As we look back on the events of the early 21st century, we can recall with amusement the oft-expressed concerns about “polarization.” That is, the then-popular worry that the deep divisions within the United States were harmful to the American people and to their republic.
Those worriers didn’t realize, of course, that the divisions were the growing pains for a healthier, stronger, body politic. Just as an organism, or a building, can’t grow too large without an internal reorganization (a skeleton for the organism, a steel structure for the building), so, too, a country needs a sound internal arrangement for its continued viability. (READ MORE from James P. Pinkerton: Elon Musk, the Red States, and the Red Planet: The Future History)
By the mid 2020s, the population of the U.S. had reached nearly 350 million putting impossible stresses on the idea of a single national big government. How could one central anything stay close to that many folks? The original U.S. Constitution had wisely allowed for the compartmentalization of states and states’ rights, and yet by the 21st century, the Constitution, with its organizational nuance, was being ignored as the central government trampled local autonomy. Even worse, the centgov was increasingly steered by a “woke” deep state that mocked popular accountability.
Some people wondered: Was 2025 going to shape up like 1861? A civil war blazing? The answer, of course, was no.
The result, as those old enough to remember those days recall, was anarcho-tyranny. The federal government was strong enough to generate inflation and throttle economic growth, but too weak, or too lazy, to concern itself with lawlessness on the border and in the big cities (even, amazingly enough, in the federal enclave of the District of Columbia).
The decisive crisis of the ancien régime came during the 2024 elections. Those contests proved to be a mess even before the November 5 Election Day; disputes erupted over ballots and ballot security, and the struggle continued for months into 2025, leaving the eventual winners diminished and the losers outraged. It was then that the national bonds of affection began to feel like jagged but busted manacles.
Yet we mustn’t underestimate the significance of the border crisis in those same years. Indeed, that crisis proved to be an opportunity: proving that a positive solution could emerge from a negative situation.
The events on the border from 2021 to 2024 were, for sure, clarifying; in the mind of half the country, the Great Replacement went from theory to fact. The precise titrating moment came in early 2024, in the little town of Eagle Pass, Texas. There, Texans boldly declared that no more migrants would pass, and the Biden administration said they should pass (and, of course, get debit cards and other aid). Texas governor Greg Abbott went eyeball to eyeball with Joe Biden — and the 46th president blinked.
The Bidenites were fully committed, of course, to open borders, and to the demographic project of turning Texas into California, and yet they feared that the Trumpy rank-and-file in the U.S. Border Patrol — and the other uniformed services of the U.S. — would not follow orders to use force against fellow uniformed Americans. And it didn’t help the Biden administration that voters supported Abbott by a more than 2:1 margin, even as the administration was down 2:1 in approval ratings; it’s hard to wield a whip from a pit.
Knowing that the eyes of the nation were upon him, the Texas governor was careful and measured as he made his case. Invoking James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and the other Framers, he declared
The failure of the Biden Administration to fulfill the duties imposed by Article IV, § 4 has triggered Article I, § 10, Clause 3, which reserves to this State the right of self-defense. For these reasons, I have already declared an invasion under Article I, § 10, Clause 3 to invoke Texas’s constitutional authority to defend and protect itself. That authority is the supreme law of the land and supersedes any federal statutes to the contrary.
Abbott’s words might have lacked a Reaganesque ring, and yet they got the job done. Here was a state commander-in-chief who had done his legal homework and spoke with footnoted precision. Indeed, Abbott’s decent respect for the opinions of mankind (and womankind) won many over to his cause. Politics, after all, is about adding to coalitions, not subtracting from them. In fact, in less than a day, Abbott rallied 24 other Republican governors. So that was 25 states, total: half the country. All the red states realized that they were stronger together.(READ MORE: Will Blue State Refugees Ruin Red States?)
So, mindful of past regional alliances that had prevailed in internal struggles, those 25 governors formed a Red Bloc for Border and National Security. One of the Bloc’s first moves was to target Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. It wasn’t possible to impeach and convict Mayorkas in Washington, DC, but red attorneys general put out warrants for his myriad high crimes and misdemeanors. So even before he accepted a position with the Open Borders Foundation, Mayorkas wisely chose not to set foot in Red.
Yet the events of 2024 did more than push half the country toward more vigorous border enforcement. Red now knew that its many frustrations in Washington, DC — the town so full of hostile judges and prosecutors — could be counterbalanced by success in its own backyard. Why should leaders travel to the blue dot, risking being carjacked, or locked up (the two possibilities with anarcho-tyranny), when they could be appreciated, in red zones, for doing good things?
Abbott’s success showed that red states could win, at least for themselves, when they organized. That is, bundle themselves into a tough unit within the nation. To be sure, this was a regional strategy, not a national strategy — even if the red region was half the nation. The 2022 elections had demonstrated, yet again, that the Democrats held a firm grip on their blue states; in Blue, unlimited abortion, mandated “diversity,” and subsidized transgenderism were winning issues. That was a hard truth for conservatives to deal with: The country had plenty of liberals! But once the right reconciled with that reality, it noticed that most leftists lived in blue states. So the better path for the right glowed with obviousness: Do what you can do in your state — and don’t try to do what you can’t do in their state.
If Blue was out of reach, Red had, after all, a mighty nice consolation prize: the other half of the country. So Americans of divergent hues came together around old wisdom: birds of a feather flock together. And of course, there’s more than one flock. For practical purposes, there were two flocks: the redbirds and the bluebirds. Both saw the value of flying together as an armada, the better to confront the other flock.
This was the Divide of ’25. After all the turmoil, the successes and the failures, the two battered sides agreed on the need for a truce. The U.S. Constitution was untouched, the union was still formally together. And yet in their hearts, Americans knew the old social contract had been had been sundered, and that a new and different one had to be stitched together. Red no longer trusted Blue, and Blue no longer trusted Red. And in turn, neither side trusted the federal government, knowing that Republicans and Democrats took turns controlling various branches — and then weaponized them against the Other. To save the union, now brittle from hyper-centralization and weaponization, the union had to be loosened — more flexibility and torque permitted. So e pluribus unum (out of many, one) became e pluribus duo.
Some people wondered: Was 2025 going to shape up like 1861? A civil war blazing? The answer, of course, was no, because for all the feuds in the 21st century, there was no issue as heatedly profound as slavery in the 19th century. The South fought hard to preserve slavery, and the North fought just as hard — and more successfully — to end slavery. But that was then. Now, in this century, the feeling, on both sides of the red-blue divide, was different: “Good riddance!”
In the absence of a fierce issue worth fighting for, there was no push for secession: the two sides simply drifted apart, while still saluting the same stars-and-stripes flag. Yet in the meantime, the Red Bloc filled in more in more mechanisms of intra-bloc cooperation, and soon, a Blue Bloc did the same. Blue’s regional capital became Springfield, Illinois, an obvious geo-compromise between Albany and Sacramento. As for Red, it was a tussle between Austin and Tallahassee, and the resulting compromise was … Jefferson City. (READ MORE: Governor or Showman? ‘Red State vs. Blue State Debate’ Exposes Newsom.)
As these sub-nations grouped within the nation, there was a happy result: It was now possible to elect a president who was broadly popular, because he and then she didn’t have much to do. Since most actual power had defaulted, respectively, to Red and Blue, the national head of state became more of a figurehead, akin to a constitutional monarch — only, of course, this was still the republic that we had kept.
Speaking of republics, those with long memories recalled that the Roman Republic had been typically led by two co-consuls. So the future went back to the past in America; the Founders had revered the Roman Republic, and now here it was again: a red consul and a blue consul.
For their part, the peoples of Red were earnest about making their half work. They knew that their population, some 170 million, was larger than the population of the entire U.S. during World War Two. Which is to say, there was plenty of red clay with which to work. And as there was no point in trying to convince people in Hawaii or Vermont about the virtues of MAGA or anything else right-wing, Redsters focused on tending their own cultural and economic gardens.
Yet for a while, there was a mismatch, as Blue was still intent on evangelizing for its many beliefs, including late-term abortion, electric vehicles, and DEI. When Blue had the federal government as a battering ram, it was reasonably successful at pounding Red into submission (even if, of course, it generated a backlash). But now, Red was ready: Fortified by the Federalist Society storm-lawyers, red states swatted down even the sneakiest arguments made by Yale Law bluetroops.
For its part, in its own way, Blue, too, got better. Since there was no omnipresent Trump to blame for everything bad.
Thus the emergence of Red Consciousness. It was one part erudite constitutionalism, one part regional pride — and one part ass-kicking of anything “librul.”
Once Blue realized that the jig was up and it couldn’t tell Red what to do anymore, the two sides settled in for a long-term competition. Happily, this red-blue competition was peaceful, except for a very few incidents, and even they were less bloody than a weekend in Chicago.
But then something interesting happened. Once each side got out from under what it deemed to be the wet-yet-itchy blanket of the other side, both Red and Blue were free to experiment — to be “laboratories of democracy.” For instance, Wyoming turned itself into an enterprise zone for cryptocurrency, while Illinois became the mecca for transgender surgery.
Inevitably, plenty of people moved to be closer to their dream — and since when wasn’t that what Americans did? After ’25, it was obvious: Move to Blue for an abortion or a green-energy subsidy, move to Red for a tax cut and school choice.
Then Red really put on the, uh, afterburners. Having withdrawn from all limits on carbon, it drilled, baby, drilled. The resulting gushers made gasoline so cheap in Texas that people joked that even Elon Musk would have to rethink his Tesla. (But in the red-blue split, Musk more than made up for his EV setbacks: “TwiX” emerged as the dominant paradigm in red media, and Texas inscribed unmolested rocket launches into its constitution.)
And when Red fully emancipated itself from the dirigiste hand of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, medical innovation took off, from Boca Raton to Boise. Boasting new treatments for such dread diseases as cancer and Alzheimer’s, big hospitals in red cities were flooded with new patients, bringing with them new money, inspiring more airports and Four Seasons hotels.
For its part, in its own way, Blue, too, got better. Since there was no omnipresent Trump to blame for everything bad, blue cities — most of them at least — bit the ACLU and chomped down on crime. Meanwhile, blue universities realized that diversity was a luxury that could be only be afforded through continued revenue-producing excellence in tech. So while of course DEI was publicly extolled, the engineering and computer sciences departments quietly reverted to meritocracy. So within the school, a win-win. The treasuries of blue states, too, were winners. And as for the few purple states, they did very well, as arbitrageurs between Red and Blue. (READ MORE: Red States, Blue States)
Yes, ever since the Divide of ’25, all 50 states have done better. Proving that polarization can be advantageous, if it leads to competition and specialization. And proving too: Diversity, of the right kind, is our strength.
Editor’s note: This is the second of The Red Chronicles, an occasional series of speculations. The first installment is here.
