue areas as blue areas become East Germany. There is no reversing this trend. The country WILL come apart. It is only a matter of dates.
Jesse Kelly @JesseKellyDC
Tweeted on October 10, 2021
[While I can see the trend and understand the desire to be separate I’m not convinced that a separation will actually occur. There was an even stronger trend and desire for the North and South to separate in the early 1860’s and that separation wasn’t really completed and certainly wasn’t even semi-permanent.
There are a number of ways we could become unified again. An external threat could do it. A military coup quickly wiping out the leadership of one side and/or the other would be another roadblock to a separation. And that isn’t even considering things like an extinction class asteroid.
It’s really difficult to figure out what might happen. There are so many different ways things could go. Prediction is very difficult, especially if it’s about the future!—Joe]
An external threat isn’t going to do it. Left has been in league with one group of foreign dictators or another for decades so they aren’t going to rally around the flag if there is a threat from China or Iran, as we already know. As for the Right, if the Left identifies some power as an enemy, the distrust is so thick now that they won’t believe it.
Your other scenarios have a better chance of doing the trick but a coup won’t produce unity, just a sullen acceptance and plotting. An asteroid might but it might also be seen as an opportunity to settle scores. Lots of that in Lucifer’s Hammer and others of that genre.
I agree that an external threat won’t do it and I don’t see anything to stop the path we’re on. Our Taliban will never accept responsibility, become less authoritarian, nor give up their beliefs at least during this generation. Should we vote them out they will refuse to go. Should we rebel or resist they would like nothing better. We’re in for a long dark winter.
That quote has been attributed to Niels Bohr but apparently it’s a well known old Danish saying, dating from long before him.
Huh. I thought it was Yogi Berra.
Learned something new today.
You can find attributions to Berra but the attribution to Bohr was earlier so I used it. And, of course, Berra and many others could have said it as well.
Many things are attributed to Yogi Berra, and he certainly has his collection of excellent quips. The way I figure it is that a quote attributed to YB and someone less known is probably from the latter.
An example is this one, which I like a lot: “In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. But in practice there is” — attributed to J.L.A. van de Snepscheut. Then again, Wikipedia says it’s from Benjamin Brewster, in 1882, a century earlier. Hm.
“Most of the quotes you find on the Internet are misattributed.”
–Abraham Lincoln
(An oldie but a goodie)
I don’t see a split as much as just the city side becoming so dystopian that we find away to live without them. And defend ourselves from them.
A county election map tells the whole story. They control almost nothing in terms of supply lines. Which is all that keeps them alive. They think daycare is infrastructure? Try eating and wiping your butt with it.
As for invasion by a foreign enemy. That’s already been accomplished.
The enemy has/is pouring through our southern border. Are supply lines are being cut as we speak. And all that’s left to do is kick the last leg out from under our money system. And we will be hanging from the rope we sold them.
China is smart enough not to come here till we have killed ourselves off.
And with the masses left fighting over scarps.
Speaking of supply issues: if you think it’s bad now, imagine what happens if China conquers Taiwan and the Taiwanese chip factories stop running. Or they still run (sort of, Communist style) but product is diverted to red China rather than to the free world.
What percentage of high end chips, running our smartphones and PCs and server computers is affected by this? Nearly 100%.
And the time to build a replacement factory? Anywhere from 3 years to forever, considering how hard it is to find the skills to make those processes work. Intel’s previous CEO lost his job because Intel couldn’t do that.
As you’ve said before. Those chips control everything around the processors also.
It appear America’s future is not so futuristic? That’s OK, were good at mechanics.
I was shocked a few years ago to learn that we don’t even make many machine tools anymore. Most are imported. For example if you want a sewing machine, mill, lathe, electric motor, stepper, or a servo most of the choices are China. The same applies to most of the linear motion tech. So how will we be able to quickly built factories and staff them without access to machine tools.
Hell, we don’t even make many consumer goods including shoes, socks, under ware, outer ware, and electronics, so if relations go south with China we’ll need to become a nation of scavengers.
That’s assuming that the scavengers even know valuable equipment when they see it and how to use it. My bet is that a lot of equipment will be destroyed in the process.
It will be lights out and survival of the fittest and luckiest.
That can also be a blessing. Being the worlds largest consumer mean everything we have used for years, is mostly in dumps.
I’ve long advocated someone sic a bunch of mining engineers on ours dumps to start reclaiming the rare materials we need for our consumer goods.
One can’t destroy an atom outside of some kind of nuclear furnace.
So everything we had before is pretty much still there.
Were Americans, and if we would get our collective heads out of our Mars dreaming behinds. We could start solving the problems of 7.5 billion people.
You can count on Americans to do the right thing after all other options have been exhausted.
–paraphrased from a quote commonly attributed to Winston Churchill
Linear actuators? Hm, I used to drive by Kerk Motion Products every day, a few miles from my home in Hollis, NH.
South Bend may no longer be in the machine tools business, but Bridgeport is still around. So is Moore Tool Co. The other nice thing about machine tools is that the technology to build good ones isn’t so esoteric that you’re dependent on a small clump of superspecialists, as is the case with high end chip making gear. Speaking of which, while the chip factories are in Taiwan, the chip machine factories are not. The key machine comes out of Holland, with its optical core made in Germany (ASML and Zeiss respectively).
pkoning:
Interesting that the glass still originates in Germany. The odd chip making machine I worked on back in the early 80’s had the lens elements melt done there. The total time to get ready to assemble glass in the door was about a year. 5 optical elements in the lens. The lens was a one-to-one imager. Unique design, with the smallest footprint in the industry. Really cool to walk into an Intel fab and see ~50 of them in one room. The bunnysuited bikini wearing operators were a bit distracting, though.
A LOT of the insane leftists that were instrumental in turning places like the Golden State into the Piss Colored State are moving also…..and many of them are moving into areas that have historically been quite conservative. These Marching Morons will do the EXACT SAME THING they did to Kommiefornia to their new locations. And having destroyed quality of life there they will MOVE ON and DO IT AGAIN.