I know Lincoln meant well. It was the right thing to do. But I’m wondering how he would feel about secession if he could see us now:
I’m to the point where I’m ready to give it a try. Why not let the red states secede? What’s the worst that could happen? It could be like Redxit.
Oh sure, it would suck for Pennsylvanians who live in the middle of the state and now find themselves in the northeast corridor blue states. But think of it this way. While we begin the transition to renewable energy sources, we’ll still have fossil fuels from PA to rely on in the interim. Who needs Texas and Alaska?
We’d also get California. Don’t laugh. It’s the world’s fifth largest economy. The rest of the world would kill for a crack at buying California. And it would be all ours. We could have better relations with Canada. We could leave the stubborn remnants of 17th century Cavalier culture behind us. We would get to keep our money in blue states and invest in our own infrastructure.
We’d still have access to the oceans. Maybe we could spread coast to coast contiguously. I’m pretty sure Colorado would want to be with us. There are only a couple of red states in the way between Colorado and Illinois. In preparation for the split, I propose we send our work from home population to Missouri and Kansas to flip the states from red to blue. Of course, that would bisect the old Red state coalition into red state north and red state south but hardly anyone lives in North Dakota and Nebraska anyway. Who’s going to fight for them? Let them figure it out on their own.
The biggest benefit would be sawing away our connection to the old, reactionary, backward south that seems determined to resist evolving. Adapt or die.
Let’s take the refugees from North Carolina, Mississippi, Arkansas, Georgia and Texas and move on. (Florida, regrettably, is a lost cause. Better to just stop beating our heads against the wall. We’ll feel so much better when we do.)
Ain’t nobody got time to fight a cyber civil war of disinformation and destruction. The blue states want real freedom from the oppression of the south.
Filed under: General |
The Confluence 
This is hilarious, RD. I love your sense of humor.
I wasn’t kidding.
i have thought of Blue states seceding, but the major problem would be that the Red states would have all the weapons, so would roll tanks in to annex them as satellite states. That is really the question, who has the weapons. Now, if the Red states want to secede, and leave the government in the hands of the rest of the states, that might be feasible, though it would be much better if they were all contiguous, so that one could avoid them while passing through.
It all seems fanciful, but we are getting to such a point. Right now, the Red states have immense power. I was musing about how if you take MT, ID, WY, ND, SD, UT, their population would probably be a tenth of the entire state of California, and yet they total 12 senators, with CA having 2. The entire electoral system is completely unfeasible, with sparsely populated blocks of land controlling the lives of millions of people, and as you note, taking money from them. Something like the Matrix, I guess. It is becoming worse and worse. A bunch of senators from the Red states, plus a president who was elected by the Red states, gleefully, passed a tax bill which was specifically designed to hurt people in CA and NY, by taking away the state income tax deduction. The government refused to send relief funds to CA after the devastating fires. it was an administration elected by, and only interested in, the people in the Red states. And then when they lose an election, they invent stories of fraud, and vow to fight against the new government, and not follow any of the health regulations; and they march around state buildings brandishing guns.
Republicans game everything out, they have found the weaknesses in our electoral system, and relentlessly use them to their advantage. Democrats are mostly concerned with helping people. The twain do not meet, no matter how much the Democrats hope that they can “reach out to Trump voters,” as one rather irritating pundit said on TV yesterday. They hate us, they would like to stick us in concentration camps of one sort or another, and they will, if they get the chance. Right now, they are working on ways to make sure that people who aren’t them cannot vote, thus insuring that they will win all the elections, after which they will try to control every aspect of our lives. Watch out for Tom Cotton, a slicker version of Trump, as the nominee next time.
I think it was Steve Schmidt yesterday who said that we are one election away from being a fascist state. How do we avoid that awful fate? By arguing that socialism is actually a decent political system; or more plausibly, that Democrats’ programs are by no means socialistic? That Republican programs would ultimately destroy the economy? That we are the worst country in the world in terms of fighting Covid, because of Trump and the Republicans? We can try, but i would much rather have them all secede, and then their states can ban masks, pray in schools, and give all their money to the billionaires. But John Dean is right; the people who run things know that they need the Blue states’ money, so they will not secede, but instead will treat the Blue states as a subservient donor class. Our electoral system is no longer workable, but the Red states which benefit from it will of course never change it. Democrats need to think of something, and fast; because letting it all play out as currently set up is akin to continuing to play poker with someone who cheats in every way possible, and is playing with counterfeit money as against your life savings.
Why do you assume the Red states would have all the weapons, or (at least by implication) that the military would all support them? Or that those strutting poseurs in the Red states are even half the BAMFs they claim to be?
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The mills of demographics grind slowly, but they do grind. Patience. If not for successful cheating, the GOP would probably already have gone the way of the Whigs.
IBW, I was thinking of a scenario where the government were run by the Reds, and the Blues wanted to secede. Do you think that someone like Trump or Graham, e.g.,would not roll in the military to force the Blue states to accede, so that they could get their tribute money? The scenario where the Reds secede is different, that presumes that the Blues are running the government, in which case let them go; the Blues would control the national government for many years. Trump is already filling the Pentagon with Gestapo types; apparently one of the reasons for the appointment of Austin as Defense Secretary was to try to fix the damaged Pentagon. So my thought was that if it came to a situation where it was the Blue states which wanted to secede, it would mean that the fascists controlled the government, and they would use all weapons, literal and figurative, to conquer the Blue secessionists. Red state secession would be a different situation, we would control the national government. I have always sort of thought that it would have been better for the country if we had let the South secede–EXCEPT that it would have meant the sanctioning of slavery within our borders. I also think that nominating and electing Obama cost a huge price, as praiseworthy as it might have been in some important aspects.
Redrawing the map might take some time. Until then, why not rename Fort Benning (GA) as Fort William Tecumseh Sherman?
Yes, yes, let’s replace Benning with a name that will remind the residents of the Union’s Blitzkrieg through Georgia. That’s a good way to make friends.
RD, I thought that for the purpose of this particular post and comments thereto, us Confluencers (?) were encouraged to go into “f*ck their feelings” mode. But for the future I don’t mind being reasonable, again…
Apologies if the joke fell flat.
Centaur, you should say whatever you want here. Please don’t take my snark seriously. I’m only imagining some lefty group out there who thinks that poking the other side is an effective use of their time.
It wasn’t directed at you at all. I’m sorry it it came off that way.
Well, speaking of Gen. WTS: 😈