I’ve included some of my favorite snippets from the article below:
...Built-in tensions between Washington and the states make periods of soft secession to some degree inevitable. The century of relative national tranquility between the Civil War and civil rights depended on the awful compromise of Jim Crow. When that finally proved unsustainable in the 1960s, the national confrontation was fierce. A measure of calm returned and lasted for half a century. But it, too, was bound to end.
A peaceful national consensus and a more or less well-functioning democracy aren’t going to spontaneously revive. A generation ago, a little-known junior senator named Barack Obama bucked us up with his heartfelt insistence that “there is not a liberal America and a conservative America,” only “the United States of America.” He encouraged us not to “slice and dice our country into red states and blue states,” because “we are one people.” Isn’t it pretty to think so? Since then we have sliced and diced ourselves thoroughly.
...Someday down the line we may decide we have no choice but to call it quits. If so, I hope we could follow the lead of post-Soviet Czechoslovakia, whose 1993 breakup into two nations was so calm, it was called the Velvet Divorce, a kind of conscious national uncoupling. For our huge, heterogeneous country, it would be extremely difficult and painful. But in the long run, it might still be better for the kids.