Two Hundred and Fifty

Once we had ventured far enough into America to no longer be anywhere near the mood-lit wine bars and overrun coffee shops of North Brooklyn, where I live, secession began to strike me as not only possible but inevitable, as if it were only a matter of time before we all realize this Union is a house too tenuous, inharmonious, and ill-defined to remain standing, and act accordingly. From state to state, there is such variation in accents, languages spoken, climate, culinary traditions, and racial demographics, and such a complete lack of consensus when it comes to guns, drugs, and abortion, that it is hard to say what we all have in common, apart from the interstate highway system and reliance on certain corporations.