The Cripping and Blooding of America, 2050

It's the year 2050 in the Divided States of America. The country's motto, for so many years "e pluribus unum," is now de unum, duo. The country, although still nominally a single entity, is in fact divided in two along ideological grounds. Like the Yangs and Comms in the old "Star Trek" episode "Omega Glory," the Left and the Right are no longer on speaking terms, unless it is to hurl epithets, to browbeat and bullyrag.

Businesses and restaurants are prominently marked in one of two colors, blue for the Left and red for the Right. Inside Blue businesses you'll find the vidscreens turned to leftist media channels, the descendants of MSNBC although the letter designations have changed. In Red businesses the vidscreens are turned to Fox News, which has kept its name for all these years, tradition being important to the Right. If you step into a Blue business you had best not be wearing any clothing colored red; likewise it's best not to enter a Red business wearing blue clothing.

Historians tend to agree that restaurants began to cater to either Red or Blue around 2012, when the Christian business Chik-Fil-A was the target of Blue outrage and boycotts. Several Chik-Fil-A restaurants were in fact burned during mob violence on a so-called "Chik-Fil-A Appreciation Day," in which right-leaning people were encourage to eat at Chik-Fil-A out of solidarity for its corporate views. Violence broke out between Right and Left on this day, resulting in several deaths and three Chik-Fil-A restaurants being firebombed by Leftist agitators.

America began self-segregating in earnest not long afterwards. It had been years since right-wing politicians could reasonably expect to win office in places like California, Massachusetts or New York, so they stopped even bothering, and moved to the Old South or the West where their views were welcome. By the same token, after decades of gerrymandering it became obvious that Leftists could not compete politically in the "flyover states" as they sneeringly called them. The widespread deportations of illegal immigrants from the flyover states changed the demographics of those areas drastically, as did the race riots that occurred in the Old South as a result of the black "Flash Mob" phenomenon (this was black violence perpetrated upon whites, usually with the encouragement of black politicians and church leaders. The left-leaning media outlets of the time refused to report on the racial aspects of the flash mobs, and thus came to be seen as collaborators in the flash mob violence, and were eventually targeted by outraged whites during the so-called "MSM Purge" of 2021).

Well, that's a good start, I think. You can probably tell I've read my share of Tom Kratman and Oh John Ringo No! novels in the recent past. *grins*