So might we drift apart more or less peacefully this time around? Possibly, but count me out when it comes to agreeing to a National Divorce. Yes, I might derive great joy from the overthrow of the U.S. Senate and its filibuster and the conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court. I would feel much safer in a progressive nation that didn’t arm its citizens to the teeth, didn’t view other nations as “shitholes” full of subhuman orcs to be subdued, and didn’t accept calamitous climate change as just the price of doing business.

But how could I happily accept the accelerated subjugation of women and people of color in a new adjacent Red America, any more than abolitionists could accept the continuation and expansion of the slavery they hated? Would it really be safe to live near a carbon-mad country in which the denial of climate change was an article of faith? And could I ever trust that a “neighbor” whose leadership and citizens believed their policies reflected the unchanging ancient will of the Almighty would leave our fences intact?

I don’t know if the hypothetical leaders of an America facing red-state secession would have the unshakable will of a Lincoln. And it’s not at all clear that young men and women in Blue America would be willing to take up arms in large numbers to resist secession with fire and blood. But this Union is still worth fighting for, no matter how frustrated we all are with congressional chaos, with elections that feel like nuclear exchanges, and with “debates” taking place between people who can barely communicate with each other. I’m not willing to peacefully give up our Constitution, abused and abusive as it has sometimes been; our capital with its surly bureaucrats and devious pols; or the bonds of kinship and history that connect me with so many red-state people, much as we disagree on most everything other than college football and fried food.