Balkanization of America (Boogaloo fallout)
First time I heard the term “balkanization” was out of the mouth of then president Bill Clinton sometime in 1994. Socialist Federal Republic Yugoslavia had fallen apart and the war broke out between some of the former republics (Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro and Macedonia). I felt offended at what I thought of as a newly minted term to describe the fiasco which was the dissolution of the country I was born in.
You can imagine my surprise when I learned that the term was coined seventy plus years earlier at the beginning of 20th century, not the end, just after WWI. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Balkanization
Balkanization, division of a multinational state into smaller ethnically homogeneous entities. The term also is used to refer to ethnic conflict within multiethnic states. It was coined at the end of World War I to describe the ethnic and political fragmentation that followed the breakup of the Ottoman Empire, particularly in the Balkans. (The term Balkanization is today invoked to explain the disintegration of some multiethnic states and their devolution into dictatorship, ethnic cleansing, and civil war.)
I was 16 when the war broke out and my country fell apart. There was talk of it couple of years earlier. I am 45 now. People are talking about “peaceful divorce” and 2nd Civil War — American Boogaloo, for my adopted country, country I love — United States. Having experienced war first hand (even if I did not experience the worst of it) I spoke up for peace and against war for years. Whoever you are… If you think the Boogaloo is a solution — it is not. If you are calling for violence whether you are on the left or the right — you probably do not know what you are asking for.
This is not about politics. This is advice for ordinary people in case USA goes through the process of “balkanization” and falls apart into two or more countries from someone who lived it.
