So, Are We Gonna Make It to the Semiquincentennial?

They’re already planning one. Let’s hope we get there.

We are, as of today, June 28, 2022, exactly 1,437 days from America’s 250th birthday, its semiquincentennial. If that seems really far away to you, realize it has been 1,437 days since July 21, 2018. The biggest story that day was former Donald Trump bagman Michael Cohen secretly taping a conversation between Trump and him discussing a payment to Stormy Daniels. That doesn’t seem that far away, does it?

So: Are we gonna make it?

Political writer Ronald Brownstein wrote in The Atlantic last week that it might be time to start considering, in the wake of Roe v. Wade being overturned, America as two separate countries entirely — maybe for good. He writes:

All of this is fueling what I’ve called “the great divergence” now under way between red and blue states. This divergence itself creates enormous strain on the country’s cohesion, but more and more even that looks like only a way station. What’s becoming clearer over time is that the Trump-era GOP is hoping to use its electoral dominance of the red states, the small-state bias in the Electoral College and the Senate, and the GOP-appointed majority on the Supreme Court to impose its economic and social model on the entire nation — with or…