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Because of recent events (not just the election, but the cultural divide that resulted in the election's results), what might have been an almost inconcievable notion twenty, ten, or even five years ago suddenly seems worthy of some consideration. The Civil War forced two vastly disparate groups of states together into what once was the most powerful nation in the world. However, almost 140 years later, we hold a tremendous national debt, have a military stretched perilously thinly across the globe, will have insufficient funding for social services such as Social Security or Welfare in the near future, and are regarded as a nation of religious fanatics by large portions of the globe. I doubt that this is the great nation that the well-intentioned President Lincoln desired. In retrospect, perhaps we would have been better advised not to have sent millions of citizens to their deaths in order to retain a group of states who did not want to be.
With regard to the situation today, it is my impression that the vast majority of people who debate secession are doing so because they do not wish to share a country with people who have values and beliefs that are almost unrecognizable to them. Further, the "blue" state people also seem to generally believe that the "red" state people would be just as happy with out them as well. If I were in charge of dividing the United States into groups of secceding nations, I would likely divide the country into four (not two) segments, something like: "the west" including the pacific coast states, Nevada, and possible Arizona and New Mexico, "the northeast" including New England, New York, Pennsylvania Ohio (for contiguity) Mighigan, Minnesota, etc. (Illinois may have to be left in the cold, unless you could convert Indiana). You could then divide the "red south" into two portions (to prevent unweildyness), say east and west of the Mississippi, or something. I haven't really thought this out too much, but I do feel that if things get too bad, then I may consider it as a plausible option.
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"Religion is the one area of our discourse in which it is considered noble to pretend to be certain about things no human being could possibly be certain about"
--Sam Harris
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