It all seemed so simple, how to split up the United States after our Great National Divorce — until they got to the state where I was born and raised, Missouri. The discussion got going, as it so often does now, with a simple Reddit thread that quickly blew up so big that even the Daily Mail sat up and noticed on Wednesday.
If you were to split up the country into four regions, what would they be? "The West" is pretty easy — Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, and everything west. The Northeast, too — everything from Maryland to Maine. But, like the Second Civil War so many people fear is coming, things got ugly in the middle.
"The Midwest" didn't include Missouri. But "The South" did.
Geography nerds being geography nerds — I collect old maps and atlases, so I know — the discussion turned heated.
But as usual, there was one burning question at the heart of the debate: what the hell is Missouri?
The Census says that Missouri is in the Midwest. The Redditor had a map putting it in the South. The truth is complicated and maybe unknowable.
Geographically, Missouri is smack-dab in the center of the country so "Midwest" would seem to fit because "middle" is right there in the word. But Missouri was also a slave state, a part of the South. It did not, however, secede and join the Confederacy. On the third (fourth?) hand, Missouri was so torn by Union and Confederate sentiment that Missourians fought their own mini Civil War among themselves.
But we're just getting started.
Below the right bank of the Missouri River, which roughly bisects the state, north to south, Missouri is basically Arkansas. But from the left bank, north, it's more or less Iowa.
The Redditor who wrote, "I think Missouri still belongs in the 'unaffiliated anarchy zone' category" must have attended Parkway Central. St. Louisians will know what I mean.
Yet St. Louis, my hometown, is a miniature of Missouri's confusion. It has Southern manners, a Midwestern pace, Rust Belt industrial decay, and in too many neighborhoods, the hollowed-out, abandoned feel of a Western ghost town. The city's population has shrunk by almost 40% from its high in the 1950s, and it shows.
On the other side of the state, Kansas City thinks it's where the West begins but, sorry, Colorado's Front Range takes that honor.
But there is a serious point here, and it's much bigger than Missouri.
There's a lot of talk — and I don't mean just among us Reddit nerds — about a national divorce or, worse, a Second Civil War. Maybe something like that is coming, but it's nothing to wish for.
Maybe you've read Kurt Schlichter's kick-butt Kelly Turnbull books, set in a near-future United States that has split into two countries, Red and Blue. You enjoy the books for the action and the sly political humor, but Kurt makes a point in those books that might be underappreciated.
The point is that divided, we'd be weaker. Lesser. We need the Union whole. Maybe our Blue brethren are too far gone to keep it that way, but let's not give up quite yet.
Recommended: JUST DEPORT THE CRIMINALS ALREADY!
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