Divided States of America - Part II

I grew up in the 1970s and I remember President Richard Nixon running for re-election in 1972. While Nixon’s Watergate scandal rocked his short-lived second term in Office, the United States (U.S.) remained united in its views of the Executive Office. The Attorney General did his job by appointing a Special Counsel who wasn’t swayed by political pressures. Congress, on both sides of the aisle, provided the necessary balance of powers to force Nixon to resign from Office in 1974. Nixon was replaced by his Vice President, Gerald Ford. With the intent of keeping the U.S. from falling apart, Ford decided to pardon Nixon for the crimes that were committed at the Watergate Hotel under Nixon’s direction. The pardon was not well received and resulted in Ford becoming the only President to never be elected to the Office. For both Nixon and Ford, their actions had consequences and the U.S. moved forward.

In 1986, I entered the U.S. Navy with Ronald Reagan as Commander-in-Chief. For the first time in my young life, I took the oath to “support and defend the Constitution” of the U.S. Years later, in 1990-1991, with President George H.W. Bush as Commander-in-Chief, I fought in Operation Desert Storm, an action designed to free Kuwait from Iraqi occupation. Unlike the Vietnam War, the people of the U.S. came together to support the troops that participated in Desert Storm.

By the end of 1995, with Bill Clinton as Commander-in-Chief, I had served with the Navy under three U.S. Presidents, two Republican and one Democrat. In 1996, having served nine years in the Navy, I joined the FBI where I served for just over twenty years after once again taking the oath to “support and defend the Constitution” of the U.S. Those twenty years were served under Presidents Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama, two Democrats and one Republican. I believe the rotation of the Presidency between Republicans and Democrats is what kept the country in balance.

I experienced eight Presidents between Nixon and Obama where each of those Presidents, for the most part, upheld the solemn oath to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States”. Those eight Presidents, balanced by a Congress that performed its function of keeping the Presidency and Supreme Court in check, preserved, protected, and defended the entirety of the Constitution and didn’t pick and choose the parts they liked while ignoring the parts they didn’t like.

Following the terrorist attacks within the U.S. on September 11, 2001, the U.S. began to slowly unravel, and partisan politics soon took center stage. In 2010, the Democrats who controlled Congress played some highly divisive, political games to shove President Obama’s Affordable Care Act down the throats of the Republicans. The games began following the death of Democratic Senator Ted Kennedy and the vote by the people of Massachusetts to replace Kennedy with a Republican who strongly opposed to the ACA. As a result, the Democrats lost their supermajority in the Senate along with their ability to stop a Republican filibuster. Rather than present the ACA to the newly configured Senate, Democrats decided to use a work-around, a budget reconciliation process, to take advantage of a version of the bill that had been passed by the House and Senate before Kennedy had died. The final version sent to President Obama was not the version that had been passed by the Senate with Senator Kennedy’s vote. This was the beginning of a relatively bloodless Civil War between Republicans and Democrats that continues to this day.

Unlike the Civil War of the 1860s, there was no President Lincoln to reunite the country, and soldiers weren’t lining up on battlefields to shoot one another to death. Instead, for example, Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell withheld President Obama’s nomination for the U.S. Supreme Court for an unreasonably protracted period of time so that Obama’s Republican successor, Donald Trump, could replace Obama’s nomination with his own. Following the Presidential election of 2020, McConnell fast-tracked a Trump nomination against the vote of We the People, a move that served to fan the flames of War with the Supreme Court as the primary battleground. Essentially, McConnell did to the Supreme Court what Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi did to the ACA, partisan politics in the extreme.

On January 6, 2021, the relatively bloodless Civil War experienced the first substantial sight of blood when thousands of angry U.S. citizens stormed the U.S. Capitol at the direction of Trump in an attempt to stop the ceremonial certification of the 2020 election. Throughout the four years under President Joe Biden, that group of insurrectionists and their staunch supporters, who had become known as MAGA, continued to fan the flames of War with no apparent desire for reconciliation and reunification.

Like the U.S. Civil War of the 1860s, friends and brothers have now become enemies of one another and the U.S. has moved as far as possible away from being united.

Beginning on January 20, 2025, Donald Trump took the War to an entirely new level. Using what he learned during his 2017-2021 Presidency, Trump appointed loyalists that were willing to swear their loyalty to Trump over their oaths to “support and defend the Constitution”. As a result, those parts of the U.S. Government that had been traditionally independent from partisan politics, such as the Department of Justice, the FBI, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and the Federal Reserve Board are all coming under the direct control of the occupant of the White House.

The despotic evolution of the U.S. is nearly complete as the Constitution has been relegated to the sidelines and both Congress and the Supreme Court are making no effort to stop it. The balance of powers built into the Constitution have ceased to exist, at least for now.

On July 4, 2026, the U.S. would have reached 250 years of independence from despotic rule but has instead fallen short by just under two years. The following excerpts from the Declaration of Independence signed on July 4, 1776, show why the U.S. has fallen short of 250 years:



“when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”

“the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.”



It seems history is destined to be repeated, especially when those in power choose to relive such histories. With the Constitution out of play, the United States of America has very clearly become the Divided States of America.