Mansfield Fox

Law student. Yankees fan. Massive fraggle. Just living the American dream.

Saturday, November 06, 2004

Who Doesn't Love a Good Secession?

Slate's "Explainer" column answers the question: "Could the Blue States secede?" (The answer, for the curious, is no.)

The article also links to the website of the Republic of Cascadia, a cryptopolitical entity in the Pacific northwest consisting of the former American states of Washington and Oregon and the former Canadian province of British Columbia.




The Republic of Cascadia



Cartographic restructuring is one of my many bizarre and esoteric interests, so I love this kind of stuff. When I was a kid, I used to draw freehand maps of North American or European geography, then subdivide it in weird and novel ways and imagine what a world so organized would be like. (Whaddya mean, "no friends"? That's ridiculous!) I think that was the origin of my fondness for counterfactual history, a fondness that endures despite the fact that almost all counterfactual history writing is utter dreck (sole exception: Robert Sobel's For Want of a Nail). Cartographic restructuring, like counterfactual history, is all about indulging your inner Napoleon, being the Great Man who redraws the map and diverts the course of history, in a way that doesn't actually require killing millions of people. Is it a little intellectually masturbatory? Probably, but I think it's basically harmless. Mark Shea has a different take on the subject, or at least on the subject of counterfactual Church history.

Anyway: viva Cascadia!