Thoughts and Facts about Secession.

[WarGamer]

A few threads and comments got me to thinking earlier.

Some people seem confused about how it'd work in reality.

I want to offer some thoughts.

Let's start.

Secession would NOT need a Constitutional Amendment.

SCOTUS can rule on a modern day secession. Yeah, 5 Justices could decide it. Texas v White, you say? You think 5 determined Justices wouldn't ignore it?

So that's the starting point of the discussion.

IF there is ever a secession, the ground rules will be laid out by SCOTUS. It would likely be a long, multi-year process with panels and committees deciding a fair division of land, resources, assets and debt.

Think independent re-districting committees in some States today.

The goal of the committee would be to create two independent countries with similar net worth, land value, access to ports, agriculture, etc.

Many people wouldn't like the results... but they'd be legally binding. Colorado might end up in the Red camp. Arizona might end up on Team Blue.

Both countries might continue to use the same currency...

There would be a period of time where the 2 countries would only exist on paper as travel and trade would be as before and only slowly would you see laws and regulations go into effect.

Different founding documents would be established. Different sets of laws.

I predict more of aa EU sort of relationship... well, maybe not as contiguous as the EU but not like Poland and Belarus/Russia, either.

There would be a period of time allowing immigration. I predict tens of millions would relocate. I think the vast majority of African Americans from the Mississippi River Valley region would move North. The suburbs and rural areas might lose 50% of their population in currently Blue States.

Business would adapt. You'd see a flow of businesses to the locales with more favorable tax law and higher quality employees.

The military... SCOTUS and the Secession Committees would probably declare military assets to be split 50/50... "1 Abrams tank for me, one for you... one nuclear warhead for me and one for you..."




Now a little background.

Ask yourself about secession.

Do we want to go the way of Yugoslavia?

How about Czechoslovakia?

One cost a lot of lives, the other was nicknamed the "Velvet Divorce", peacefully and happily forming the independent nations of Slovakia and the Czech Republic.

I don't think any reasonable person believes the current state of American disunity can continue without problems...

[bucolic_frolic]

1. I think it would be ore like 'Sooners all over America

Everyone grab what their might enables

[lapfog_1]

2. we would have a second civil war

I cannot imagine having a bunch of lunatics armed with nukes as next door "neighbors"... not to mention that the red states are not all that red.

After we crush them again... this time we don't collect their AR-15s and send them back to their homes... we need to root out the problem that has been 160 years festering.

[WarGamer]

5. Wouldn't happen.

It could not.

2 separate Countries... one with common sense gun laws, bodily autonomy and a Gov't based on Science and compassion... pick a side.

[lapfog_1]

9. you can't draw a map with red and blue that makes contiguous geographic sense

there are many blue (very blue) cities and town in "red state 'merica"... take Colorado that you suppose would be in the new Confederacy.. you think Boulder CO (or even Denver) would accept being part of the right wing confederacy?

Of course there would be a civil war...

[WarGamer]

10. Civil War?

That's silly.

So Team Blue or Team Red is going to face off vs the 101st Airborne or 5th Armored Division?

If a Secession is sanctioned by the US Gov't... approved as legal by SCOTUS... it will be backed and enforced by the might of the US Gov't

[lapfog_1]

16. you think that a state petitions the SCOTUS and they say "sure thing"

and that's it?

Gee, why didn't they think of this back in 1860?

[WarGamer]

22. I didn't say that.

It would have to be an organized effort... probably decades from now...

Where the population basically realizes that secession is necessary, then you have a large group approach SCOTUS.

If it was one State, SCOTUS would tell them to GFY.

There will never be a CIVIL WAR v2.0

It'd be the equivalent to Russia vs China.

[marie999]

36. What makes you think the population would think it was necessary 30-50 years from now?

[marie999]

33. The US government would not sanction it.

[WarGamer]

35. At a future date...

If 40 States approach SCOTUS... and convince a majority of the population...

The US Gov't will sanction it.

We're not there YET... but we're headed that way

[marie999]

38. What makes you think 40 states will want it 30-50 years from now?

We don't have any idea what this country will be like then.

[WarGamer]

40. this is purely hypothetical...

That's the direction we're headed...

Who knows... maybe we're all best friends and neighbors like in 1954?

[Calista241]

18. Agree. If California, Oregon and Washington wanted to go off and make their own country

It would be impossible. 45% of CA is conservative, and would want to stay in the US. Those conservatives and their land also produce most of the food, most of the power, and provides all of the clean water to the rest of the state. Washington and Oregon have the same issues.

And do you think those military members and their bases would want to secede? How do you split up a Navy when the other 2/3 of the United States wouldn't have a pacific port? Will the Army and Marines want to go?

We're just going to have to learn to live together.

[WarGamer]

23. The Committee would draw the map to give equal access to ports, resources, etc

[Calista241]

37. What committee?

We can't even investigate Jan 6th in a bipartisan fashion, and you think everyone will just agree to a committee to split everything up fairly?

What if one sides hates what the committee comes up with? What if they decide it's too much or too hard?

There is zero chance the US splits up without a serious armed conflict.

[WarGamer]

41. We're either Yugoslavia or Czechoslovakia.

[Calista241]

44. All of Europe and the US fought a pretty serious armed conflict in Yugoslavia.

Peace was forced upon them at the point of a gun and guaranteed by the UN. Even then, they had war criminals that waged secret a secret war against their adversaries. Who's going to field a shitload of neutral UN troops in the US to guarantee peace.

[WarGamer]

48. That's why most would prefer Czechoslovakia.

It's a much better model.

[marie999]

46. Or India and Pakistan. Or North and South Korea. Or Abbott and Costello.

Or Martin and Lewis.

[brush]

52. You've got it backwards. The rightists are the usually the secessionists.

[Calista241]

56. Some rando saying Texas will secede if 'such and such' doesn't happen

is full of garbage. Rightists, as you use the term, will only be secessionists until they realize they have all the guns. Then they'll either convert, imprison, or expel people like us. The military and the police lean conservative, so I'm not sure they'll back up blue staters if it comes to an armed secession campaign with all Americans having to choose sides.

This whole premise is ridiculous though. 90% of Americans want to live a normal life and provide for their family. Average, normal, less-politically involved Americans will not tolerate economic disruption of this magnitude over stuff like abortion or trans rights. It's not a hill they'll die on.

I know someone will bring up the Martin Niemöller poem, but this is real life. At the end of the day, very few Americans will tolerate dividing up their superpower country, so they can join one of two 2nd tier, average, developed nations.

[brush]

58. Rightists and conservatives are usually the same thing. You do get that, right?

They are the fascist, secessionist wannabes. Hitler, Franco, trumpers...all extreme rightists.

I do agree that this whole notion of a negotiated secession is not how rebellions happen in tension-filled, powder keg, guns-everywhere, political environments happen. There's violence.

[Karadeniz]

3. Interesting... But I doubt a secessionist state would abide by any agreed upon conditions.

[WarGamer]

6. But they'd be drawing half the conditions...

Of course they'd go along... they're the ones wanting the secession.

[msongs]

4. red states are parasites on the nation, their new nation would be financially a failure nt

[WarGamer]

7. It'd be a different paradigm post secession.

Are you assuming that the same businesses and assets currently enriching the Blue States would remain? Or that the people who are a drain on the Blue States would stay in a blue State?

[msongs]

8. when you leave you get to keep what u already have and that's it nt

[lapfog_1]

12. except for the military that we all paid for

especially nukes. I cannot imagine living next to people who have Trump as their leader armed with nukes.. or MTG or Bobert or Cawthorne or any of them

[WarGamer]

14. The Committees would draw up the rules and such things...

Logically, people and businesses would move around... before the Secession was finalized, a process that'd probably take 10+ years

[Freddie]

11. What about a state like Pennsylvania?

Blue urban areas with Pennsyltucky in between. Would we divide by county?

[WarGamer]

15. PA would be Blue block... the rednecks would move South.

[Calista241]

21. So it's the political version of ethnic cleansing. Gotcha.

[WarGamer]

24. It's your choice where you want to live...

I'm sure MANY people would stay in the State of their Birth... where they'd built their life.

[TreasonousBastard]

13. It will have to. How will Nebraska handle foriegn trade when...

the seacoasts are in foreign countries? And showing a passport at the GW bridge or the Nevada border?

US military forts and training are largely in the South. Who gets UN HQ? Pearl Harbor? NATO HQ? Patent law? Currency?

The British assholes thoroughly fucked up Brexit. Can we possibly do any better?

Besides, we fought a war over it the last time. What guarantees no war this time?

[WarGamer]

17. I'd imagine an interesting map

Either you chop the country in half... or you try to follow a more "political map" that is more fragmented and then you'd have "easements" and "legal transport zones".

If California through WA was Team Blue, it might be connected to the Midwest States by a legally drawn 12 mile corridor, 1500 miles long.

Lots of people wouldn't like the results... for sure. But that;s what it takes if the people decide they can't be neighbors.

[marie999]

43. Ever hear of the Berlin airlift?

That is what would happen if one of the states the corridor is in closes it.

[FrankTC]

19. What Kind Of Divorce Would We Have?

Sometimes after divorce the ex-spouses get along better than they did while still unhappily yoked together. I see us as almost two countries already, with a kind of Western-hemisphere Danish social democracy linked in disharmony to a 1890's wild west territory. Take any problem, and half of us want to establish a study commission to develop a thoughtful policy solution, and the other half want to form a posse, "Freedom!" "Someone get a rope!" So it's not clear how we would live post-divorce. There may be ongoing tension, or maybe people will feel a lot calmer because their attempts to establish their version of the good society are not always automatically blocked by half of America. Being a social democratic type, I think it would be useful to establish a federal commission to review how other countries have managed their divorces and come up with a plan that would maximize the likelihood of our proceeding with peace and civility.

[WarGamer]

45. Agreed.

We'd get along better if our nation had laws and principles that better reflected who we are as people...

Gun Control, Taxation... a Science based Gov't rather than a quasi-Theocracy... we'd all be happy in our own reality and would worry less about what's happening in THEIR country.

[Hekate]

20. Ulysses S. Grant, 1875, had some thoughts on this...

"If we are to have another contest in
the near future of our national
existence, I predict that the dividing
line will not be Mason and Dixon's
but between patriotism and
intelligence on the one side, and
superstition, ambition and
ignorance on the other."
-
- Ulysses S. Grant



In other words, not secession of territories, but neighbor against neighbor.

[Lars39]

25. You think the people in red states would be happy?

These people are steeped in The Great Commission from their right wing evangelicals. They would constantly be trying to expand their territory.

[Baked Potato]

27. Have you brought this up at any Democratic fundraisers you hold?

If so, how about some feedback.

[WarGamer]

29. This is a hypothetical scenario of course...

And probably wouldn't happen in my lifetime.

But there are facts and reality that seem to be frequently ignored.

[brush]

28. If they want to sucede let them go. SCOTUS would have nothing...

to do with it, just as in the Civil War. SC started it at Ft. Sumner. If traitors want to go, go. But they'd be wise not to star a shooting war. And there'd be no shared businesses or currencies. No uninterrupted travel across state borders from one country to another.

And red state a-holes must move to a red state. Same with blue-staters. I say good riddance to the traitors. Make your separation/compensation deals with national corporations on their land, property, employees etc. Same with US property...military bases, ports, federal buildings and property. Nothing will be given to them. Nothing free. They'd have to pay/make deals as they're the ones wanting to destroy the union.

Go already.

But I am definitely not in favor of making it easy on them. They'd have to create their own currency, taxing system, government, army, navy, air force. They don't get to keep any US weapons/property without paying for them.

Like I said, go already, and don't let the door hit you in the ass, assholes.

[WarGamer]

31. If SCOTUS gives the power to a Commission that draws borders and divides assets...

Those fighting against it would be the insurrectionists.

[brush]

42. Where are you getting that notion that SCOTUS would have any...

jurisdiction over breakaway states? Also where does the idea come from that secessionist states would want to abide by decisions of a court of a nation they've broken away from? They would be rebels, unbound by anything from our courts. With all the guns and trigger-happy hot heads out there, there would be no peaceful, negotiated secession.

Let 'em go, and if they know what's good for them, they'd best not start any war.

[WarGamer]

47. There would be no such thing as breakaway states

Because the "divorce" would have been LEGAL and the terms established.

Anyone not liking the terms... would be the rebel or insurrectionist.

[brush]

50. Ahhh...show us where that has happened in history.

There are no negotiated revolutions/rebellions or whatever. That's a dream scenario.

[WarGamer]

63. Czechoslovakia.

[marie999]

30. Not going to work. Only 5 states have 50% or more Republicans

and only 7 states have 50% or more Democrats and no party has more than 57% in any state. I am a reasonable person and I do believe we will continue to have problems but it would be worse to split the country in 2. And what would the border look like with Arizona in the North and Colorado in the South?

[WarGamer]

32. Some States would have to dissolve into Team Red/Blue against their will.

[Calista241]

34. Peaceful secession is not possible.

Too many guns, too many grudges, and too much complexity.

The red interior states feed the nation and much of the world. Think they'll just let that go on per usual without extracting their pound of flesh from blue states? They also provide all of the clean water to the coastlines. a 10 year ramp up gives them plenty of time to dam that shit and start hoarding it for themselves. Power plants and power systems cross territories, but most power plants will be in red areas.

What about air passage rights? Travel rights? Will the interior states just let a hole bunch of flights in their airspace? Families will be split up. Will they have free travel, or will this be a Berlin Wall scenario again?

Will the blue states give up half the US Navy? What about the Army and Marines? They have huge bases and billions of hardware all over the place, and the military as a whole leans conservative. Those red states area also armed to the teeth. They can force their will on everyone else if they were committed to it. Will police and the military defend some citizens against other citizens?

And will enough Americans want to give up their greatest nation political and military power to be 2 mediocre nations dependent on allies and security guarantees to secure their future and their borders?

[WarGamer]

39. great points...

I think both nations would STILL be in the top 5 richest and most powerful countries in the world.

[MerryBlooms]

49. In the olden days of DU,

posts like this were called Creative Speculation, and there was a whole Group dedicated to this sort of discussion. Probably not much action there these days. GD should expand its description to include Creative Speculation.

[Hekate]

53. Actually, GD should probably encourage people to check out the CS group...

It being dedicated to their special needs and all.

[marie999]

51. Thank you for about an hour of fun and games.

Really, it's nice to use my mind every now and then. Now back to Russian WWII movies.

[JHB]

54. Another thing to ask is: Do we really want a client state of an adversarial power on our border?

Whatever turf that might constitute MAGAstan would be an instant magnet for authoritarian money: Russia, China, the Saudis, etc.

The only thing that might complicate its puppet-state status is the question of whose puppet it would be.

[davsand]

55. Wolverines!!!

Let's play the fantasy out the rest of the way...

[Paladin]

59. Thread winner. (nt)

[keithbvadu2]

60. The Roman Empire split into two half empires which quickly became competitors, not two parts of a wh

The Roman Empire split into two half empires which quickly became competitors, not two parts of a whole.

[WarGamer]

66. Good point... but a different era

I'd suspect we'd be more like the UK and EU... independent but linked forever...

[mercuryblues]

61. What a state would give up

Education from pre-k to college.
The highway system
Airports
They may love deregulation, well until their water supply is contaminated and they have to pay another country for clean water. unsafe workplaces. No overtime pay,
No disaster relief
No Snap, Medicare, Medicaid
No government contracts
mail delivery
court system
no military bases
But the biggie is no protection from an invasion.

So no, there is no state that will actually secede. The politicians toss that out as red meat.

[WarGamer]

65. Why give up?

Why wouldn't the Red Nation have airports?

Or mail? Military Bases???

And with 50% of the American military might, they'd both be powerful.

I agree about the other things... but that's why I wouldn't want to live there.

[mercuryblues]

68. Do you really think the US government

will just say ok, go ahead and secede. No. The military will pull out of those states and take their toys with them. They have a habit of what they can't take with them, they blow up. Sure, there be some personnel that will go to those states, but not much in the way of arms. The military has a habit of what they can't take with them, they blow up. How long do you think it will take Tx and Mexico to go to war?


The same with the post offices. The US government will not do door to door delivery in a foreign country. They don't believe in a postal service so they will have a private delivery service.


Airports will not have any federal funding. Nearly all of the airports are owned by the federal or state government. The Federal Aviation Administration helps fund improvement projects for airports. The federal government will abandon the buildings. The new government will have to take them over and broker deals with airlines. That will work well.

[Act_of_Reparation]

62. SCOTUS would never rule in favor of secession.

[WarGamer]

64. Not today perhaps...

As I've written above, this is speculation for the future.

Secession might have 20% approval now... maybe 10%...

But it's certainly heading in the UP direction and who knows the environment in 20-30 years.

[keithbvadu2]

67. Red nation theocracy with its own Christian ayatollah.

Red nation theocracy with its own Christian ayatollah.

Who would be in control? Protestant or Catholic?

Orange and Green?

[haele]

69. You are making the mistake of believing their talk of succession.

What the "theys" who are more than noise really want is to take the entire country.
Do you really think the Kochs, the Mercers, the Scaifes, all those Federalist Society A-holes, Hedge Fund and Trust Fund babies really want a Secession, where New York and the West Coast end up being their own Unions? Where they are basically left with backwards "taker states" that have little to no real import and export capabilities without going through highly regulated "Blue" countries?
No, they want a centralized government over the US. Just not a Democracy based on logic, justice, and science.
They want an Oligarchy. Where they are the elites and the rest of us are just fungible drones.

Haele

[Crunchy Frog]

70. Or it could be quite a bit more chaotic.

Dramatic social transformations don't always happen in such a smooth, orderly, and predictable fashion.

Czechoslovakia wasn't insane when it broke up.

[Hortensis]

71. This is like the MADD discussions in the last century.

Social gatherings often ended with people arranging to get together and then saying if the world didn't end first, some agreeing it might well since it was inevitable. Anxiety of the era.

I'd like to throw in that We the People have a duty to all citizens, a duty to protect their citizenship and their rights as Americans. Lincoln didn't include that in his 5 reasons for opposing secession, but imo it should be #1.

[msfiddlestix]

72. Wouldn't Texas be returned to Mexico?

asking for a friend....

That would make me happy if it should happen.

[msfiddlestix]

73. Why would SCOTUS be the deciders in such a scenario?

Can you imagine THIS court being fair and impartial? The majority would likely light the fuse.

[rockfordfile]

74. What's with this Russian propaganda crap?

This is the kind of stupid bullshit the wackos waiting in Dallas for JFK would push.