What you’re about to read is not some seismic shift in right-wing thought. These noises have been made for quite some time. Remember January, 2021 when the Wyoming GOP chair got so upset that Liz Cheney voted to impeach Donald Trump, that he threatened that Wyoming might secede from the Union?
Calling this right now: secession is the next big MAGA play.
Don’t think they are that crazy? Then you haven’t been paying attention. https://t.co/7FO4Rs2jaD
— Charlie Sykes (@SykesCharlie) January 19, 2021
Many people thought that was howlingly funny. And indeed it is. Wyoming is a state full of scrub brush. Herds of buffalo used to thunder across its plains. What, suddenly it’s going to become farm country USA, sprout oil wells and technology and be self sufficient? Or, it’s going to buddy up with Texas, and Colorado and New Mexico are just supposed to go along with it? Or, Wyoming will do an end run around those states and hook up with Nebraska, Kansas and Oklahoma, to get to one seamless red route to Texas?
Evidently that’s the fantasy. And if it is the fantasy, then that means that the people fantasizing have absolutely no concept of how anything works. And since we’re talking MAGA, that sounds about right. Yahoo News:
Red-state Donald Trump voters are now more likely to say they’d be personally “better off” (33%) than “worse off” (29%) if their state seceded from the U.S. and “became an independent country,” according to a new Yahoo News/YouGov poll.
It’s a striking rejection of national unity that dramatizes the growing culture war between Democratic- and Republican-controlled states on core issues such as guns, abortion and democracy itself. And an even larger share of red-state Trump voters say their state as a whole would be better off (35%) rather than worse off (30%) if it left the U.S.
The survey of 1,672 U.S. adults, which was conducted from July 8 to 11, comes as a series of hard-line conservative decisions by the Supreme Court — coupled with continued gridlock on Capitol Hill — have shifted America’s center of political gravity back to the states, where the parties in power are increasingly filling the federal void with far-reaching reforms of their own.
The further apart they push their states — on voting rights, on misinformation, on post-Roe regulations, on gun-safety measures — the more the country morphs into what one political analyst has described as “a federated republic of two nations: Blue Nation and Red Nation.”
“[This] is a defining characteristic of 21st-century America,” the Atlantic’s Ronald Brownstein recently argued. In another piece he wrote, “The result through the 2020s could be a dramatic erosion of common national rights and a widening gulf — a ‘great divergence’ — between the liberties of Americans in blue states and those in red states.”
Regardless of where they live, most Americans are hardly ready to dissolve the union (even though, in a previous Yahoo News/YouGov poll, a majority of Republicans [52%] did predict that “there will be a civil war in the United States in [their] lifetime”).
Ted Cruz once said that Texas “could take its oil, NASA and be on its way.”Umm…who said you’re entitled to NASA, Ted? Also not sure what good it’s going to do you. What, you’re going to colonize the solar system and plant the Lone Star flag? Build a starship and be Captain Cruz in gold velour? And Mitch McConnell and Mehmet Oz can play the Spock and McCoy analogues? And don’t get me wrong, I’d love to see all these guys off this planet, believe me.
But I digress. Here’s another MAGA voice singing this crazy tune. As you see, this is a few years ago.
They can pick a trans non-binary queer to be their President before Antifa and BLM burns down their White House— (for being white, of course).
— Candace Owens (@RealCandaceO) June 11, 2020
As you can tell, the finest right-wing minds have examined this issue thoroughly. Except that they haven’t.
Could one of these people explain to me, because I’m just a dumb Democrat, how dismembering the infrastructure now in place is going to work? I would really like to know. We have issues of power — and if Greg Abbott is any indication, red state Republicans are not really high on power grid maintenance — then there are the communication and transportation grids on top of that.
For instance, if somebody wants to fly out of blue state Nevada and go to Georgia, assuming Georgia is still another blue state, will they be allowed to fly over Texas, Oklahoma, etc., or will Ted Cruz blow them out of the sky as enemy spy planes? Just trying to get a handle on how this works.
Now here’s the kicker? Are you ready for this? More red voters live in blue states than live in red states.
In 1860, the division was regional. Today the red-blue split is mostly rural-urban. That doesn’t lend itself easily to division. We built a computer model that included voting and Census data for every county in the U.S. We then tested different ways to split up the country into geographically cohesive red or blue countries. No matter how we gerrymandered the map, we couldn’t do it.
Consider Senator Cruz’s example: Texas. There are 254 counties in Texas. Of those, 232 went for former President Trump in 2020. Nonetheless over five million Texans voted for President Biden, almost half the electorate. Two thirds of those voters live in or around five big metro areas, Dallas-Ft. Worth, Houston, Austin, San Antonio and El Paso. Those five cities also contain half of Texas’ population and three-fourths of its economic output. What would happen to the blue voters in those cities after a Civil War? Take it or leave it? Better red than dead?
Or would the cities exist as blue islands in a sea of red—modern day Berlins? And before red voters say “damn straight,” they should realize it’s not just a blue problem. What about red voters who live in blue states? According to Washington Post correspondent Philip Bump, who covers the numbers behind politics, more Trump voters live in blue states than red ones. Mass relocations or walled cities? (Unfortunately we have a lot of experience lately with building walls, and they seem to run about $20 million per mile. More billions.)
In short, even if Americans are not compelled by our shared history and culture to stay together and work it out, we should be swayed by the realization that splitting up would burden our children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren with crippling debt and sub-scale economies.
It would be an expensive, and unmanageable, divorce.
I definitely don’t believe in two people staying married just out of economic necessity but I heartily believe that 330 million people better do just that.
Benjamin Franklin foresaw this day. He wanted to deal with the issue of slavery back then and he saw it was impossible. So the government was designed to placate slave owning states and to lead to the day we’re in right now where the tyranny of the minority exists. Wyoming has two senators, when it has a population the size of Fresno.
The crazy talk will continue. Secession fever, as Charlie Sykes calls it, will become part of the swamp fevered, black helicoptered, conspiracy laden MAGA landscape. I see it on the horizon, too.
Their ancestors got their collective asses shot up during the Civil War trying that racist & stupid shit. You LOST assholes. Clearly you didn’t learn a goddamn thing. Let’s do an exchange program where we let someone in who wants to be part of this USA, & kick YOU fucking traitors out. We won’t miss you murderous cult members.
Never forget that these people are also cowards, as most bullies are. The only reason they’re even talking secession is because they’ve given up on taking anything over, be it Iraq/Afghanistan in the 2000s or the US last decade. Whenever those kind of defeats hit their psyche, they naturally retreat to Bye-Bye Land. The worst part is they STILL wouldn’t be happy on their own.
True. Their fearfull leader always talks tough, tucks tail, & runs. Hell, he needs two hands to raise a glass of water.
By and large we could “lose” the south, WY, ID, the Dakotas, and the rural center of the country and we really wouldn’t be losing much. I don’t worry about MT because there are enough progressives, etc. that would shoot down that kind of idiocy when it came down to a vote which it would have to.
What these idiots do not realize is what the south did not realize back in the 1860’s: they still rely on the north and specifically progressives to keep their shit together. Remove all the federal aid these states receive and you will see the cast from Deliverance and that sort of poverty in a New York second. I do not know why they think any international companies that manufacture things in their states will stay: those kinds of companies can easily go elsewhere and will not stay in a “country” with nothing but idiots to do the work (think robotics and that sort of thing in the Japanese auto industry which does have a presence in the south). Take away the military bases and ALL that goes with those bases (think contractors–they’ll follow the money in a nano second) and these states are left with….well, really nothing. The intelligent people will move out of those states and those are the people who make cities like, say, Austin worth visiting or living in.
These fools put forth arguments about taxation and all that but when taxation goes away they will resemble nothing so much as Ethiopia or Sudan, Haiti, you know, shit-hole countries. We can see what will happen when the next pandemic hits these states–the population will suffer death likely at a rate comparable to the plague in the middle ages (surely they don’t think educated medical people are going to stay right?). When the tornadoes, hurricanes, floods and what have you come knocking on their doors WTF are they going to do? There won’t be any FEMA or anything like it to help–let’s add cholera and typhoid to the stew of disease that will shred the population in these states.
These people spew nonsense rather than think about consequences. I say let the fuckers have their cake AND eat it. They’re going to choke on it. Should this happen, and quite frankly I would be glad to be rid of these morons, I give it maybe a couple of decades, maybe much less, before A) they cry to come back into the fold or B) there isn’t enough of anything left of their “country” and we will do what we have excelled at in the past: colonize their asses out of existence. If you look at the whole idea closely enough it pretty much is a win for the U.S. and a very, very, big loss for whatever afghanistan wannabe country they create.
Yep, let ’em go. We will lose nothing and gain, at the very least, a large bump in our country’s collective I.Q.
You don’t want to lose the Mississippi River, because it’s the key to the entire area between the Appalachians and the Rockies, and a major shipping route. (Thus, New Orleans and Vicksburg as battlegrounds in prior wars.)
If they hate the way the country is being run *under the Constitution*, they can leave. I’m sure there are countries that would be more to their liking.
There is another possibility for dividing into “Red” and “Blue”, equally unworkable to the ideas expressed above. Everyone decides which they are and attaches red or blue emblems (stars?) to all their clothing. Each area where there is currently one government will then have two, providing services to the two populations. For instance, there will be two police departments, respectively uniformed in red and blue. If there is need for policing, the appropriate department (or both) will be dispatched. Of necessity, there will continue to be a single water, sewer, etc. department, managed by a commission whose membership will be apportioned according to the respective numbers of red and blue customers. Other functions will be organized according to one of these two models. The two overall governments will be responsible for levying taxes on their respective proportions of the population. The utility department, for example, will calculate the proportions of their operating budget that each of the governments needs to contribute to cover expenses not covered by user fees. Metering for the utility services will be reconfigured to have remote controls so that use by red or blue customers can be throttled to stay within the share of the department’s budget that has been provided by their government and their utility bill payments.
But, hey, having two area codes overlaid on a single area is working just fine for the phone companies. Why shouldn’t it work as well for this?
Did anyone mention to Ted Cruz that NASA is a federal government agency, funded by Washington and it would be immediately shut down in Texas if they seceded along with other federal establishments (army, navy and air force facilities, withdrawal of all troops and their spending power) (plus all the red states that rely on federal funding would have to find other sources of income)?
Can someone please explain to me what exactly would be lost if all the Red States started their own country? Aside from pride (and what there is to be proud of right now I cannot imagine) I simply don’t understand why people in the Blue states should care if the Red ones go and start their own country. Sure they have natural resources and Texas has a serious economy, but I cannot imagine a case of more “Irreconcilable differences” than people who voted for Joe Biden in the same country as Joe Manchin. Marjorie TG, Loeren bumblehead, Hershell Walker, Mitch McConnell, and 2/3rds of the SCOTUS. I am no expert, but can someone tell me what the Dem States have to lose if the Red States go their own way, on a “here’s what we lose, here’s what we gain” analysis. I can only see a strong lean to the VERy good and positive. Am I wrong???
well, you are condemning millions of blue voters in those states to hell, so there’s that.