The South Should Rise Again!

By Richard Boettger

Everybody complains about the Red-Blue split in America today, with polls showing that each side views the other with “fear and contempt.”  But there is a real easy and 100% natural way to fix this vicious war forever: both sides should SECEDE FROM THE UNION.

That’s right, let’s merely do a mulligan on the Civil War and say the South won, just without returning to slavery.  Imagine for a moment how joyous both sides would feel, with low taxes, no immigrants, and few regulations in the Red states; and clean energy, transsexual bathroom rights, and free health care in the Blue states—and that’s just for starters.

In the modern, atomic-bomb-proofed world, there is zero advantage to being a giant country.  Little Britain with its few nukes is as safe from invasion as China or the USA are.  A little-recognized fact is that the tiniest nations on earth are the richest and happiest: Monaco, Andorra, Liechtenstein, San Marino, Luxembourg, basically all of the midgets.

Right now both sides have the worst of both worlds by trying to mix oil and water.  Our congress destroyed itself and gave up on doing anything decades ago.  It refuses to vote on wars, immigration, health care, education, basically anything important.  We can barely vote to pay our national bills, in the uniquely foolish charade of “increasing the debt limit,” which no other country on earth has ever required.  

Also, we should by now recognize that our oh-so-sacred Constitution is not worth saving.  For starters, the electoral college and “debt ceiling” are really dumb ideas which no other country on earth has ever inflicted upon itself.  It also makes doing anything to rein in a bonkers president impossible, making impeachment the only restraint, and making impeachment so difficult it has never actually worked (Nixon chickened out, or I bet he would have gotten off too).

I see an article about secession every couple of months now, so I am not claiming any genius insight, I’d just like to help get the ball rolling.  These columns usually bring up the same kind of give-up objections that fit well with our current impotence.   It’s just a “fantasy.” The minority of other-colors in each state would whine. Conservatives wouldn’t let liberals move to their states, and liberals could not stand to be next door to a “carbon-mad” dirty country that discriminates against minorities.

Geez, these are such stupid arguments I feel stupid myself for even bothering to shoot them down.  In order, all countries seemed like fantasies until they were created—and just yesterday, Britain left the EU.  Even worse than living next door to folks you don’t like is sharing a bedroom with them.  Plus, conservatives like having a minority of snowflakes move in so they can make fun of them, and liberals like pet conservatives so they can cancel them.

Below is my list of the happy differences for the Red and Blue States of Disunited America:

Now these last two is where things get interesting.  In our current marriage of opposites, the po’ folk on the right get to vote tough while still being coddled by Social Security and Medicare.  I don’t think it has sunk in with the Red working class base that in the past, both SS and Medicare were resisted by Republicans—Senate Republicans voted 17-13 against Medicare, and as recently as 2005 George W. Bush seriously tried to privatize Social Security with a plan that would have cut benefits to 70% of recipients.

A really interesting future of the Disunited States of America could see the Red working class seeing their public retirement and health benefits get voted out, and their deciding they better move next door to a worker-friendly Blue state.  At the same time, fat cat CEO Democrats currently gorging on Republican tax cuts might find, as many already have, that Texas is better for their own bottom lines, and move there.  It is harder to see a poor Alabama worker finding a Blue state to his or her liking.  Maybe they’d band together like expatriates, forming their own reddish enclaves in the middle of their Blue majority Virginians.

I would love to be alive to see the different votes of the Red and Blue Supreme Courts, each voting to repeal previous rulings no longer to their current liking.  And what would we do with the Army?  Just cut it in half?  Along  military lines, what wars would each get into, and how would we deal with Israel?

It would be a much healthier environment for all concerned.  More two love fests of like-minded fellow citizens, instead of the current “fear and contempt”-fest we are all as a single nation getting too used to.  The South should rise again!  Resurrect those toppled statues of Robert E. Lee, and let both sides have at it.

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