'Maybe we've outgrown each other': How 'king' Trump is threatening to break up America

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Back in 1998, Igor Panarin — a Russian political scientist and former KGB analyst — predicted that by 2010, the United States would break up into six different countries. As Panarin saw it, the political divisions in the U.S. ran so deep that there was no way its 50-state setup could survive.

At the time, the U.S. economy was booming under then-President Bill Clinton. And Panarin's critics saw his prediction as a far-fetched conspiracy theory. But Panarin's admirers would say there was a time when the thought of the Soviet Union breaking up seemed far-fetched.

The U.S., of course, didn't break up in 2010. In a think piece published by Mother Jones on June 10, however, journalist/author Bill McKibben questions the United States' "cohesion" at a time when Americans are bitterly divided over Donald Trump's second presidency.

"Until a few months ago," McKibben explains, "the question of America’s cohesion — whether it would stick together — was rarely raised. Yes, there are always simmering secession movements…. but they're always deeply fringe and usually deeply cringe. That's because most people could answer my initial question fairly easily, though with different emphasis. Here's what I would say: I am an American because, beyond my citizenship, I identify with the outlines of the American idea. America was born as a radical experiment in democracy, denying the right of kings and empires to rule at a distance or without the consent of the governed, a place with full religious liberty but where no single creed ruled save the secular one of progress undergirded by science and reason."

McKibben adds, however, that although he is "loath to give those ideals up," the second Trump Administration "has done its best to shred" them.

"We now have a king, or a president attempting to be one — not just posting pictures of himself in a crown, but ruling by fiat as best he can," McKibben laments. "He and his colleagues are doing their best to restrict the number of people who can participate in that democracy, and to restrict the control that democracy can exercise…. Around the world, they are abandoning defining commitments; the U.S. is considering stepping back from its formal leadership of NATO, a post first held by (President Dwight D.) Eisenhower in the aftermath of D-Day. We now routinely side with the big and autocratic against the small and democratic."

McKibben continues, "So — assuming as a thought experiment that we are unable to derail this new regime, and that it manages to impose its values on our government for the foreseeable future — what is it going to mean to be an American? It's pretty simple to figure out what it means to Trump: It’s to be a winner. We're meant to have more. More money, more territory….. And of course, there are Christian nationalists, responding to the high-pitched sounds of a weird hymn the rest of us, including old-school Christians, can’t really hear."

McKibben ends his article on a grim note, wondering if too many Americans have irreconcilable differences.

"Maybe we’ll figure out something else to bring us back together," McKibben argues. "The American idea is worth fighting for. But not indefinitely. It’s possible we may honor it best by remembering that its early chapters were written by relatively small numbers of people in a relatively small place, and that just maybe we’ve outgrown each other."

Bill McKibben's full article for Mother Jones is available at this link.