Secession II

 

Secession? No. Brain surgery: talented amateur variety.

First, the preliminaries:

I analyzed (and rejected) an idea on a blog post a couple of posts back, yesterday. I freely and frankly confess I had no idea it was T.L. Davis' blog, but had I known it, I would probably have simply moved on to other business, rather than be caught walking on Clint Eastwood's lawn in Gran Torino. I simply don't need the aggravation, but I withdraw nothing said, then nor now.

However, that said, I have no personal animus towards T.L., then nor now, and wish it noted that it's the idea of secession that was ridiculed, not the man offering it. If, despite that, he feels personally insulted or slighted, I offer my sincere apologies for giving that impression, and I alone am to blame.

Furthermore, without offering examples, rest assured I've had a stupid idea or two in my lifetime, and have the scars, both psychological and physical, to give proof. So please believe me that I can see where anyone, self included, can do or say something which later becomes rather obviously a damned fool undertaking, and would generally prefer neither to repeat those endeavors, not have them recounted on a regular basis. No one is perfect, but wise men don't commit the same foolishness twice. Not least of which, because some mistakes in life you don't get to make twice.

Which brings us to T.L.'s response to my take on his original post.

If you're expecting tit for tat, forget it. After his initial fit of pique in yesterday's comments, T.L. wishes to flesh out a few things, on the merits. Fair enough. Let iron sharpen iron, and see where the sparks fly.

This will be long, and lest I misquote anything (or be accused of it), we'll take on the whole of his post, and see where we agree, and where we part company.

I don't usually respond to comments around the web on the things written in this space. Largely, they are by communists who don't like to be criticized, but something written by a person I have respect for (and I am giving him a lot more credit than he gave me) writes something that while it criticizes the concept of secession, it also raises larger issues in the overall discussion, so I thought that I would break with that tradition. 

Aesop in the Raconteur Report posted something highly critical of the idea of secession, without really fleshing out the machinery of secession. Now, this is not an attack on Aesop. As I have said, I have respect for him, but it shows where a lot of people might be misunderstanding the situation and I am using his post as a method of walking through it. 

Aesop says, "This is 2021. Not 1861. Not 1776." First of all, how does he know?

Well, I looked at a calendar. 

Will future generations look back on 2021 or more likely 2025, and add them into some future post in 2150? The point he makes is that there is not a dividing line, an us vs them or solidification of sentiment as there was in those olden times. Not all secessions begin and end the same way.

History tells us that 1776 was as convoluted and politically charged within households as 2021. There was the British and the Colonists, but not all British felt themselves loyal to the crown and, conversely, many colonists did. Just as not all fedgov feel loyal to Joe Biden, or conservatives to Donald Trump.

Point of order: all the colonists were British. That some of them no longer wished to remain so was rather the whole point of the exercise. That the split was roughly 1/3 Tory (pro-King), 1/3 Patriot (pro independence), and 1/3 Leave Us The Hell Out Of This (pro Leave Us The Hell Out Of This) was not only well attested from primary sources, but noted in every treatment of the Revolution, including such cinematic flag waving efforts as 1776 and The Patriot. Given that both sit on my shelf, and I watch 1776 somewhere north of 2-3 times a year, and refer to it any dozen more times in various contexts, suffice it to say I am well aware that it wasn't all a group of any one thing or another.

I give George Washington as an example, who traded in his commission in the British Army to stand with the colonists at a time when I'm sure he felt that he would lose the war. That the war was unwinnable, but saw it as a means to appeal to the international community, mostly France, to intercede against Britain long enough to establish the new nation. Washington had foresight and didn't charge off to attack the British at their strength. Aesop seems to only want to a fight a battle he is sure to win, or that losing is somehow stupid.

T.L., please. No battle is sure. Losing is a tragedy. But inasmuch as one has a choice, they fight a battle only when the odds are in their favor. Vegas has a name for those who take on long odds: losers. That's not a tragedy. It's a form of mental retardation or insanity; perhaps both, in various measures.

Both options suggest a person who does not act out of principle, but only if assured of success. This suggests a willingness to live on one's knees rather than to die on one's feet.

As to the former, we will let someone else speak for us:

"Thus it is that in war the victorious strategist only seeks battle after the victory has been won, whereas he who is destined to defeat first fights and afterwards looks for victory." - Sun Tzu

I never met Sun Tzu (or T.L. for that matter), but being that Sun Tzu's studied by every serious student of the military arts on every continent, and that I've read that magnificent bastard's book, I'm going to go with the idea that the old guy from China may have a bit more insight into military arts than T.L.

As to the latter aspersion (and let's be clear, that's what it is), I offer the following:

You may have seen that meme. Perhaps here, perhaps on WRSA; perhaps both places. Emiliano Zapata (the lad in that pic) said it, but I made that meme, which is why you've seen it recently. I posted it first here, on January 6th. Some of you maaaaay recall that day, for some reason or other. Read what I wrote that day (or, hell, any day since about five seconds after I started blogging), and tell me I'm a big fan of living on your knees.

Suggesting it is risible on the face, and frankly beyond the pale.

Second, the idea of Texas breaking off from the republic to stand alone as one nation seems ridiculous to Aesop.

Not ridiculous. Just "about as likely as monkeys flying outta my butt." Let's be clear on that.

This shows lack of understanding of secession. Did South Carolina remain alone, just because it was first? If 38 or 40 of the states (Republican legislatures) decided to secede, the question then becomes, are the 10 or 12 left really the formidable force he seems to think it is?

Call me when you get one. Unless I miss my guess, I'm pretty sure even schoolkids in Texas can tell you what happened the last time they tried that, and how it worked out in the long run.

And, at that point who is choosing secession and who is choosing the Union? I suggest it is the one that wants to follow the Constitution that has legitimacy.

Never argued they didn't. So, when SCOTUS told Texas and 19 or so other states to pound sand on suing the states that held unconstitutional elections last November, which ones seceded? I'll wait while you look that one up. 

The longer run, political leverage and maneuverings seem lost on him.

As the cold, hard political realities seem lost on you, sir. 

Even then, a lot of people have moved to Texas from blue states, because they felt themselves no longer able to take the communist pounding and complicit government actions of those blue governors.

How's that working out for Texas along the border from El Paso to Brownsville? So, is Texas now more conservative, or less , than it was in, say, 1980? Again, I'll wait while you check the tape.  

Florida has felt the same surge, for the same reasons. Is this not a form of breaking off? Is there only one line? Only one action?

Florida is dangling by a thread. Another little nudge, and it's blue. And even had Trump been inaugurated this year (he already won, which doesn't seem to have mattered), the day that happened, you would have seen the last Republican president in your lifetime once Florida flips sides.

People moving from one state to another isn't "a form of breaking off". It's called people moving where the jobs and opportunities are. Yet somehow, despite all that relocation, Alzheimer's Nancy and ChuckU Schumer still sit atop the political pyramid, almost like "voting with your feet", or any other election, just doesn't matter. Another form of secession bites the dust. Bummer for the theory.

Yes, we are a purple nation, as Aesop says, in purple states. Does he envision it has ever been anything else?

Since you asked: see if this rings a bell:

 That's from waaaay back in...1984. Kindly point out the purple states, at your leisure.

Again, history goes wanting in his analysis. Kentucky straddled that fence of Union and Confederate, taking neither side, Kentuckians from each side volunteering for either the Union or Confederacy.

How many Kentucky Confederates emerged victorious in 1865? 

Perhaps the feud of the Hatfields and McCoys slipped the mind. Does he imagine that everyone in South Carolina felt the same?

I needn't, and it's immaterial. South Carolina fielded no Union regiments, it started the war, it lost the war, and it was subjugated in response to its loss.Even had the entirety of the Confederacy been 100% inclined in favor of secession, it wouldn't have changed the final outcome of the war, only perhaps the date of their ultimate defeat, and the final tally of the total dead on both sides.

That no South Carolinian thought the actions of the government were unwise and dangerous?

See above. 

What we learn from history is that there are no sides in any civil war that only reside in one household, much less a county or state, solidly among all the people. Never has and never will. Aesop is right about that, but he doesn't see the similarities, I do. I moved to a 90% red area of a red state to put myself more solidly among people who would more likely be on my side in Aesop's "cagematch", whom I could fight with, rather than against.

You've improved your odds locally. So, what will you do about that 10%? Slaughter them? Round them up and exile them? And what if they resist? What are your odds if 10% of any society disagrees with you violently? (Before you answer, consult manuals on guerrilla warfare, and then look up the prison incarceration rate of the U.S., and let me know how bad society would be with 10% solidly violently criminal. Or even 5%.) 

I do agree with Aesop in the understanding of the battle as a "cagematch." Yes, I believe it will devolve to that, even if a state like Texas announces the desire to secede, which it already has on a couple of different levels, there is no one people of one mind in Texas. Who knows, Mexicans in Texas might be willing to support it, if for no other reason than to deliver Texas into the hands of Mexico. But, in his zeal to denounce forever some fantasy of a civil war like the Revolutionary War or the Civil War, he fails to recognize that the civil war already rages in the minds of both communists and patriots. The question is: how does it transition from mask wearers and mask deniers to fisticuffs, then stabbings, then shootings?

I don't give a damn how. I'm far more interested in whether, where, and when. If, however, you can muster a whit of evidence to show why how matters, I'm open to hearing it.

Without ridiculing Aesop, as he ridiculed me, personally,

No, T.L.; I ridiculed the idea of secession as a workable model with any chance in the real world. I repeat, if you feel personally slighted, I accept that, and I apologize.

I will lay out my understanding of the coming secession. It begins as it already has, with certain counties instituting Second Amendment sanctuaries.

Cost-free jibber jabber, with no teeth. 

With Sheriffs, as we have already seen, promising to arrest federal agents who intend to enforce unconstitutional laws (laws that are in and being passed by Congress right now) within the county, with states like North Dakota refusing to enforce any of the Executive Orders Biden issues.

Call with news the day so much as one fed is arrested for that, anywhere.  

The Pandemic they used to cow and terrify the nation has already shown us the direction they intend to drive all of America. States like South Dakota, Georgia and Florida have proven that the communist impulse to shut everything down and lock people away is problematic. Any future lockdowns will be met with stronger resistance, but only in certain states. Gun confiscation will be more successful in those blue states than it will be in red states.

FTR, the compliance with such hogwash, in both Califrutopia, and NYFS, has been, to date, under 2%. 98% of both populations, IOW, have said "BFYTW". Gun confiscation in blue states will go about as well as arresting Dorner in blue states. Except most folks, not being certifiable, won't helpfully mail in a manifesto and self-identify from the get-go; they'll just start racking up a box score, and let TPTB figure things out their ownselves.

Over time, and I don't expect this to kick off in 2021, there is a coalescing of sentiment in certain areas both blue and red. Not anywhere near the 90% Aesop seems to think is necessary for one state to break from the federal government, especially when that declaration is not made.

Feel free to go to my post, and excerpt the quote from which you extracted that wholly imaginary "90%" number you claim I think is necessary. I'll just wait over here with the table salt for your crow. And then, ever so gently, suggest that you respond to what I actually wrote, and not what you imagined I wrote. 

Secession is not so much a political act as a determination of one group of people to disassociate from another.

Then kindly title your post "Imaginary Secession", and I'll leave that where it belongs, and trouble you about what you would imagine no further. 

Nowhere in the idea of secession that I proffered did it include an official declaration, at least not initially. It arrives rather as resistance to unconstitutional laws, H.R. 1 for example, where the methods of conducting elections nationwide is abhorrent to most of the red states, who will not comply and the initial gunshots are in the form of lawsuits and outright refusal to obey by one political entity or another.

Lawsuits? Like suing over voting irregularities? In federal courts? Or before SCOTUS? A picture would seem to be worth 1000 words here.

I'm sorry, I'm dunking on you, while you were sticking to words and all serious, but c'mon, T.L. If lawsuits were secession, we could have just retained Philadelphia lawyers, and settled the entire Civil War out of court for a 33% fee.

Even in the concept of TEXIT, it is a vote rendering a sentiment and the proponents of it recognize that, if successful, it only starts the negotiation with  the federal government.

The federal government doesn't negotiate with terrorists. One either complies, or rebels. Ask George Wallace and Bull Connor (let alone Jeff Davis and Robert E. Lee) what rebelling gets you. 

Certain states and legislatures of others will see the successful actions of the few and replicate them.

Right. The successful lawsuits. Refer to the meme above.

It is still a long way from the "cagematch" but the sides are being chosen, at least in the hearts and minds of the people, each becoming more red or more blue. Aesop overlooks the vast unaffiliated middle, who normally avoid politics, who feel themselves being drawn closer to one side or another, despite their reluctance to say so publicly.

Au contraire. But undecideds have only potential value, and they cancel themselves out. They are neutrons in a molecule. They provide mass, but wholly without serious influence. 

There is a whole soup of issues swirling about that push these individuals one way or another: abortion; gun rights; election laws; lockdowns; masks; sports viewing; work; loss of job or business, on and on.

Their only value is once they pick a side. Thus the only thing to do with them is to give them a host of reasons in favor of one way, and another set not to go the other way. But until they come down one way or the other, they are as unimportant as green shoots in a field: only when they are obviously wheat or tares can they be sorted and used, or removed and burned.

He is right, it never comes down to lining up on one side or another leveling our AR-15's shouting "Texas Independence or Death!." The big blue areas of Houston, Austin, Dallas, etc., seem to be a big problem in Aesop's mind. There's no need to go in and clean these areas out, door to door. If the red areas surrounding them, all of them, put up resistance to allowing power to flow from distant power generating stations to the cities, interdict the travel of trucks on the highway, trains on the rails, wind turbines in the rural areas, etc, etc, they destroy themselves from want, heat/cold and lack of goods.

Right. Because 

a) those cities, and every last person in them, are all 100% evil, and deserve what they get

b) And they'll just sit there and take it, and like it

c) And they have no relatives elsewhere who'll get a vote

d) And no one, including Fedgov, will have a vote in that clever plan

e) And because no one you didn't know was on your side there will decide "BFYTW", and flip sides, because your clever plan forced them to chose the lesser of two evils

f) there aren't any people outside those cities in your non-100% red areas who'll happily pay you back 10-fold for that sort of silliness, right in your own patch, and in the back

I could go on to z), or maybe even zz) but we'll just 

cf.: #cuttingoffyournosetospiteyourface, and

#theEnemyalwaysgetsavote

Less Genghis Khan and dummkopf, and more Sun Tzu and Schwarzkopf, if you please.

But thanks a pantload for kicking off exactly the house-to-house and block to block civil war, in 254 Texas counties, you said you were seceding to prevent.

They might want to band up and go out into those rural areas causing their distress and murder those backward hillbillies. I wonder how successful that would be. That is how nasty it can and probably will get. That is Aesop's "cagematch," but it starts somewhere, has some initial impetus. The consideration of secession, not the overt act, is the beginning of drawing more like minds together, in the same towns or counties. It is strategic and determined. Just being a smartass doesn't get us any closer to that coalescence.

And having made that point, you'll understand when I reply that just being a dumbass won't help much either.

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.

I ask him, though, what is the alternative? Roll over and let the communists rule? Are the big red areas not just as big a problem to them as the blue areas would be to us? It could be something as simply put as "in the absence of orders, find something communist and destroy it."

That would be an insurgency, and an underground. Not a secession. 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.

If they could have pulled off minding their own business once in the last 60-100 years, we need never have reached the state we're in now, one which is only going to get worse, day after endless day.

To secede is something one does in their own mind first and foremost. I already have.

Good for you. But the rest of the country doesn't live in your mind, they live in the real world. And if they want their freedom and liberties back, they're going to wrap their minds around the idea that to get it, and keep it, they're going to have to slit throats, and shoot m*****f*****s in the face.

Trying to use some Zen mental visualization technique will come in a distant second to going all stabby and shooty on those who would cheerfully enslave them and kill them as soon as swat a fly.

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”

― C. S. Lewis

One doesn't "secede" from a metastasizing cancer. Ones carves it out wholesale, burns it, poisons it, and literally nukes it, until no trace of it, not one single cell, remains. 

The same is true of tyrannies. We didn't do a 70:30 deal with George the III, nor Jeff Davis.

Anything less than the complete eradication of the problem is a recipe for long, agonizing, and unspeakably painful death. I'll pass.

So please, be in no confusion: The only time I'll be facing that on my knees is when I have one of them firmly astride someone's windpipe until his legs stop thrashing, or I feel a satisfying cervical cracking sound underneath.

There's no substitute for victory, and nothing less will suffice nor avail.

If you can figure out any easier way, give a holler. I'll always entertain the blueprint for a better mousetrap.