“Those people are “nutbags”?”
Actually, while I understand the impulse, yes. Such people, assuming they exist in Couer d’Alene, would be nut-bags in the full sense of the word. In 1861, you could secede from the Union for whatever reason, and be more or less ok one way or another.
In a nuclear age, on a global stage, it’s impossible and possibly suicidal. China would snatch up one part of the globe and enslave everyone. Russia would snatch up the other and do crooked deals for Putin’s cronies. Then they would turn their attention to each other and America. It would not be pretty, and the people in Couer d’Alene looking for a tranquil life far from a centralized, tyrannical government, would remember that dream fondly as they worked in the salt mines under the whip of their overlords, who might speak Chinese or Russian.
Or it could all just end in a cascade of mushroom clouds.
Nah, that’s nonsense.
You think the safety of the planet is dependent on being in a confederation with New York and California? Seriously?
A self governed autonomous region would still have ties to the rest of “America”, which is rapidly becoming “Mexico Norte”. So if the need existed, alliance for common defense would still be on the table. Britain just left the EU, and the world didn’t end.
As for nooks, who the hell do you think invented them? Aboriginals? I had relatives at Los Alamos.
An autonomous region in the Northern Intermountain West would do just fine. My family settled those mountains as we settled the deserts of Arizona and Southern California over a century and a half ago.
If the Bolsheviks in DC ever wanted to dismantle their New Deal bureaucracy and give up on the idea of a federal currency backed by a federal tax, maybe we could talk again. But those same deranged people want to elect a new people, as Brecht said about the DDR government.
But like 1860s Northerners, they seem to believe they have a right to determine the character and policies of States they have nothing to do with. Whether they have a good reason for that (like ending chattel slavery) or bad reasons (like diluting the white population into a hated minority), it’s not a good thing either way. The States are regions that should determine their own future.
The Swiss Federation will soon be voting on whether the vax mandates are to be retained. Their union features a very weak central government whose shenanigans can be nullified by popular vote. Imagine that. And now imagine a region of America where that could happen. Hell, imagine all of “America” being like that.
We wouldn’t have to rap about secession.