Sunday, March 7, 2021

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.

19 comments:

Michael said...

I did go to T.L.'s site and yes you did post the whole thing and dissected it like a frog here.

I NOTICE Dear T.L. Doesn't ALLOW dissenting comments on his site. INDEED NO Comments on his postings. That speaks volumes of his ability to rationally discuss important ideas like say "Life and Death of the People of our Republic"?

Living in a echo chamber means your always right eh? I go here to hear viewpoints I may or may not enjoy.

The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function. F. Scott Fitzgerald.

His "IDEA" of Surrounding a Blue city and starve them to death, priceless. Guess unlike Sodom and Gomora no Innocents in any of those cities eh? None of the Khan's men would ever decide to turncoat on him for such an idea eh?

IN American Revolution ALL were British Citizens as you pointed out. Some folks that wanted to remain British citizens, some that wanted to rebel and go their own way and a LARGE Number of folks that simply wanted to be LEFT THE HELL ALONE.

Guess WHAT... Same right here, right now in America.

Things are going to get ugly in our dying republic and allying yourself with someone with delusions of being Genghis Kahn seems foolish. Like that Magician Stalin, Genghis Kahn COULD make trusted friends Disappear.

Aesop said...

I give him a total pass on that.

My comments here were minimally moderated (like maybe 2-3 deletes/yr for a decade) until last year, when the Zombie Troll Hordes descended like feces-flinging monkeys, because they couldn't accept that COVID wasn't a hoax.

I turned comments off for a week, then restored them, fully moderated, and set a number of accounts to go straight to spam sight unseen. I have half the comments (sadly), but 0% total shit-flinging monkeys.

Anonymous @$$holes on the 'net are why we can't have nice things, and I will gig no one for sparing himself the bother of shovelling through the literal shitpiles every day to find a diamond.

1chota said...

One simple, singular point that those that wish to secede have overlooked:
whose money will you use?
People have medicare, Social Security, health insurance, investments, IRAs, etc.
gonna be a bitch if the PTB decide to erase all that purchasing power.
Hmmm?

Wyomarine said...

All the colonists were British?
And here I thought New York used to be Nieuw Amsterdam and we had the NY and Pennsylvania Deutsch, Swiss, and Austrians, along with French and other European nationalities.
Gotta love revisionist history.

Chris Mallory said...

Mass population transfers happened in Europe over the whole 20th Century, mostly in Central and Eastern Europe. States broke apart and are still breaking apart. No reason why it won't happen here in the USA today. If we are lucky, it will follow the Czech/Slovak model. If we are unlucky it will be Yugoslavia writ large. We should have closed our borders in 1789 ahead of the 1790 Census. Failing that, it was a shame Lincoln and his generals weren't hanged as the war criminals they were.

Slick said...

I think there are one or two of the (in)tolerant left in DC that could learn a thing or two about discourse from reading this. But then the ones needing it most probably excel in teeth and tongue over brain cells.

T-Rav said...

Well, this is helpful.

I don't want to sound insulting to anyone, but where does this back-and-forth sniping get us?

Aesop, I agree with you that secession is a losing proposition--not in the short run, for reasons I won't get into here, but almost certainly in the long run--but as far as I can tell, the "open season" you predicted on our public traitors starting Jan. 20 hasn't happened either. Which I'm not surprised by, but it hasn't.

We are being run by a treasonous regime, almost certainly one bought by and answering to Beijing to boot....and what's being done about it? Bearing in mind your many remarks about how it's better to march into battle with a good plan, rather than one thrown together at the last minute, I'd still like to see any sign that there's a serious challenge from any quarter, by whatever means.

Secession may be a sucky idea, but compared to 90% of "conservative leaders" saying "don't worry, we'll get 'em in '22," is it really that much more ridiculous? And I mean, yes, I am trying to do something; I emailed a proposal for a 2A sanctuary resolution to the leaders of my county, and wrote to those in another county in my state that had already passed one, urging them to form an auxiliary force along the lines of what you talked about in VA last year. It may not be enough--it's almost certainly not enough--but it's something.

So what is to be done? Because until or unless one of the options you or others have proposed starts to be put into operation, and shows signs of working, I for one am not taking anything off the theoretical table.

Matt Bracken said...

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.

Michael Powers said...

Having lived in the "state of Jefferson " faith in sheriff's is sadly mistaken. They talk a good game but haven't done crap and in fact continue to work with the ATF on crimes involving firearms...

Cederq said...

At most times you make a hell of a lot of sense and at most times I shake my head as to what you are trying to say. I do disagree with you as much as I agree with you, but in all times you have a wisdom, born of actual experience, education and chutzpah... for that I will read you and take note. I too am of the belief I don't want to give one square inch of this hard fought country and turn it over to communists, for we know if they have that one square inch they will want another. Kill a commie for mommie...

Robin Datta said...

The core of the commie and jihadist ideologies is that utopia will happen about as soon as all else is eliminated from the known universe. Those who preach secession are useful idiots to be humored until they can be isolated and exterminated.

Even a successful secession will leave the secessionists for the long duration in a truncated and more vulnerable holding, more convenient to the predators.

Bear Claw Chris Lapp said...

"History tells us that 1776 was as convoluted and politically charged within households as 2021".

More than I knew. Recently read the three lives of James Madison. I was not aware that dumbasses like the a federalist author wanted to go back to a monarchy after helping to get the constitution ratified.

Following great and oft repeated advice I have seceded from locating in the big cities permanently, visiting it rarely or events never. It's going to be worse than I and a lot of people can conceive in their own mind because they don't believe it can happen here. I have thought often I was born a hundred years to late based on family history, but then I hop in my truck sometimes to do that which is necessary. My AC runs in the summer. I wish I would have gone mountain guerrilla and others long ago. I am sure my wife would have become an ex-wife and my kids, who knows.

In the end I pray for the best and expect the worst and do what I can not what I can't most here are welcome at my fire anytime.

Bob NC said...

Aesop,
Thanks for demonstrating the difference between a well-reasoned argument, and someone with a minimal grasp of the realities talking out of their...hat. If Kierkegaard were alive today, I believe he would say this same thing about the internet:

"People demand freedom of speech to make up for the freedom of thought which they avoid."

TechieDude said...

You miss out on a few things.

First off, In Dallas, the blue crowd, blue part of the city is surprisingly small. It's surrounded by some very red neighborhoods and cities. I had the same impression of Austin, last time I was there.

The bulk of them, and the worst of them are transplants. The inner city is black, and they vote for their own for the council, which is about as corrupt and self dealing as it gets. you can't call them blue. They are green. As in money talks green. They aren't dying on any hill.

Don't think US Civil war, think Balkans. A lot depends on how Texas handles things, but if it gets too miserable, they'll be driven back home (and I don't mean in a car). I"m guessing many of them came here for good reasons, and will realize the error of their ways in the next two years.

Here's an example. In my upper middle class neighborhood, there were a smattering of Biden signs and about an equal number of Trump signs. I"m betting there would be more Trump signs, but most people here rarely put any sort of sign out, and probably figured it wasn't worth the trouble. Nearly all of them took their signs down after the election.

Except for three locusts from California. (I saw the tags when they moved in). These had monster Biden signs, and refused until late January to take them down. They were asked nicely on social media. I'm betting more than one neighbor brought it up in person.

Things get bad, they will move. Dallas police are notoriously under funded, and slow to respond.

A lot depends, though, on how Texas handles things.

Stealth Spaniel said...

No delusions here. I am always sad that TLseems so pacifistic. He has great convictions, but there will be zero peaceful split up. Period. We need to start in the barbed wire of the District of Criminals, and work our way up. The fact that the drunk who is Nancy thinks January 6th was an insurrection......speaks volumes of their idiocy. (And I say this, having the CALIFORNIA breakfast of avocado on toast. And no-it was not "invented" by that Australia chef who thinks he is the clever one. We in the Golden State have been feasting on this delight since our inception. I grew up with my mom swinging her Mustang through the Canyons in search of fresh avocados, butter lettuce, and sourdough for breakfast.) Aesop is very correct. It's either full out fighting or on your knees.

Aesop said...

@Wyomarine,
No revisionist history. Where people were from was immaterial. If one was physically in the 13 colonies, absent some formally recognized diplomatic status, they were British subjects, in every sense, the minute their feet hit the ground, and fully subject to the jurisdiction thereof.

@T-Rav,
Understood. Were 38 states to all secede next month, I'd happily eat my words, but thefact that whole swaths of the country didn't secede the minute SCOTUS ruled that the Constitution didn't apply to states suing other states over an unlawful and fraudulent election, the republic was officially dead.
So why O why would anyone expect anything like common sense recognition of reality from their state or county PTB? Not one single one of them, at any level, has shown 1/10th the sense most readers hereabouts have about what's what. You have been failed by every level of elected reps and ordained powers, from dog catcher to Chief Justice, and at every layer in between.
If you want something to happen, you're going to have to make it happen.
I ardently suggest familiarity with the doctrinal publications of US Army Special Forces pertaining to insurgencies, undergrounds, and unconventional warfare. You're going to be living it.
One of the fundamental tenets is that in any successful such undertaking, at some point, shadow government and organization supplants and replaces similar functions of TPTB.
Government's hired minions aren't going to carry your water for you, and they won't provide the structures nor perform the functions you'll have to have.
Stop expecting them to do anything else. Supplant them.
Mexican villages, tired of the predations of both the government and the cartels, formed their own self-defense forces, and kicked the government and the cartels out of their districts. At gunpoint. If illiterate peasants with nothing can do it, so can we, and we either will learn that, or we'll suffer for failing to do it.

@Matt Bracken,
It's uncertain what comes afterwards. But it's certain there's no other way to get what we desire. Which makes it a necessity, and then we're back to "a republic, if you can keep it".
I don't see regional warlords. I just see different degrees of bloodier struggles to eradicate attempts to establish same. Chicoms on the West Coast, or those trying to do a reconquista of Aztlan would - and will - get the same reception Japanese troops landing here would have found in 1942. From all sides. Support for socialism hereabouts is a mile wide, and an inch deep. The other side, OTOH, at any width, goes down to bedrock. That doesn't promise an easy victory, but it bodes one helluva contest.
Whether it's the Appalachian Range, the Ozarks, the Rockies, the Sierras, or the Coastal Range, just like the Swiss or the Montagnards, I would never bet on flatlanders over hill people.

Aesop said...

@Techie Dude,
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 having not even 2500 more Trump voters in each of 254 counties, and a bit over 600K statewide out of 11M voters is a pretty thin sliver to rest on. After watching an 800,000 vote lead disappear in PA in only two hours of carefully conducted voter fraud, if I was Greg Abbott or Ted Cruz, I'd be looking hard at my hole cards next time I was up for re-election, and socking money away in a Swiss account just in case.

The outcome there, long-term or short-, is anything but certain, and if folks are serious about not becoming NYFS South, you'd better start preparing the battlefield for the contest to come. And I'm not talking about the '22 elections.

What do I know? I'm only speaking from a state that elected Reagan four times, which now stands as a shining example of neo-Marxist single-party stupidity, having flipped so in less than a generation.

Greg said...

Thanks for a righteous rant Aesop. I realize that moderating comments is a PITA, but the end result is worth the effort. This is a great comment thread, with lots of insight. Even dissenting opinions, when reasoned and civil, add to the issues discussed. I agree though, that any comment that begins "Hey dipsh*t..." belongs in the spam bucket.
It is becoming harder all the time to maintain a positive attitude within the degeneration of everything around us. I have looked to those who've already lived through the horrors to come for clues about how to proceed. Selco Begovic is gritty and tough to read. He's been very scarred by what he's lived through, but I welcome his advice. Yesterday's column by Sarah Hoyt is also a very tough read on the issues of this post here: https://accordingtohoyt.com/2021/03/08/i-dont-want-to-write-this-post/ Even the little backwater, redneck town I've relocated to is infected deeply with the libtard virus, and I've no doubt things will get ugly here too.

Bailey said...

Sir,
This seems to keep happening.... those on the right appear to endlessly 'argue' over the why's and wherefores, even as the left acts with one mind and one purpose.
I suspect this is an inevitable result driven by a foundational discrepancy between the two sides.
The left is a collectivist, top-down sort of entity that rules through a variety of feedback loops. Avoiding the deplatforming, the hatred, the cancelling, is a matter of successfully navigating the orthodoxy de jury. As a side note, this must be exhausting. No wonder that those who are committed leftists seem to be immune to negotiation or compromise; their journey has already cost them so much.
The right, on the other hand, is composed of individuals, free-thinking and independent as a rule, that make up their own minds and come to conclusions that are personal and specific. Since free-thought is a rule rather than a bug, consensus is sometimes (usually) elusive.
This is a pernicious problem, without solutions that would tend to avoid undermining the things that make the right, the right.
How to overcome this? I suspect the answer to this question would work in the long term to allow cohesion of a lasting sort, the kind necessary to achieve larger goals.
The short version is, we all know what's happening, and we know that this will get two-way before much longer, and we know it will be so for a long time to come. Perhaps we can focus on those truths, rather than the finer details of timing and overarching approaches. The details, I fear, will have a way of resolving themselves....
Just thinking out loud. Thank you for all that you do. We need to get our heads right, and soon.