I'm a big fan of the "alternative history" sub-genre of science fiction which explores the past and subsequent future in a a 'what if...?' motif. Harry Turtledove is without question the one great master of this craft. My favorites of his are the "Invasion" series which posit an invasion of intelligent lizards of this planet occurring during World War II. He creates complex characters of ordinary people in extraordinary situations, sometimes interacting with the great and near great. In the Invasion books, a regular guy named Sam who's a minor league baseball player is the protagonist caught up in the invasion of downstate Illinois and thereby entering military service and becoming the "go to" guy for the humans who run things as an expert on the lizards from his interactions with POWs and, if you can believe it, as a foster father of infant lizards. The heroes and villians of the era of the era are there, too: Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov, Nazi bigwig Heinrich Himmler, Polish Jewish resistence leader Mordecai Ancelwicz, and more. It explores how events unfold and how they affect regular people, mostly Sam and those close to him. A rival sub-commander of the lizard leader switches sides after a failed coup and becomes one of Sam's crew. My favorite moment is when the lizards learn from Molotov of the Bolshiveks' execution of Tsar Nicholas and the royal family and are horrified, because they, like the Japanese back then, revered their Emperor and that his occurred leaves them going, "You know, maybe we overreached here..." (They had scouted Earth back when Knighthood was in bloom and figured we'd be easy pickings, but them found out how far we'd avanced, and were like, "Oh, shit!")
Another Turthedove opus I love is "The Two Georges" concerning the late 19th Century theft of a huge painting of an accord between King George III and George Washington, which resulted in us entering a commonwealth status like Canada did. He co-wrote that one with Richard Dreyfus (yes, the one in the movies!).
My first exposure to such things was a paperback popular in the early 1960s at the time of the Civil War Centennial called "If the South won the Civil War" which supposed they had and what would happen. Long story short, Texas split from the Confederacy (well, we had been a republic just fifteen years before Fort Sumter) but eventually slavery was ended amiably and the three Republics reunited.
These days, some of the loudest mouths on the far right are all "there's gonna be a civil war again - just you watch!" It's certainly not likely, but, hey, anything's possible. So below the squiggly, here's my concept of how such a thing could happen, if it could. Keep in mind, it's not my desire for such a thing to occur, but, I despair of the neverending culture wars, and I wanted to tell a story how the thing could come to pass and then come to an end, so here goes.
In his introductiory narration to "The Big Lebowski" Sam Elliott as "The Stranger" intones that "sometimes there's a man... I won't say a hero, 'cause, what's a hero? But sometimes, there's a man." Well, in the Civil War II of the United States, there was a man all right, but he wasn't a hero. In fact, he was quite the villian.
His name was Reverend Billy Wayne Johnson, and he was the charismatic pastor of a growing nondenominational megachurch on the outskirts of Charlotte, West Virginia, of all places. Reverend Billy Wayne was doing pretty good for himself, but he was tired of being a big fish in a little pond. He had made the rounds of the various right-wing conclaves like CPAC and so forth, and was looked upon with by the Old Right people as a young man on the go, somebody who could do big things. Often he was out of his church's pulpit and leading revivals from Cincinnati to Orlando, and even Riverside, California. He had developed quite a following. Some were calling him the successor to Billy Graham, or Ralph Reed.
He didn't have to wait long. By 2021, President Hillary Clinton had made three appointments of liberal justices to the Supreme Court. Back-to-back cases had legalized same sex marriage in all the states and territories, and then they reconfirmed Roe v. Wade as the law of the land, with a bang of the gavel nullifying just about all state restrictions on abortion. So, just like "The Dude" in the movie, he declared, "This will not stand!"
Reverend Billy Wayne went on the warpath. He networked with just about every right-wing group you could think of: Focus on the Family, the John Birch Society, Americans for Prosperity, you name it. Some were reluctant. Some flatly refused to help him. Others took a wait and see attitude. But the right-wing evangelical groups were mostly like, "But, Billy Wayne, what can we do?"
Secret meetings were held. He formed a core group, putting himself at the head, In an impressive ceremony, some two hundred pastors meeting at his megachurch annointed him with a "laying on of the hands" where those closest to him touched his body, and others touched theirs and so on. They decided to name the group "The Freedom Fighters" for both its ambiguity and its hearkening back to a bygone era.
A manfesto was developed. It was decided, with the possible exception of Michigan, Iowa, and Georgia (which had been red but demographics had turned it purple), that all the Blue states were "lost" to them. To get to rule the way they wanted to, secession of the states which objected to the policies of the administration would have to secede, as the Confederate States had done over 150 years before.
States' rights, like in the Confederacy, would be the centerpiece. The national government would primarily handle defense and foreign policy and trade only.
Billy Wayne had a book quickly ghostwritten documenting the reasons for the proposed secession. It rose to the top of the bestseller lists. While specific domestic policy imlpementation would be left to the individual states, an outline was proposed in the manifesto. It would have a strong executive and a unicameral legislature. Federal Judges would be appointed by the President and not have to be confirmed as the U.S. Constitution specified, but they would serve at the pleasure of the executive and could be removed on his orders. Senators would be elected by state legislatures as presently constituted, with a minimum of five per state, and more for the larger states.
Local organizing began in earnest, both of mass signups to the cause, and of an elite cadre who volunteered for military service. The military would be all male, While minorities would not be prohibited from serving, they would be subjected to heightened vetting prior to being appproved to take their oaths. Muslims, Buddhists, atheists, and all members of other religions besides Christians and Jews would be prohibited from serving, and Jews, like ethnic minorities would also face increased scrutiny.
Billy Wayne did not neglect his personal ambition in the process. He decided to strike for West Virginia's Governorship in 2024. The incumbent was a Tea Party Republican who had been elected in 2016 and narrowly re-elected in 2020. But 2024 was a long way away. In a stroke of luck, a seat in the State House of Representatives in his district opened up. The incumbent resigned, with the old "I want to spend more time with my family" schtick, but many suspected Billy Wayne's people had something on him; a secret scandal, or incriminating photos, perhaps? No one was sure. But anyhow, Billy Wayne filed for the special election. It was a solid red district so the real contest was in the Republican party, and his only opponents were 'some dudes." So the election was essentially a coronation.
In the House, Billy Wayne introduced a secession resolution. Immediately, there were concerns: West Virginina is a poor state and benefits greatly from federal spending. So the resolution was immediately bogged down in committee, chaired by an old pol who didn't like the idea at all. "We'd be cutting our own throat," he told Billy Wayne at the meeting at which he informed him he had no intention of bringing up the resolution. Some pronounced the movement dead at that point. They were premature.
But elsewhere the movement caught fire, in varying degrees. Resolutions to secede were introduced by Billy Wayne's allies throughout the red states, as well as Hawaii, Oregon, Ohio, Iowa and Florida, but they were all no gos. The big prizes in the red states, Texas and Georgia, also had the resolutions referred to committees which buried them. Nebraska's unicameral legislature had no memeber willing to sponsor such a treasonous act. The same was true in North Dakota, Wyoming, Montana, Utah, Indiana, Arjansas, Missouri, and North Carolina (which had voted for Clinton in 2016 but not in 2020). But there was movement on the bills in South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, Kentucky, Louisiana,Oklahoma, Kansas, South Dakota, Idaho, and Alaska, Arizona had purpled but had a Democratic Governor who said he;d veto it, so it stalled there. The result was a patchwork quilt of real estate, with South Dakota, Idaho, and a patch of the South consisting of South Carolina and the five interior Southern tier states, plus Oklahoma and Kansas, with secession movements which caught fire.
South Carolina, like it did 180 year ago, was the first to adopt a secession resolution. The others followed, excepting Kansas where a coalition of moderate Republicans and the few Democrats managed to stall it.
Needless to say, the national government looked upon the movement with askance. Federal funds transferred to those states were stopped by executive orders. the federal military presence remained, however, with significant installations in Oklahoma and Alaska put on the highest alert.
State national guard units in the seceding states were mobilized, but most African-American, Hispanic, Native American, and Asian-Amrican troops, as well as female and LGBT guardsmen and women going AWOL, many fleeing to nearby free states, Another executive order facilitated the absorption of these state guard troops into those of loyal states.
Interstate movement and commerce continued, but inspection points which normally stood empty were staffed 24-7. Another executive order stopped food and construction shipments to the states in rebellion.
The business community balked. Oklahoma, Idaho, and Louisiana rescinded their secession resolutions within two weeks. Tennessee and Kentcky quickly followed them. That left a disjointed confederacy of dunces running South Carolina, Mississippi, Alabama, Alaska, and South Dakota in a state of rebellion, Congress expelled the members from those states, with only a handful of Representatives casting nay votes.
Alaska's state militia demanded the feds surrender Fort Richardson and Fort Wainwright. Battles commenced at the gates of those posts, and the federal troops were easily victorious. Sensing the feds meant business, all the other states quickly caved. Navy Seals secured the Alaska state capitol at Juneau and leaders of the militia were arrested, In a military tribunal, the leaders of the Alaska rebellion were found guiilty of treason and shipped to a makeshift stockade at Fort Drum, New York,
Billy Wayne sought support from his allies in established right-wing groups but they washed their hands of him. Their websites were whitewashed of anything supporting him and his movement. His colleagues in the West Virginia legislature turned on him and stripped him from his leadership position. He fled to Russia and obtained asylum there. He was able to live out his years there in obscurity with the political action committee funds he absconded with.
The Tea Party movement, which had originally embraced Billy Wayne and secession, was at a loss. They too disavowed him but it didn;t save them. They collapsed on the ash heap of history.
The right wing continued to exist, but reinvented themselves. Religious and economic conservatives had a messy divorce. The Republican Party reconstituted itself as a loyal opposition. CPAC was discontinued. Republicans began to pretend their far right and treasonous flirtations never happened. Pro-choice and gay groups were again welcomed within the party, but they were for a time an ineffectual voice of opposition. The President invited moderate Republican Seantors and Governors to a reconciliation meeting at the White House. They were united in their contrition.
Thus Civil War II ended as in T.S. Elliott's immortal phrae, "not with a bang but with a whimper." Billy Wayne's ghostwritten book was occasionally seen available for sale at Dollar Tree, Dollar General and similar stores, but some of their outlets in blue states just summarily put the copies they received in their dumpsters.
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The above summary of fictional events was prsented as a news summary. Actual state election and legislative procedures were taken with considerable literary license.