The question has been framed in the streets: is a government that impoverishes healthcare and nutrition, flouts the law, enriches its officials, imprisons babies, and kills its citizens worth the money it collects, much less the respect and obedience it demands?
Democrats have nothing to lose by shutting down the government to force the majority party to respond to these questions and the one that looms over all: what, if any, is the political and moral future of the US?
While my theory is based on various sci-fi so should be taken with a mine of salt, my guess is that USA will split into three different countries: NUSA (lol Cyberpunk) which will comprise of the original 13 colony states and the upper North East, The California Republic which will essentially be the West and NW and in good relations with NUSA but with different legislature, and the South which might be called anything from Texas, New Texas, Republic of Texas, or New Louisiana Territory, which will essentially be a war-torn area full of religious extremists not unlike Middle-Eastern areas after the West had their way with them. It will be full of forever wars by religious factions funded by the MIC shareholders of various other countries but in the public face it’ll be covered by the media as religious extremism and/or patriotic fanaticism while ignoring the material reality and history of the situation.
The south could bring slavery and cousin/sister shagging back like they have always wanted. I say let them have their theocracy. We build a wall around the enture south and make it into a reality tv show for the world. and, profit.
When season 45 ends we can then just give whatever rubble is left to cuba to figure out.
That’s just the plot from escape from new York.
In the American Civil War the North had the advantage in Navy, population, wealth, and industrial power.
Now those advantages in population and industrial capacity are flipped. In the scenario you project the south could devolve into infighting and hollow out, but a single charismatic figure could unite them, and that would pose a terrible threat to the NEUSA and the Cali Republic. Have you read Rurtledove’s American Front?
The south would collapse so fast lol what