Will the red and blue states get apart?

           https://tass.ru/opinions/10320259               
                Shitov Andrey
                TASS observer
          
            (Translated into English by Alexander Vild)

   Can the "red" and "blue" states of the United States get along with each other? And if not, then in what form will the further clarification of the relationship between them take place and will it come to a real separation? Recently, specialists both in America itself and abroad are thinking about this more and more often.

   The November elections, which were won by Democrat Joseph Biden, did not clarify the situation, rather the opposite. Over 81 million American voters cast their votes for the winner, but more than 74 million people supported the current owner of the White House, Republican Donald Trump. Both indicators are record-breaking in their own way.

   The incumbent president is still convinced that, in fact, if we count only the “legitimate” votes, he won the elections, and the victory was “stolen” from him with the help of various machinations, primarily by mail voting. The courts do not confirm this, but a large number of Trump supporters share his belief that the election was "dishonest."


               
                "Things are heading for secession"?

   It is not surprising that the topic of political demarcation emerges against such a background. The well-known conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh recently made a splash with his statements about "secession", ie. separation from the country of a number of states. "I really think we are heading for secession," said a journalist who lives and works in Florida.

   “I see more and more people asking what really unites us with those who live, say, in New York." Limbaugh later clarified that he did not call for a split, but only expounded the opinion of an "impressive and growing" number of people.

   In fact, the topic he raised is by no means new. The author of the book "Crash Come On: Secession, Discord and the Secret History of an Imperfect American Union", published in the fall, Richard Kraitner proves that the ideas of separatism have accompanied the United States as long as the country has existed. In fact, they appeared in the New World even earlier, since the Puritans-pilgrims who formed the British colony in Plymouth called themselves separatists, emphasizing their independence from the Anglican Church.

   
   It's just that these ideas are back in fashion now. This year, other books on the same topic have been published in the United States, for example, "American Secession: The Looming Threat of the Collapse of the Country" by Francis Buckley or "Divided We Fall: The Threat of Secession in America and How We Can Rebuild the Country" by David French. There are also novels with a similar plot - like "Crisis" by Kurt Schlichter.

   
                It was topical.

   It is clear that in this case, political scientists and fiction writers are not so much ahead of reality as trying to keep up with it. Just the other day, the head of the Texas Republicans, former Congressman Allen West, publicly called on the "law-abiding states" of the United States "to rally and form a union of states that will abide by the constitution."

   The statement was made in response to the refusal of the US Supreme Court to consider a Texas lawsuit that challenged election results in other states: Wisconsin, Georgia, Michigan and Pennsylvania. The lawsuit was supported by President Trump, as well as attorneys general of 17 other states and 126 members of the US Congress.

   According to West, in the past elections, the respondent states "committed anti-constitutional actions, violating their own electoral legislation." And the Supreme Court, preferring to wash its hands, in his opinion, created "a precedent according to which states can violate the US Constitution and not be held responsible for it."

   "This decision will have far-reaching consequences for the future of our constitutional republic," the Texan said. By the way, Texas, along with the so-called Cascadia on the US West Coast (Washington and Oregon states), has long been considered a leading candidate for secession and independence.


               
                "America is not a democracy"

   West mentioned the "constitutional republic" by purpose. At least since the time of Alexis de Tocqueville, America has been considered and called democracy. You will be surprised, but in the United States itself, not everyone agrees with this definition. And this is important both for understanding the origins of the current discord, which is often compared to the ideological and informational "civil war", and for assessing the prospects for the future.

   "All the changes the left is advocating are supposed to make America more democratic," said conservative ideologue John Yoo, former associate of US Vice President Dick Cheney and now professor of law at the University of California, before the election. they ignore the fact that America was created as a republic and not as a democracy. Change is deliberately difficult. The founders deliberately built [into the political system] defenses against the tyranny of the majority."

   Utah Republican Senator Mike Lee was even clearer. "We are not a democracy," he wrote on Twitter in October. "The word" democracy "is not mentioned anywhere in our constitution; probably because our form of government is not a democracy. But a constitutional republic."

   The British Financial Times (FT), from which I borrowed these quotes, for its part, reminds that the American-idolized constitution is not a "quasi-religious set of commandments", but "a confusing, albeit witty compromise between slave-owning and non-slave-owning states." And the purpose of the "famous American system of separation of powers", i.e. checks and balances, according to the publication, "was the prevention of a return to royal absolutism, and not the creation of mass democracy."