When will the United States break up into states????

Someone asked me the other day. Well, not me, but I imagine it was directed at me because I am SMAT.

You might be wondering why someone might ask such a question. And I shall answer. You, not him. I'll answe him in a second. But for you, the answer is: Ever since January, certain segments of white America have developed a fear of the black dude being in office. Apparently this was their worst nightmare, and now that it has come true, it's time to talk secession. Serious talk. Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX) of Texas (R-TX) let it slide that secession is not out of order for the Texan.

So just like a black dude moving into a white neighborhood, now all the white people want to go off and do their own thing. What if it happens on a national scale, though? Fortunately, I am here to provide you a guide just in case the worst (best?) happens.

NEW ENGLAND

Government Type: Noble Republic

National Motto: "Yankees suck!"

State Bird: The cod

National Anthem: Yankees Suck

Probable Ruler: Jason Varitek

New England was one of the first English settlements in the New World. It has been downhill ever since. You couldn't expect much from Puritans, anyway.

The history of New England is rich and vibrant up until around 1780, and then it kinda turns into "meh." The American Revolution pretty much started there and Boston Harbo(ur) was the site of the original tea party. Subsequent attempts to repeat the tea party have been funnier but much less effective, so we can thank New England for that.

When the Revolution kicked into full gear, though, New England kinda went quiet. I guess they were all loyalists to the crown after all, or perhaps were placated with a shitload of crabs or something. They've spent the rest of American history kinda at the peripherals, having a race riot here and there, having a Kennedy here and there, and contributing lots of sap and drunk people.

Secession is not new to New England, though. Around the time of the War of 1812 (circa 1812), some butthurt New Englanders from Hartford (naturally) wanted to petition government to do something retarded. In the first documented use of "lol, no" in history, they were rebuffed and sent home in a tub, according to one depiction. It turns out to have been a true depiction because goddammit it's the funniest!!

New England has returned to the fore recently by having a bunch of states legalize gay marriages, once again pissing off large segments of the country, but this time for non-gay (ironically) reasons. It's inevitable, then, that New England will secede to protect its gays and its fishing rights and the few remaining Kennedys, lest New York eat them all.

MANHATTAN COMMUNE

Government Type: Anarchist Commune


National Motto: "What do you mean the A line is closed??"


State Bird: The middle finger

National Anthem: The Sound of Roadwork

Probable Ruler: A collective of 25 Democratic homeless guys and Michael Bloomberg

New York has a pretty vibrant history that precisely zero people outside of the greater city limits gives a shit about. It was first colonized by the Dutch. When the English realized that the Dutch knew what they were doing, they seized it, and it has been inhabited by assholes and paranoid people ever since.

In the Revolution, New York got off to a bangin' start, with Washington and his crew trying to do drivebys against the British. There even was a battle in White Plains, in which the loser had to occupy them. After Washington lost a bunch of times, he fled to New Jersey. That about says as much as you need to know about how well New York fared in the war.

New York city spent the rest of the war harboring prisoners, another thing unchanged up until now.

Although the city has remained America's largest and most important cities (sorry Fresno, you're still No. 1 in my heart!!), not a great deal of things of historical significance have happened to it. Sure, some people tried to blow it up a bunch of times, it has the greatest sports franchise in all of sportsdom in it, and it has steam pipes that explode on a regular basis, but really, can you write a decent history textbook about that? Probably not.

When the secession time comes, New York city will serve as the capital of a rather dreary country. By necessity, New Jersey will have to be annexed to serve as a natural buffer state. An entire swamp of toxic waste should be sufficient to keep out Appalachia. As for the north, upstate NY will also have to be annexed. Miles and miles of boring, empty countryside should be sufficient to keep Vermonters and Canadians at bay.

However, that still leaves the Connecticuters, who are basically mutant New Yorkers. New England will have to deal with them for the most part, but CTers could pose a serious threat if they continue to fester to the north.

Long Island would also have to be annexed and converted into a penal colony, perhaps for rogue CTers and New Jerseyites. I'll leave it to you to imagine what terrible things will dwell on the Island after a few generations of those get together.

MIDWESTLANDS


Government Type: Absolute Monarchy


National Motto: "FIRE MILLEN!" (now and forever)


State Bird: The canary

National Anthem: Have You Driven a Ford Lately? looped over four minutes

Probable Ruler: The corpse of the last steelworker propped up a la "Weekend at Bernies"

From Pennsylvania til the outer reaches of Wisconsin, and down through Appalachia, Midwestlands represents a vast, mysterious colony of Americandom.

At the time of the Revolution, this land was inhabited by nobody. Oh wait, it was inhabited by Indians but, yeah. It was also supposedly inhabited by French people but come the fuck on. As America marched westward, squashing everything in its way, the Midwest turned into a breadbasket, and when that got too boring, a huge place of industry. Cities like Detroit, Chicago and Louisville sprung up to either build shit or provide shit to build said shit with (it was mostly shit, though). This turned out to be pretty cool for a few centuries.

The Midwest lived through the Civil War, becoming an area of battle and bloodshed and carpetbaggers fighting and stuff. Then the Depression came and turned half of it into a wasteland. But after WWII, the Midwest sprung back to life with industry, and cities like Cleveland actually mattered. Funny, eh?

The Midwest became historically notable for being the sight of some rebelliousness, as blacks frequently rioted against shit conditions, particularly in Detroit, which was very understandable. Also someone set the Cleveland river on fire once, officially marking it as cooler than London, England. Chicago also burned down once thanks to a cow. Cows have been outlawed ever since.

But ever since that fire, it's been downhill (or should I say, down mountain? Haha no actually most of the Midwest is flat. EAT THAT). Industry began to dry up, either being annihilated by bad market conditions or moving to lower-cost pastures. Today, the situation is so dire that, well, actually it doesn't really look that much different than when it was prosperous.

As the Midwest begins to crumble, there will be a mass migration to the only area that has econmic activity left: the Appalachians, where coal is king. And boxite is the queen. Talc is the jack, surprisingly.

By retreating into the mountains, Midwesterners will naturally turn into dwarves and gnomes, rebuilding themselves into a kingdom of IRON. Well, coal mainly. But you can still build shit out of coal, right? It's like a rock. Just pile that shit up and voila! An outhouse!

Eventually, the surface will be totally abandoned, although shrewd Midwarves will charge people (like me) to urbex that shit. Perhaps Disney will buy up Cincinnati and turn it into one giant Haunted Mansion. Disney, if you're reading this, hire me. It'll be fucking DAP.

It's unknown if the Dwarven Kingdom of Midwestia will ever return to prominence. Eventually they may develop a weakness to light a la the trolls from "David the Gnome." When that happens, the kingdom may come to a tragic end when they mistakenly surface during a solar eclipse and are caught out in the light, wiped out en toto. No, not that toto you dimwit, it's Latin. No, Toto was Latin, I mean "en toto." God.

TEXAN

Government Type: Corporate Kleptocarcy

National Motto: "Run for the border!"

State Bird: A Predator drone

National Anthem: White Faces

Probable Ruler: Branch manager of a Taco Bell

When it comes to seceding, nobody does it like Texas. Although the CSA gets the glory for seceding, Texas paved the way. Without Texas, Dixie would have pussied out and then we wouldn't have had "Glory," and thus Denzel Washington's career would not have taken off. Then what would Tyler Perry have had his black grandmothers stereotypically lust after? Wesley Snipes? I don't fuckin think so.

Texas was originally a land filled with dinosaurs and other exotic creatures. And then a comet landed and everyone died. Then Mexicans appeared, but the place was too shitty to settle on their own, so they invited white Yanks to settle it for them. This would mark the first time that American tourists would fuck a place up.

Predictably, this setup wasn't gonna work for the long run, mainly because the white settlers wanted to bring slaves in and the Mexicans were against that. So the Texans heroically rebelled and formed their own gay little nation. And then they became Americans. And that's why we have the Dallas Cowboys, Susie!

Texas would again (sorta) secede, along with the rest of the south, in the Civil War. But Texas wasn't too active during the war, mainly because it was still a sparsely populated shithole. After the war, Texas became notorious for being a cowboy yipee-kay-yay motherfucker warzone, but that shit happened more in Arizona and New Mexico. So in reality, Texas is more boring than it seems.

Nowadays, Texas is known for cattle, football, baseball and attacking Mexicans, although only cattle really stands out as distinctly Texan. When the time comes to secede again, Texas (along with Oklahoma, because who else would take in Oklahoma?) would most likely hunker down and go into full David Koresh mode. Except this time the ATF won't win! Because there won't be an ATF! Hooray for fucking default wins!

The future of Texas will remain a mystery after that. Texas Tea has long since ran out, and it's doubtful that Texas would be able to maintain its military bases without support from the rest of the non-existant country. Would they turn to Mexico for help? Would we come full circle, and return Texas to the Mexicans, and then in turn to the dinosaur people, asleep in Aztec temples, waiting for Quetzecoatl to liberate them from their slumber? I hope so because I want to visit Jurassic Park right now. RIGHT NOW.

DIXIE

Government Type: Fundamentalist Theocracy

National Motto: "No, it clearly says here that Jesus hates fags AND Haitians."

State Bird: old Jewish New York expat launched out of cannon

National Anthem: LOL Smiley Face

Probable Ruler: Computerized face of Pat Robertson a la "TRON"

When the Confederates first broke away, they made the terrible mistake of wearing gray on their uniforms, thus making them stand out against the blue Union uniforms. What they should have done was either a) dress up in blue uniforms, thus confusing the Union and possibly making the Yanks shoot at each other, or b) dress up as monsters and try to scare everyone.

But that's neither here nor there. Dixie wrote the textbook on how to secede (and win people (and get curbstomped)), but there was a slight problem: they seceded against an entire industrialized country that was primed to drag them back into the Union. This time they won't face such an adversary.

In an ironic twist, whereas the industry of the country was focused on the north and west, now a good deal of remaining industry is in the south. Problem: a lot of that industry is foreign. Toyota owns a large chunk of that manufacturing, for instance. Would Dixie dare nationalize those factories to retool them into Hummer and Giant RoboJesus production plants? Or does the fear of samurai assault keep them at bay?

The only real problem that Dixie will face for sure is its emancipated black citizens. As always, blacks outnumber whites, and this time they're OUT. FOR. BLOOD. Would white Dixians attempt to reslave the blacks? We don't know. And that's why I'm paid the big bucks to be an anthropologist!

DESERET

Government Type: ???

National Motto: ???

State Bird: the bee

National Anthem: ???

Probable Ruler: Glenn Beck

Deseret has already existed once. When Brigham Young and co. were kicked out of Ohio (back then this was actually considered a bad thing), they headed west until they finally found people who wouldn't kick them out: nobody in particular. They finally settled on a giant fucking salt lake called Salt Lake City, though it wasn't called Salt Lake City at the time. It was called "a giant fucking salt lake, oh whoops, sorry Jesus!".

Well anyway, the Mormons named their new kingdom Deseret. Why? I dunno, I guess because it was near a goddamn desert? Something like that. Anyway, this new land was supposed to be independent and shit. The problem was the United States already claimed that land and weren't about to let Mitt Romney build a temple on it or whatever he wanted to do. This led to an almost war between the Mormons and the States, but the Mormons backed down in exchange for a middling basketball team.

Ever since then, Deseret (commonly known as Utah to you and mean) has been basically the only functioning Mormon stronghold on the planet. As the epicenter of Mormonism, much of the land is shrouded in mystery, almost as obfuscated as the Vatican or Angkor Wat, or the Forbidden City, or Scientologia, or K-Mart. What on earth is in K-Mart's furniture section? The mind ponders...

It's easy to say that Deseret will be impenetrable. It's surrounded by desert and salt, so the plan to sneak in via Trojan Slugs will ultimately fail. Also the flag has a giant beehive in it, and if it's one thing most people are scared of, it's FUCKING BEES. Are the Mormons growing giant anti-Mormon African Killer Bees? No, because according to Joe Smith, Africans are of the devil. It's true look it up. No, it's not true that Africans are of the devil, it's true that Joe Smith says that. What? How the fuck should I know, the dude would shout out the book of Mormon into a goddamned hat.

CALIFORNIA (KNOWS HOW TO PARTY)

Government Type: Thugocracy

National Motto: "For English, dial 1. Para Espagnol, oprima dos."

State Bird: the Anaheim Angels of Anaheim, California, Los Angeles county

National Anthem: see nation's name

Probable Ruler: A child molester dressed as Pluto (but now we are redundant)

California is the land of dreams, gang warfare and the constant specter of total annihilation via the earth literally flicking southern California off its back like an agitated dog. It also as a goofy looking bear on its flag, so it was pretty much destined to be a Disney hotspot since its conception.

Like Texas, California too knows the sweet, sweet can, erm, glory of secession. The "Bear Flag Republic," as it was called because California was infested with both bears and flags at the time, seceded from Mexico in favor of glorious annexation from the States. California also took Nevada, California, Arizona and New Mexico with it. But not Hawaii. That would come later.

Unlike Texas, though, when the Civil War appeared, California stayed put because it was on the other side of the country and it had its own shit to take care of (like, nothing). But after the war was over, California exploded due to the presence of Chinese workers with nothing to do and gold prospectors with also nothing to do.

When gold was found, though, then pushy American tourists appeared and started settling towns in the middle of the desert. California's economy kicked into gear as railroads came up and blah blah blah you should've learned this shit in high school. Oh that's right you fell asleep. I bet you never thought that that D on that history test would come back to haunt you, eh? EH?

But then the gold went away, only to be replaced by something even more worthless: Hollywood. California also built up high-tech industry and expensive houses and really, really prickish rich people, and its economy was based on the health of all of those things. A century later, and the only things remaining in California are Hollywood and prickish (but not as rich) people. Also forest fires. But you can't exact tax money from forest fires because they are all poor and lazy bums and GET A JOB YOU FIRES.

How would California (and associated territories) fare in the new North America? Outlook not so good. Hmm, that sucked, let's try again. :shakes: Ask again later. Ask again later? How much later? :waits 30 hours: Okay, one last time. :shakes: No.

Well there you have it. The Magic 8-Ball has deemed California as being a wasteland, though it's easy to see why. In terms of natural resources, the only thing California has in abundance is gaudy sports teams and abandoned houses. It gets worse when you go outside of Cali proper. Nevada has gambling, but that's it. Colorado has pot, but not as good as in the Northwest (or so I hear). Arizona has sand. New Mexico has... what the hell does New Mexico have? Cacti? Who knows??

On the flipside, this apparent lack of anything worthwhile may insulate California was invasion, as long as they can keep Disneyland a secret. Actually that may not even be necessary, as Disneyworld is so much better than Disneyland, most invaders would probably just pass it by. So score one for the Californians!


CASCADIA

Government Type: Drum Circle

National Motto: "(a long, drawn-out sigh)"

State Bird: an owl or something

National Anthem: Anything by COBAIN!!!

Probable Ruler: Most likely, that same owl

The Pacific Northwest once was nearly a casus belli between the US and Britain. Yes, hard to believe, but remember that whole 54-40 or Fight nonsense way back when? No? It was only like 160 years ago, man. That shit was a big deal back then. Okay I'm done trying to make that sound hella interesting.

In the ensuing compromise, the United States got everything south of Vancouver. In retrospect, that didn't work out so well for us because Vancouver is the world capital for "cheap movie sets that absolutely need to look vaguely like a big city." On the plus side, Vancouver Island is actually pretty boring.

After that brief bout of glory, Cascadia has been quiet ever since then, until the 90s, when grunge music emerged like an unexpected burp that brings up some vomit with it.

The United States survived the grunge onslaught, and the Cascadians retreated to their dens to write more chords. Also the SuperSonics did something, and the Trailblazers drafted Sam Bowie, and the Seahawks got RIPPED OFF. The end.

In terms of resources, Cascadia has a shitload of fish and trees (and trees, if you know what I mean, and I think you do :tries to wink, fails:. It also has rain. Rain rain rain. Rain rain. But that's just about it.

How would Cascadia do post-secession? It'd probably do pretty well, actually. It's protected against Canadians by virtue of British Columbia being terminally boring. If they ever were attacked, they could retreat to the trees and launch devastating aerial attacks against anyone foolish enough to think that Tacoma actually was worth visiting. The only problem they'd face is Californians fleeing from the Big One or another forest fire or the riots spawned by the Clippers winning a championship. But when it comes to hordes of Californians stampeding into your state like surly lemmings, nobody really knows what to do.

WHOCARESISTAN

Government Type: Mehocracy

National Motto: "Hello? Is anyone out there? (echoes four times)"

State Bird: an empty birdcage

National Anthem: Four Minutes of Dead Air

Probable Ruler: Who cares?

The rest of the country would inevitably be left to fend for itself, as the members of Whocaresistan know well enough. Whocaresistan has had a very vibrant history of being completely unnotable. Even Cascadia had more shit going for it than the states of Wisconsin, Minnesota, Idaho, Montana, the Dakotas and Wyoming. If you want to be generous and give them Kansas, well okay. But then all they have is Bleeding Kansas, and really, what the hell is that?

Well that's not entirely true. Whocaresistan was the sight of many different Indian battles, such as Little Crow and shit. But really, that's it. I mean it this time.

Whocaresistan isn't totally devoid of everything, though. It does have some farmland, some lakes I guess, and the Packers. And Brett Favre, the most feared man in the world.

Will Whocaresistan secede? Or will everyone else just kinda slink it off like an uncomfortable sweater that your mom makes you wear. All scruffy and warm on the neck. No I'm not wearing it anymore! Oh great, now it's cold. Now I need to put it back on. And now my hair is all messed up. YOU RUINED CHRISTMAS AGAIN MOM.

So what'll happen to Whocaresistan after secession? Probably the same thing that happens when a tree falls in the woods and nobody's around to hear it. It'll make a sound, duh. What, you think the laws of physics end beyond your ears? Come on man. But the question is, what sound will it make? My money's on it going, "Mmmmmmrrrrup."

And now we have reached the conclusion of this post. You might be wondering what happens to Alaska and Hawaii and Guam and the Virgin Islands and Samoa and Eritrea. Well, Hawaii has been independent before so I guess it'll be alright? And Alaska will be eaten by wolves. There, that settles that.

Who knows when the United States will break up? It could happen tomorrow, or a year from now, or 20 years from now. Or maybe it already happened, and only YOU can go back in time and stop it. Are you bad enough to go back in time and stop the United States from breaking apart?

If you're bad enough to do that, turn to page 34.
If you're a total wimp bitch who cries for his/her mommy, close the book.