You’ve heard about the current national craze for secession coming from unhappy conservatives dismayed at finding themselves on the light end of the great scales of justice and democracy.
It’s a fad. A friend of mine somewhere in either Utah or Washington State (he has friends and family in both places) filed a petition asking that all the, ah, offensively stereotyped conservatives be allowed to secede as soon as possible. Texas and Louisiana’s petitions are subscribed enough to qualify for an official response from the Obama administration (Texas will probably hit 100,000 petitioners).
Out of curiousity, I checked the site and found that my own state, Illinois, has an active petition, filed by one “Illinois R” in Pekin, IL. R for…. RRRRRrrrrepubilican, maybe? Oy.
So the rest of the petitioners are listed by first name and last initial, and strangely enough, the first few I looked at are not from Illinois at all. It’s like the sort of person who thinks this secession thing is a good idea is, oh, I don’t know, wanting to force Obama’s home state to secede, because hurr, hurr, HURR! Funnneeeee laff!
Alternatively, a few unenlightented souls (most likely from “red” states) are going through the site and signing ALL the petitions, because it’s the LAW and IT WILL HAPPEN just like the Republican landslide did.
Um, yeah, just like that.
So how many actual people other that Mr Illinois R (who is probably a really annoying guy who dresses up in Revolutionary War garb at the local Rotary functions, or writes one of the downstate conservative blogs) are actually from Illinois? Let’s see!
Wow. The fix is in already, I just refreshed and the count went from 172 to over 400 in just a few minutes so I think my “jackoffs from some conservative nest of vipers trolling the site” theory looks pretty viable. I’ll just go back and count however many happen to be that are actuallly claiming to be from Illinois now…
And so here’s my totally unscientific count: there are currently 430 petiioners, and of that number there are just 53 people who claim to be from Illinois towns (mostly small Downstate ones, and a couple from Chicago, and a few from the northwest suburbs near us). I didn’t count the people who left their town or state blank, so there could be more.
So there you are: only about 12% of the petitioners are from illinois, so this petition totally won’t count because VOTER ID, BITCHEZ. Heh.
The Constitution gives the citizens of the United States of America protection from tyrannical governments, guaranteeing basic rights. When these basic rights of are threatened not only by legislation, but by the erratic spending of a government in debt, it is only natural that we, the citizens of the United States stand to defend them. As said by our founding fathers in the Declaration of Independence,"…Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and institute new Government…" I pray the government of the United States of America peacefully allow for the State of Illinois and all others requesting to leave.
Which leads me to think that it might be nice if all the bullheaded intolerant people could be allowed to peacefully secede temporarily, in a kind of trial separation. The Texans claim to have the 15th largest economy in the world, so they could totally do it… just so long as they don’t do it with any US of A Gummint Property or resources. So no military bases, or Coast Guard facilities, or Federal public health support like the Center for Disease Control. They don’t want the EPA, so pollution from the refineries and oil terminals would totally be their little problem. There’d be no FEMA. In fact there would be no more tax subsidies from the blue states to any of the red states who currently take more than their share: Texas would have to pick up the slack for some of their red neighbors if they decided to hitch thei panties in a bunch to the same tired Religious Right ideological applecart. They can have their Confederacy and their fliag and their oppressive social policies, and they can expect to lose a whole bunch of migrant farm workers, entry-level workers, and their kids will have plenty of “want fries with that” non-union jobs to go around.
Yeah, that’ll work out well for everybody. Not.
What would that be like, just for a little while? It would be a mess. A total disaster. Meanwhile, the little city of Austin would be like a beacon of democracy, tolerance, and rationalism, because they’vee got their own petition up to secede from the rest of Texas and remain in the United States, so they could be just like West Berlin, except with alternative music and great Tex-Mex street food.
But think of the historic implications of an Austin Airlift: huge military cargo jets flying in over hostile territory, laden with textbooks, science fair kits, and Discovery Channel DVD sets of old Mythbusters seasons! The little children would scamper around the heroic airmen, clamoring for Elmo (he’s totally been cleared, yo) and forbidden Northern demonic Halloween candy, and then gathering in packs at the local library, happily reading Arthur story books and “Heather Has Two Mommies.”
It would be awesome, if only we could get Texas to actually secede for about 4 years, along with the rest of them. One condition of the trial separation, of course, would be that they could not come back until after Election Day 2016. Or make it even, and they couldn’t petition to come back until 2020, by when presumably theiir vision thing had cleared up.
That is, if they really want to come back – they might like all the fantastic new oceanfront land opening up every year along the coasts, and the Texans can certainly secure their long, long border with Mexico all by their little ol’ selves. Maybe they could work with Arizona to make a sort of “Mexicot Line,” with just that itty-bitty gap along there south of Albuquerque.
What would that be like, I wonder? Would a trial separation work better for them… or for us?
