We do NOT want a balkanized USA.
Just returned from Belfast, Northern Ireland, UK.
Catholic neighborhoods have walls around them, with gates that close anywhere from 6:30pm to 9:30pm.
Every school has to be duplicated: one Catholic school, and one Protestant school.
Once a year they build huge bonfires near Catholic neighborhoods (sometimes as high as 12 stories tall) to remind everyone of William of Orange's conquest of Ireland, where they burn Irish flags and have F the Pope signs. They also do marches. During both events, teens routinely throw rocks, eggs, and other objects at Catholic houses (over the fences) such that the Catholic houses had to erect fencing at their roof-line to stop such projectiles from hitting their homes. The Catholics also do bonfires, where they burn British flags. Because the UK supports Israel, the Catholics support Palestine, so you see Israel or Palestinian flags all over depending on the neighborhood, despite it very much seeming like nobody actually knows much of anything about Israel or Palestine or that conflict.
Every older person knows someone who was either 1) killed during the Troubles by the other side, or 2) imprisoned for killing someone from the other side, or 3) both.
To create peace, BOTH major political parties must by law share leadership power. So if the Ulster party (the Loyalist/British/Protestant party) wins, then Sinn Fein (the Republic/Irish/Catholic) party leader is also placed in equal power in leadership, and vice versa.
There are billboards showing men armed with machine guns dressed in all black around town, with statements about "protecting their cultural identity." As money dried up overseas to support these militias, they turned to drugs sales and other similar crimes to fund their militia efforts to "remain ready" to defend their culture. This appears to be true for both the IRA and the UVF.
Here is an example of one I saw (this one happens to be a UVF one, which is the Loyalist/British/Protestant sides militia):
This is what a balkanized nation looks like. We don't want that. There has got to be a better way to focus on common ground than turning to that sort of solution.