The Lawyers Guns and Money blog -- a bunch of historians, but in US election years the blog is all local politics all the time, as now -- has a note about a couple of recent novels about how the United States splits into rival states along ideological grounds. One they mention is by Emily St. John Mandel, whom we claim as Canadian. Omar El Akkad, also Canadian, made his name with a new-civil-war novel. I think there was a modern civil-war movie too for about five minutes.
It's been my theory for years that all that really holds the United States together is ruling the world. Absent that, what do Oregon and Texas and Minnesota and Florida and South Dakota and Maine have in common? Some fiction writers are awakening to the possibilities.
Instead of busily negotiating another surrender to the almighty United States, as we seem to be doing again this week, maybe we should just wait out the completion of these novelistic predictions.
Update, August 22, 2026: With Prime Minister Carney's government declining the surrender demands of the United States, today feels like Liberation Day, whatever hardships ensue. Molly Ungar sums everything up:
What really holds the US together is:
a) a deep conviction that the US is the best, most powerful, most enviable, most righteous country in the world;
b) a deep conviction that the US needs no one and nothing from any country, ever;
c) a deep conviction that everyone in the world wants to live in America and be an American;
d) a deep conviction that the US must take continuous action to keep everyone out;
e) a deep conviction that organized government is greatly overrated;
f) a deep conviction that history comes out of the barrel of a gun.
