Don’t Listen to Anyone Who Thinks Secession Will Solve Anything
It’s become almost like a histamine response: After a shocking national event like the assassination of Charlie Kirk, or Donald Trump’s deployment of the military to Los Angeles last June, mentions of the term “civil war” and calls for secession surge online. This kind of talk flared again in January, when two citizens were shot and killed by immigration agents on the streets of Minneapolis, and governor Tim Walz mobilized the Minnesota National Guard to be ready to support local law enforcement. “I mean, is this a Fort Sumter?” Walz said in an interview with The Atlantic, invoking the battle that sparked the Civil War. In a loopier register, former Minnesota governor Jesse Ventura urged the state to secede from the US and become part of Canada. “I think someone seriously should contact Canada and ask them if they’re open to this,” he said. These two statements by men who’ve held the same office pretty well sketch the basic outlines of popular discourse about American fragmentation: Spiraling civil war is the nightmare, tidy secession is …
