There is definitely some connection here…

The author of an essay about the Prospects for Soft Secession in America starts by sharing that he heard some professor observe that:

“nationalist movements in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were largely centralizing while the nationalist movements of the twenty-first century were largely decentralist in character—breakaway movements represented by Brexit, Taiwan, Scotland, Catalonia, and others (including wannabes like Trump)"

and this observation makes him ask:

• What if the greatest political trend of the past two hundred years, namely the centralization of state power, reverses in the twenty-first century?
• What if this century is not about ideology, but about separation and location? And what if covid has dramatically laid bare this possibility?

If you ask me…

I don’t know about the prospect of soft secession in America. But the first things I can’t help thinking when I read:

“What if this century is not about ideology, but about separation and location?"

are:

1. Separation and atomization are exactly what current social media are designed to do
2. The current metaverse craze, instead, seems exactly the opposite of a push toward “location” (what if the former intensifies the latter?)
3. So far, “Big (american…) Tech” has been wildly successful on the first front and, let’s say, hardly successful on the other

It will take years to really understand how all these things actually influence each other. But sure like hell, there ARE strong connections here.