News Flash! While shopping at WalMart Americans discover their nation has disappeared. Update after the game!

One the last day of 2008 I bring you cheery news!

America will collapse in the summer of 2010.

Around the end of June 2010, or early July, he says, the U.S. will break into six pieces...So says Russian academic Igor Panarin.

On a local note - for me at least - California will form the nucleus of what he calls "The Californian Republic," which always feel just under the surface to me anyway. California, a nation-state, has a specific identity - that most residents ignore. Ignoring this identity is part of the identity. We would be upfront about it like Texans but to be like Texans would not be Californian.

Alas, Igor goes on to say: and will be part of China or under Chinese influence.

Uh,no, Igor. I think not. Like Obama, I am not an actual professor, but Igor clearly has no concept of the Californian-American identity. We might get in bed with Mexico if it were not a worse basket case, but not China. I don't care how many dollars they are holding.

Even the Mexico scenario is suspect. In the 25 years California was a part of Mexico (Yes, it was only 25 years.) Californios didn't much acknowledge or like their overlords in Mexico City. California was a backwater - which is why the Spanish built "missions" up the coast. The nation Cali most mimics is Australia. So the Risk Game scenario lends itself more to a California/Australia alliance. Crazed surfers and outback rednecks fighting off the Commie hordes. Communication will be difficult as Cali surfers and Aussies both speak an incomprehensible English - but we'll figure it out.

I am being silly.

However, the potential for large scale social disruption in this country in the short term is real. We are not prepared for another Great Depression. The societal glue of 1932 is not nearly as strong now. Entitled brats were confined to a few rich families on the Eastern Seaboard then. Now, it's the national disease up to and including the current and next President. And I do not see a unifying American leader on the horizon. As I said last night, I could be wrong. Mr. Obama looks more like Neville Chamberlain than FDR. His soaring rhetoric could morph into "Can't we all just get along?" pleading if the breadlines get long enough.

The answer, to him in particular, is going to be a resounding "No".

Obama still strikes me as "the other". An interloper. This sense I have has nothing to do with race. Colin Powell feels American. As does Jesse Jackson. Whatever one thinks of Jackson he emerged from here. His American bonefides are not in question. He exists in the part of the house most of us ignore - but he is still in the house. Regardless, Obama is a concoction, a creation (a confection to many) whose history has largely been blotted out, Soviet style.

Obama has alight here...there...and everywhere. He is a man of the world (or rather, he plays one on TV) coming to power at the precise moment globalization is cratering. The "America as lone superpower" Neo-Con project is snapping back. We are entering an inward looking time.

Diversity is only a strength if all agree to a final answer. If not - it's just a bunch of fraternities partying in a nice mansion - libel to disintegrate into a fracas when the Bud runs out. The great American ideals have been subsumed into a "consumer culture" now apparently on the verge of collapse. I consume, therefore I am does have an answer: Okay, then you're not.

To paraphrase James Howard Kunstler: An endless string of strip malls, Walmarts, and drive thru windows won't be fought for because they are not worth fighting for. Even the most TV addled American knows this. An eruption of regionalism that shoves aside nationalism is a real possibility in this mix, if not quite yet a probability. I can see people circling the wagons to protect actual places say Asheville, North Carolina, much of New England, or the California central and northern coast. In other words: places built with citizens in mind, not consumers, that are worth protecting.

Further, I can see people ditching those places thatrepresent the height of post war American civilization - like Plano, Texas or Peoria, Arizona - "towns" built for cars to easily shuttle consumers whose lone purpose is to ingest something at all times. Soulless Walmart horizons, with nothing in the middle distance except parking spaces.



BUT underneath the thick layer of post moon landing American lard there still lives a "Live Free or Die" attitude. Like the Japanese on December 6th 1941, Mr. Panarin neglects to add this into the equation. It remains to be seen if that impulse will unify the nation or result in a bunch of dudes with shotguns screaming "Get the hell out of New Hampshire"...or Texas... or Biloxi...