TL responds to Aesop, Aesop responds back, and Bracken wades in as well:
Aesop gets the better of the debate, for sure.
But I’m not so sure if after the “cleansing” we wind up with 50 states under the old Constitution.
Nobody can predict how CW2 might go, but extrapolating something like Weimar X Yugoslavia X Rwanda is the best I can do.
What emerges on the other side of that is probably not another George Washington uniting the country again.
A breakup seems likely, once the regional warlords have subdued their collections of states.
I could see New England and the Rust Belt under some socialist dictator, the SW as “New Aztlan” run by the last cartel boss standing, and so on.
I could even see West Coast governors inviting in ChiCom “peacekeepers” to restore order and get the grid running again. ChiCom peacekeepers who would never go home.
If anybody’s crystal ball is less cloudy than mine, your predictions are probably more likely to come to pass.
Helluva thing about those proverbial Interesting Times we’re cursed to live in: from within them, one’s vision tends to be cloudy, distorted, and confusing, reducing attempts at prediction to little more than guesswork.
For my own part (not that anybody asked, mind) I remain convinced that secession, most likely nullification as well, can only ever be an entertaining topic for speculative after-dinner debate over brandy and cigars, if even that much. As a practical, real-world eventuality it is chimerical, a phantasmagorical will o’ the wisp that only serves to distract from the real problem we face, the fundamental, rock-bottom issue that must sooner or later be decided. I’ve written numerous times over the years about this problem, which Aesop identifies thusly:
Nobody serious is seriously considering secession. It’s like talking about winning the next election. They’re considering insurgency, revolution, and overthrow. I don’t want a piece of what used to be known as the U.S. of A.
For about the tenth time I’ve said it and posted it here:
I am so enamored of the republic that was, that I’ll not willingly part with a square foot of it to the communists. I want the whole damned thing back. Whether any of them survive the transition is a matter to me ranging from complete indifference, to active revulsion at the thought.
That isn’t secession. It’s cleansing.
France didn’t secede from Nazi Germany. America didn’t secede from Britain. And no place is seceding from the U.S. They’ll either win their independence, again, or roll over, give it all up, and wind up in the gulags featured in every communist state since ever. There’s no third option. And there won’t be any safe space unless it’s called Everything, because the other side has proven beyond all doubt that the one thing of which they are wholly incapable is to leave everyone else alone. Couldn’t do it in Korea. Couldn’t do it in Vietnam. And only brinksmanship and the threat of global thermonuclear war stopped it in Germany. Communists, like muslims, are the world’s original pugnacious busybodies, and the only successful remedy is removal in toto.
Amen. Broken-record time: Liberty and tyranny can NOT peaceably coexist. Ditto with free people and Communists. One of these things is not only not like the other; one of these things eternally seeks to strangle the other—to choke it out of existence, to eradicate it entirely. And that we simply cannot have. Which, all reverence for the First Amendment notwithstanding, means but one thing. Yet another of Mike’s Iron Laws, in the form of a Biblical rejiggering: Thou shalt not suffer a Communist to live. The tension between the absolutes represented by the idea of freedom of speech and thought and the necessity of seeing to it that our principles are not allowed to be used as the means of our own destruction is beyond ironic. But paradox is the way of things on this poor planet.
So be it, then. If it’s war to the knife they want, then it’s war to the knife they should damned well get. It’s impossible not to hear the creak and groan of A House Divided Against Itself, on its way to doing that thing such houses must inevitably do:
The Schumer-Pelosi gang looks exorbitantly proud of their legislative coup in the stim bill (and Mitch McConnell’s gang, too, which had to play along, or get tagged and cancelled as Dr. Seuss-like creatures of Grinchified parsimony). Obtuse, desperate, and stupid as these grandstanding politicians are, they all overlook the workings of entropy in these foolish expedients to keep the plates spinning in this performance-art economy. Namely: disorder. Everything is groaning and cracking out there.
One-time $1,400 handouts and even regular $300 unemployment subsidies won’t pay the mortgages or feed families very long, and every day there are fewer families bringing in anything close to that mythical $150,000. For many, it’s more like… nothing. The one-time bailouts of recklessly insolvent city and state governments and pension funds will only postpone their collapse. The varying guaranteed basic income schemes, enhanced child credits, advances on tax refunds, and other gimmicks would turn the former working class into sub-lumpenproles with nothing to occupy them but crime and vice. In fact, we already have a sizable underclass demonstrating exactly what you’ll get from enlarging the social group dependent on government support.
The only other question for now is when do the different population groups in this land explode in violence? The group loosely bundled as “Red” is angry enough with the ongoing insults of Wokery, failed rule-of-law, and abridgments of basic constitutional rights. The states where they dominate are likely to resist any more fiats by the federal government, like the imminent attempt to confiscate firearms. The “Blue” auxiliary armies are beyond their creators’ control. Antifa will be ready to rock-and-roll in the streets with good weather because so many young people have absolutely no prospects to thrive in the collapsing economy, and the streets have become their social space, with so little money for lattes and beers. And BLM need look no further than the Derek Chauvin trial in Minnesota, starting today, for an excuse to resume its characteristic activities.
Does anyone seriously believe that the husk of Joe Biden will remain in office more than another few weeks? It’s obvious that he doesn’t have the mental mojo to work an authentic press conference, and surely not the customary address to a joint session of Congress. Even the news media may seek to know who is actually in charge of the executive branch before much longer. Pay close attention to events unspooling. Get ready for trouble. It’s coming every which way, from money to public order to rollicking spring weather.
It is. So here we all are: the lines drawn, the final pleas for redress issued, the warning implicit with those pleas arrogantly, contemptuously spurned by those who would enslave all free Americans—ie, those who would have profited most by paying more careful attention. The stage is set. All that’s left now, for both sides, is the breathless pause before the curtain rises.
The play’s the thing. Although Hamlet meant something else entirely by them, his words fit this context well enough too.
I live in a heavily red area, in a heavily red region.
Houses are selling here for the first time in a decade – people are separating themselves out already by moving in. This trend will continue as people run away from the big urban centers.
Sorting will play a part.
My area has been growing all along but is now booming. Land that was bought for 500K 3 years ago is approaching 1.5 million now. Demand is through the roof.
On Hatteras Island we’re running out of homes for sale. Houses that have been on the market for years are now under contract. I think 2/3’s of the listings here are listed “under contract”. People are purchasing rental properties and converting them to their primary home. It’s a boom never before seen on this island.
It’s all fueled by people leaving the blue cities.
And those “people” are bringing their politics WITH them. Make sure you note their addresses for when the festivities begin!!!
I take your point, but I think you have it worse in Florida…
Look at Austin and try to say that with a straight face!
I’m not in Texas but I am passively familiar with Austin. I think that is the destination of choice for every Texas lefty, not just the more recent immigrants.
Texas ain’t overwhelmingly red, just enough to get most elections over the 50% mark. The last democrat gov was Ann Richards, ’91 – ’95.
Hell, Cruz barely beat the fake spaniard, beto.
Voting with your feet will help, but it won’t suffice.
As I noted in comments at my blog, take Texas.
Big (imaginarily) Red By-god Texas.
“Texas:
Trump: 5,890,347
Biden: 5,259,146
That’s parity, statewide. Which is a recipe for about the fairest and most equal Civil War bloodbath you’ll find. Suggesting that Biden voters, all 5M of them, are from out of state, is simply sour grapes, to point to my namesake’s applicable tale. TX is in fact so purple your state animal should be Barney the Dinosaur.”
And that’s the rightwing hole-card state.
The country is purple. Period.
The side that goes ugly first, just like the line of battle that crosses the “T” and fires first in Napoleonic maritime war, wins.
You can improve your odds, slightly, sure, for awhile.
But look up your county’s numbers, and realize that unless it’s 98:2, an insurgency against either side of even 5% means a metric fuckton of pain for everyone who lives there.
That’s Bosnia, writ in 40-foot tall red letters.
How has hoping for a peaceful re-alignment worked out for anyone, from 1930-present? How many lawful, peaceful approaches have succeeded, over that time span, and which way is the trend arrow moving?
Asking for 330M friends and neighbors.
Rwanda.
Meh. It’s a mildly entertaining way to assassinate the clock until the shooting starts in earnest, Mike.
After that, it’ll still be entertaining, for various values of entertaining.
“it’ll still be entertaining”
Yes. I think the guillotine should be revived as well. We can run the rest through your wood chipper 🙂
I ran across a pic of what looked like a humongous fucking mobile industrial woodchipper that looked like it was built onto a 40′ semi trailer. I’ll have to see if I can dig that up again… I can’t remember what it was called, or I’d just search through my history.
You could do all of D.C. in bulk installments with one of those. 🙂
Look up “Industrial Biofuel Prerendering Device, SJW Model”.
*snicker*
I want one.