Even after a violent insurrection, after endless debates over stolen elections, and after disingenuous Republican “election integrity” measures designed to suppress the vote, one may still hear some tone-deaf Democrat joke about voting early and often. Loose talk on the left about letting red states secede is similarly counterproductive. Both should stop. The right should curb its own thirst for a separate white republic.
Casey Michel, author of “American Kleptocracy,” examines secessionist sentiment growing across the country among the disaffected:
And it’s not just a tiny fringe that’s thinking about these concepts anymore. As the Bright Line Watch, a group of researchers from places like Dartmouth University, the University of Rochester, and University of Chicago, noted in a study released earlier in February, one-third of Republicans said they support secession. Disturbingly, half of Republicans across the former Confederacy (plus Kentucky and Oklahoma) are now willing to break off to form a newly independent country.
There are murmurrings of secession from the Pacific Northwest among both ehe left and right, but none more serious as on the right elsewhere.
The Texas Republican Party recently supported a referrendum on withdrawing Texas from the union — nicknamed “Texit” after the British vote to leave the European Union. Reportedly, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott dodged questions on whether he supported the effort.
While much of the secessionist rhetoric remains couched in claims about things like fiscal responsibility and burdensome federal regulations, it doesn’t take much to discern the ethno-nationalism driving the push. Just like so much of Trumpian America, secession in places like Texas is rooted in a combination of nativism, xenophobia and white racial grievance. Texas secession Facebook pages are saturated with fantasies of forcing Democrats to leave the state, seizing their property and forcing them to “convert” (to what is unclear). Just like the Confederates before them, this modern secessionist ethos is rooted at least in large part in maintaining white supremacy and authoritarian governance, regardless of the costs.
On their own, the increasing marriage of secessionist chatter and GOP ideology would be cause enough for concern. But this month’s disastrous winter storm in Texas also points to how idiotic such secessionist dreams truly are. Thanks to an electric grid carved out separately from the rest of the country, Texas remained effectively stranded while storms wrought rolling blackouts, boil-water advisories and dozens of deaths thus far. Scenes reminiscent of catastrophes like Hurricane Katrina illustrated what state-level collapse looks like in modern America.
Bright Line Watch finds, “The unwillingness of respondents to reject secession outright is widespread and context-dependent. Republicans express greater support for secession overall than Democrats, but Democrats are more amenable to secession than are Republicans in regions they dominate.”
Yes, but.
“Unless you want violence on the scale of the Partition of India—primarily targeting non-white and immigrant populations—liberals should really, really stop encouraging secession of so-called ‘Red States,'” Michel wrote in a tweet.
The joke is that it is hard to look away from a slow-motion train wreck. Even harder when you yourself are riding on the train. Harder still when these people are riding in the seat beside you.