Minnesota Joins Canada

I first saw this Wall Street Journal article on the Huffington Post, but when it was on BoingBoing today it reminded me that I hadn't written about it.

Basically, a Russian KGB-analyst-turned-professor named Igor Panarin is predicting that the U.S. will have a civil war by 2010 and break up into six pieces. Ho-hum, I thought. But then I saw the map he draws:


Whoo-hoo! Minnesota gets to join Canada, and I don't even have to move.

Prof. Panarin clearly has an his odd sense of U.S. cultural geography, and a major case of wishful thinking when it comes to Alaska joining up with Russia (imagine all those Alaska independence folks going along with that).

And since when would Kentucky, Tennessee, and the Carolinas do anything like join up with the mid-Atlantic states?

And Mexico will dominate Texas and most of the southern states? What? If the U.S. economy falls apart, I think dominating Texas will be the least of Mexico's problems.

It was a good laugh. But it does remind me of how folks in 1985 or so would never have predicted the fall of the Soviet Union, so I don't disparage the general idea.

And I hope soon I won't have to joke about moving to Canada quite so much. Wouldn't that be nice.