Russian predicts imminent collapse of US

This is pretty amusing, but also pretty sad:

Image from Wall Street Journal Online

There have been a series of news articles over the last few months highlighting the predictions of Igor Panarin. He came up with a theory about 10 years ago that sometime between 2010 and 2011 the US would collapse into four nations, that Alaska would be reclaimed by Russia, and that Hawaii would become a protectorate of Japan or China.

He hadn’t gotten a lot of attention for these predictions, but with markets souring and people generally dooming and glooming about, his ideas have started to catch the attention of the Russia’s state-controlled media, which in turn caused various US media outlets to notice.

I found some of the most entertaining speculation about how this could play out over at “Hysterical Raisins” blog. Be sure to keep reading as it’s a multi-part series!

Now then, as to the validity of this concept… clearly Mr. Panarin is way off target here. If the US ever does teeter on seperating into two countries, I’m pretty confident it’ll be more along the lines of a red state / blue state split. And everyone knows what they’ll be called: The United States of Canada and Jesusland.

From Wikipedia: The United States of Canada (Blue) and Jesusland (Red)

I will say, Houston would stand to benefit from such a split. We’d be the largest city in Jesusland, and probably competing with places like Dallas (Jesusland’s #2 big city) and Kansas City (Jesuslands most centrally located big city) to become the new national capital! Not a bad place to be!

On a more serious note, people are comparing Mr. Panarin’s predictions to those of Emannuel Todd, who predicted in 1976 that the Soviet Union would collapse. Mr. Todd turned out to be correct, but I strongly urge readers to consider the ethnic histories of the areas under Soviet control, and the long history of those peoples existing both independently and as part of different empires over time. No similar history of cultural or ethnic divide exists in the US. While there are regional differences, nearly every person living in any part of the US thinks of themselves as an American first and foremost. While the problems facing our nation may be great, I believe our resolve to confront them to be greater. Certainly, if nothing else, there is no will amongst the people of this union to dissolve it, and the effort it would take to physically separate the various regions of this nation would require a will as great as our founding fathers had to separate themselves from Brittish rule.

So, never fear, fair reader, I think it is safe to say that America will still be America in 2012. We may not be any richer, but we’ll still have Thanksgiving in our hearts