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Posted on 10/14/2013 11:55:48 AM PDT by RKBA Democrat
Secession is not just for unreconstructed Confederates anymore. On both the right and the left, Americans increasingly see Washington as the problem and local autonomy as the solution.
Despite all the talk, the federal government shutdown hasn’t greatly affected daily life for most Americans so far. Some have been hit hard, especially federal employees, those receiving certain benefit payments, and tourists planning to visit the Smithsonian or a national park. But as apocalypses go, a couple weeks without “non-essential” federal services has been underwhelming for most American families.
Things could get worse if the closure were to extend from weeks into months. But judging by past shutdowns, it’s likely that Obama and Congressional Republicans will soon reach a deal to restart the federal services that have been suspended since Congress failed to pass a funding bill by the start of the federal fiscal year on October 1.
The World War II Memorial will then be open again. But that won’t mean that America can go back to normal. The new normal
Normal ended for most of us when the economy crashed in 2008 and the government shutdown shows definitively that no help can be expected from Washington for ordinary citizens who continue to suffer. Despite economists having declared the Great Recession finished in June 2009, in today’s economy most Americans outside the top 1% are still battling financial hardship:
One in five families relies on food stamps, food banks and other feeding programs to make sure that they’ll have enough to eat next week
Overdue student loan debt and youth unemployment remain at all time highs
For the last decade, the stock market has soared, helping the rich, but middle-class household income has declined
It’s clear that America’s middle class is actually suffering through what Paul Krugman has called a new Depression or even what James Howard Kunstler has more ominously dubbed The Long Emergency. Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair
The shutdown demonstrates beyond doubt that Washington, plagued by partisan intransigence and captured by corporate special interests, has finally become unable to effectively govern the United States.
In 2009, early in the economic downturn, Paul Starobin made the case in his book After America: Narratives for the Next Global Age that governing America from Washington has become such an unwieldy system as to justify alternative arrangements. His perspective is even more prescient after the government shutdown.
“The present-day American Goliath may turn out to be a freak of a waning age of politics and economics as conducted on a super-sized scale — too large to make any rational sense in an emerging age of personal empowerment that harks back to the era of the yeoman farmer of America’s early days,” Starobin wrote in the Wall Street Journal.
It’s easy to laugh at Texans who’ve threatened for years to leave the Union. But with dysfunction in Washington sure to grow, Texas secessionists may ultimately have the last laugh.
Starobin comes at the problem of an oversized America from the right-wing — he rails against imperial overreach by President Obama and the expansion of social programs that Republicans refer to as “Big Government.”
But there are plenty of people on the left who also think that America has gotten too big to operate as a democracy. Just take the example of the secessionist movement in ultra-liberal Vermont, whose adherents want the freedom to eat local and organic and exclude nuclear power without interference from Washington.
While the mainstream media seem to find the idea of secession laughable at best, groups on both sides of the political edge are embracing the eventual breakup of the United States as not merely thinkable but even desirable. Secession from Oregon to Texas
Here are five reasons why secessionist movements like the microbrew-friendly Republic of Cascadia in the Pacific Northwest and the immigrant-unfriendly Texas Nationalist Movement may ultimately win some degree of autonomy from Washington:
Political Polarization — Does anyone think that, after Boehner and Obama make a deal to re-open the government, the two parties will begin to work harmoniously in the national interest anytime in the near future? Look for the trend of take-no-prisoners partisan warfare to ramp up, not down, in coming years, bringing the machinery of national government to a halt again and again through future battles over the federal debt, social programs, financial regulations and environmental protection. Partisan fighting will alienate voters and make clear the increasing impotence of the federal government.
Resentment of the One Percent — No one benefits more from centralized power than big corporations and the rich people who own them — and who pull the strings of power in Washington. Coming from opposite ends of the political spectrum, both Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party are populist movements critical of centralized power in both the government and the economy. As the economy continues to decline and government falters, movements on the political extremes will gain followers as more families have to struggle to keep their homes on part-time jobs. Americans who fall out of the middle class will grow angry and resentful at the rich for so cruelly rigging the system against the ordinary wage-earner.
Economic Collapse — The collapse of an economy that requires continuous growth but is stuck on a planet with finite resources may be unavoidable, but gridlock in Washington will help to bring it on sooner as the ripple effect from a decline in federal spending acts as a negative stimulus, killing jobs and causing businesses to close. After a few more government shutdowns, the next financial collapse could make 2008 look tame. As the national economy fails to deliver the prosperity that Americans used to expect, they’ll look more to economic solutions from local manufacturing to local currency.
Climate Chaos — Mounting costs to deal with the superstorms, derechos and other weather disasters that will become both more frequent and more damaging due to runaway climate change will stretch federal, state and local budgets to their breaking points. As schools, roads and social services are cut to pay for rebuilding hurricane-ravaged cities or constructing sea walls to protect coastal areas from rising seas, populations will grow restless. Initially, they’ll look to Washington for help. When that help disappoints or fails to arrive altogether, citizens will fall back on their states and localities, making the federal government increasingly irrelevant.
Peak Oil — By itself, depletion of fossil fuels will raise the cost of energy beyond the point at which transportation costs will make governing any nation of continental scale, whether the U.S. or Russia or China, impractical. In the long run, an ongoing reduction in travel by air, road and rail in response to rising costs for liquid fuels from crude oil will weaken the national ties forged in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries by the rise of those same forms of transportation. This will provide more slack to breakaway regions and secessionist movements. In the short-term, a 1970s-style energy crisis or some more catastrophic oil shock may be the Black Swan event needed to push the weakened and brittle edifice of national government and global trade over the edge into collapse.
All of these factors could clear the way for regional secession movements that could ultimately break up the U.S. and all of North America into half a dozen or more regional nations. In the meantime, as the economy continues to cool down, the climate continues to heat up and Americans get more cynical about Washington and Wall Street, campaigns for everything from local food to local money could coalesce into a grand localist wave like the Transition movement, which already boasts nearly 150 Transition Towns in the U.S. committed to building local autonomy.
In a future where central government has clearly lost control, that local autonomy could evolve into local sovereignty.
Before it gets to that I see the governors getting together, between them figuring out they have a set, and realizing that together THEY and their legislature can decide the fate of Washington.
A Con/Con will happen before this IMHO, the real test will be if the entrenched bureaucracy will submit to States rule or order troops mobilized. Be interesting to see how well an embargo against a state would play out in reality, United we stand, Divided we fall will be on the minds of a lot of state politicians if that ever happens...
Mounting costs to deal with the superstorms, derechos and other weather disasters that will become both more frequent and more damaging due to runaway climate change.
Guess the fact that even a barking moonbat can see DC is broken is something, though.
Anyone who think Texas will bow a knee to Mexico is INSANE. The only reason we have not shut the border down on our own is DC says it is illegal...
Demographics is destiny. Illegals are slowly changing everything here.
Our dear leader here is a bud to illegals. Thanks for the instate tution. lol.
By overthrowing the U.S. Constitution and its enumerated powers and obligations, including:
Article IV - The States...Section 4 - Republican government The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened) against domestic Violence.
1. Was going to comment on the article itself but as I got into it I realized how stupid the writer is and decided not to bother.
2. I predict there will be no secessions.
well, at least in Garreau’s world, Detroit gets to be something again
Most of this can be handled with the existing tenth amendment, and repealing the 17th.
In advance of such an eventuality the House of Representatives needs to impeach the Members of the Senate in violation of their sworn oaths. Unless the House of Representatives can successfully argue the Senate must recuse the impeached Senators during the impeachment trials, the Senate will not convict the impeached Senators, nor will they impeach Obama-Biden. At that point the House of Representatives can call upon the States to exercise their Constitutional powers to constitute a constitutional convention to deal with the impasse.
Say that when gringos are outnumbered two to one. About 2030.
And then there are the people like me-latinos with a family history of a few hundred years in what was Spanish territory, who are so generic American that we are almost never noticed-and we like illegals about as much as we do any criminal-maybe even less. In much of the hinterlands, there are more old families with Spanish surnames than anglo ones-and we call immigration on illegals...
I’ll be happy to do my part to see them back over that border-anchor babies and all-if Texas comes into its own again-or maybe sending them to California would be kinder?
Many people have fled Mexico to be here, and it just isn’t for the jobs. This story has been written before. The end is by no means certain this time around, but the likely result is Texas stays Texas.
Do you think all the Mexicans will want to really do that though? Some, I bet a surprising number, will understand that if that happens they slit their own throats.
They have it good compared to Mexico now, many would understand that if that were to happen it would just mean an invasion of others coming up and competing for what they’ve got now.
The entitlements dry up, the safety nets they enjoy if they are working and need assistance disappear, and their quality of life they wanted will disappear because of the millions more hungry than they are now wanting a slice of the pie.
Some will, but I think the number who have two brain cells to spark together would fear that happening and support a border line.
The problem is we all are being taken over.
There is only a finite amount of resources.
I do business in Texas and have extensive family in all parts of the State. I visit several times a year. Texas is no more than 20 years away from being taken over just like Southern Kalifornia. The signs are all there and the trend is not in your favor. I was in McAllen recently. The change there in just five years is profound. Sorry but if things sontinue as they are Texas is finished.
“Jose Angel Gutierrez[edit]In an interview with In Search of Aztlán on August 8, 1999, Jose Angel Gutierrez, a political science professor at the University of Texas at Arlington, stated that:
“ We’re the only ethnic group in America that has been dismembered. We didn’t migrate here or immigrate here voluntarily. The United States came to us in succeeding waves of invasions. We are a captive people, in a sense, a hostage people. It is our political destiny and our right to self-determination to want to have our homeland [back]. Whether they like it or not is immaterial. If they call us radicals or subversives or separatists, that’s their problem. This is our home, and this is our homeland, and we are entitled to it. We are the host. Everyone else is a guest.[11 “
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reconquista_(Mexico)
Note where Jose “works”.
I think those latinos who are here legally and have assimilated into Texas culture will be just as ready to join the rounding up of illegals-but the illegals are likely to leave on their own when the welfare disappears-there is some historical evidence that it would happen. When Mexico split with Spain in 1821, those in the territories who didn’t want Mexican independence ran to the coast and shipped out to some other Spanish colony further south, or to the islands.
Likewise, when Texas declared independence from Mexico, those who didn’t want it or weren’t willing to pick up a gun and fight went to Mexico.
The rest, who had intermarried and formed business relationships with the relatively new-come anglos fought and died beside them-two of my ancestors died in that war-almost every old family has at least one who did...
Texas has always been a bit different.
this is false flag BS.
the weather underground/ bill ayers wanted to divide the usa into four “managable” parts with 30 million (obamacare) targeted for extermination.
And that finite number of resources is why Texas needs its very own border all the way around it-not just to the south-mean as it sounds, I say keep your poor, your huddled masses, etc...
People from envirolunatic states are the worst ever wasters of water and other natural resources-they think their yard is in southern Florida or something-people like that don’t need to be here, either.
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