The main reason I can point to for the fact that so many Americans who call themselves "right-wing" or "conservative" refuse to realize the country they grew up in or fetishize from the history books no longer exists is due to a religious devotion to the idea of "America." I would go further in saying that most do not understand what or who "America" is. So many have blindly bought into the dogma sold to them in government schools, in churches, and in front of the hearth at home by their equally deluded parents and grandparents. The realization that their blind allegiance to a form of government has captured their minds, and one that has only ever existed on paper, would seemingly be painful to them.
The "United States" has never been a constitutional republic or a democracy. It has always been an oligarchy designed to benefit a few cronies. When you realize that this cronyism existed long before the Declaration of Independence was even a thought, you begin to see things more clearly. That is not to say that the idea of federalism, the thoughts behind the crafting of the tenth amendment, or even secession are to be discarded. To the contrary, they are not only to be embraced, but they are the answer to most of the questions asked today.
I believe most people who would consider themselves to be right-wing or conservative are fine with the ideas of federalism and the tenth amendment. Secession is where they balk because most believe that issue has been settled forever in the US. But this is just more religious thinking on their part. To say the War of Northern Aggression settled the secession question is equivalent to you fighting someone over whether 2+2=4 or 2+2=5. The guy who believes it equals 5 can leave you beat up and bloodied in the gutter; that doesn't mean 2+2=5 is all of a sudden correct. It just means he's stronger and can beat you if he disagrees.
Questions I would like to pose to anyone who believes secession is wrong are:
Should you be forced to live next to people who hate you?
Should people who hate you have a direct say in your life? How about in the way in which you are governed?Why are you content with sharing a polity with people who hate you?
Are you truly unaware that the people who hate you want you dead? What is it going to take to wake you up to this fact?
Why wouldn't you want to be surrounded by people who think and act like you do?
The idea that there are millions of people, even hundreds of millions, who think it is perfectly fine to be surrounded by people who hate them is mind-boggling. One imagines that since they sleep peacefully in their beds at night with no rioting in the streets outside their homes, this will always be the default. As someone who worked in Atlanta in the summer of 2020, I can tell you that is not the case, and that is one of the main reasons that I now live in an area that has questionable internet service and no federal roads near it. I have undertaken my own personal secession, as so many others have felt compelled to do in recent years. Many members of the civic religion are perfectly OK with an individual doing this, but the idea that a section of the political polity of which they are congregants is taking the same actions is anathema to them. I won’t even address the people who spout the cope "you’re running away from the cities where the power resides" while they have no plan or organization in place to "take the power back."
I am not deluded into thinking that if enough people decided secession was the way forward, it would just spontaneously happen. It always comes down to a small cadre of elites who turn ideas into reality. But most elites put their fingers up to gauge which way the wind is blowing, and a shift of the Overton Window in regard to the masses’ opinions on succession could influence that. Without separating into units where the overwhelming majority have commonalities, the people are forced to engage in an endless war, whether it be cultural or political. But I repeat myself. Is this how we are supposed to live our lives? Constantly fighting one another politically? Maybe, but the smaller the polity, the easier it is to get your way. The person who looks at the current state of Washington, DC, and thinks they can change it with anything other than its total destruction or with Caesar's hand is delusional.
Inspired piece today, Pete.
The sad reality is that due to some combination of apathy, cowardice and incentive structures (e.g., money), most people will meekly climb into the box car and/or lineup against the wall up to the last possible moment.
100% and I think some of this civic nationalism, when I have poked and prodded these people to find where it rose from was the moon landing (of all the unnecessary nonsense ever imagined). Since the US won the race to space, Americans alive during this event or whose parents pounded it into their heads take great pride in that event and their personal identity is tied to it as if it was their football team winning. They believe they did that and telling them they didn't or it wasn't all that, becomes a personal attack. They may believe all the wars we "helped win" are a matter of pride, freeing slaves of ethnicity, or polity seems to be another even if it happened before their grandparents. To them, that's America and as long as they identify themselves as "Americans" they take the credit for bullshit and nonsense that either never happened, didn't matter or made things worse while refusing to consider them any other way than the pristine fairy tale they were taught in grade school.
But as I said to someone recently, a right leaning anarchist living in San Francisco championing this idea that he is virtuous because he has friends whom he accepts that have differing view points, "where will you share a plate of nachos when your friends, whom you accept, are only going to eat at a restaurant that serves food made of plant matter and bugs? Are you going to feel cultured sharing in their affinity for bugs, like the way we compromise and eat toxic soy based products with them while they never compromise to eat nutritious meat?" We can't share a plate of fucking nachos. They will not make the same compromises for you-ever. They will act offended at the suggestion of a steak house and won't even go there and not eat. This is just a microcosmic look at the entire way in which they view your way of life. You can't share a plate of nachos much less a neighborhood, a city, a state or a country."
I read him that quote by John Quincy Adams "If the day should ever come when the affections of the people of states be alienated from each other...or collision of interests fester into hatred...the bands of political association will not long hold together parties no longer attracted by the magnetism of conciliated interests...(better)to part in friendship...than to be held by constraint. Then will the time for reverting to the precedents which occured at... the adoption of the Constitution to form again by dissoliving that which could no longer bind....and to be reunited by the law of political gravitation to the center."
He says, yeah, "I'm at that end part, the coming back together." I was dumbstruck. I guess he hasn't figured out, the rest of the country has got to go their separate ways first. He thinks he can will them back together perhaps by sitting with them to enjoy larva cheese with cricket chips.