Right to Secede
States of the United States should have the right to secede from the union.
I am the opposite of the kind of person who goes around saying "the South will rise again." Never let anyone tell you the American civil war was about states' rights. It was about slavery. The Confederacy was, without question, in the absolute wrong, because they wanted to keep the privilege of owning slaves—that is to say, the privilege of using one's own land to imprison certain people, and torturing and murdering those people via forced labor, simply to turn a profit, and viewing this as justified simply because the victims of this treatment come from a different heritage than one's own.
The Confederacy was evil. They were villains, and Abraham Lincoln was a hero. I won't say everyone who lived in the Confederacy was evil, but I will say everyone who lived there willingly was evil, as was everyone who owned slaves and mistreated them, everyone who owned slaves and did not fight for their liberation, everyone who fought on behalf of the Confederacy, everyone who supported the Confederacy in that fight, and everyone who believed owning slaves was okay.
That being said, the Confederacy had one thing right: states should have the right to self-determination as independent nations. Abraham Lincoln should not have insisted the United States remain united no matter what. He was right to wage war to liberate the slaves, but he should not have considered it a civil war, of Americans versus Americans. He should have treated it as what it rightfully was: an international conflict against a nascent axis power.
I say all this because it's relevant to a conflict we face today in the United States, and what I think should be done about it at this point. I think Washington, western Oregon, and California should secede and form a new left-wing confederacy. The West must rise again.
Why?
Here's a list of reasons why I think secession is necessary:
The United States are now a fascist country. Donald Trump has been reelected for a second term. The fight to repair the system from within is permanently lost. Our only hope now is to escape it and try to repair it from without.
The people willingly and legitimately reelected him. That doesn't mean he is a good person or a good leader. It does mean he is a good person by their moral code, and a good leader for them. But all that means is that they are no longer one with us. That is to say, the people are now fascist.
Even the Democratic Party is adopting fascist rhetoric as it struggles to dissect and cope with its catastrophic loss. "Maybe we really have alienated the workers we're supposed to represent," they say, and by "workers" they mean cishet white men. "Maybe we really are focusing too much on social issues and ignoring the economy," they say, for by "the economy" they mean the economy as it relates to cishet white men, and by "social issues" they mean the economy as it relates to anyone else. If they are thinking along those lines, then that means that they, the anti-fascists, are now fascist.
Our homeland has fallen to fascism. We're fascist now. All of us. Everyone. Everyone is now fucking fascist. If you don't want to be fascist, well, you're in a fascist country, that belongs to fascists, so get off their property and go get your own damn country to live in.
That's exactly what I'm saying the West should do, and if the rest of the country doesn't end up liking it, too fucking bad. What are they going to do, kill us for it?
How?
Indeed, what are they going to do—kill us for it?
They can try. It would be hypocritical of me to say they can't try: after all, I already said Abe Lincoln was right to battle the South, so I must concede that while I do believe states should have the right to secede, I also believe, reluctantly, that there are certain valid causes for nations to go to war.
But that's a fight the West can win, if we give it our all. Here is why I think secession is possible:
Granted, the Union would have the clear advantage in raw land. But California is densely populated and obscenely wealthy. We are the most industrious state of America by far. We wouldn't have the advantage in number nor in resources, but we'd have a much better fighting chance in those regards than you'd be able to tell just from looking at a map.
California has an excellent standard of education and is the tech capitol of the world, and Oregon is the world capitol of left-wing crazy government-hating conspiracy theorists (a highly endangered species). There are at least two things that people (rightfully) paranoid about corporate and government surveillance and overreach are very, very good at, and those are operative security and preparing for war—two fields of pursuit in which we in California, being far too trusting of economic liberalism and big government, fall far behind. Oregon covers our weaknesses. Together, we should be able to engineer sophisticated and unhackable war machines. Does it sound like I'm proposing something completely absurd, like making Gundam a real thing? Because that's exactly what I'm proposing. I am literally saying we should get together and make giant killer robots. (Except preferably more practical than that.) We can. It's within our power. We have the means, and we have the knowledge. The army, the navy, the national guard—especially in red states—sure, they may have all the firepower right now. But we have everything we need to make more firepower, and things are going to start moving in a very different direction when we aren't making any more firepower for them.
The United Nations are rightfully terrified of the United States, but they are also highly critical of fascism. If we can make our case to them, and convince them our now-fascist parent country can actually be taken down, we may be able to attract international aid in the war effort.
Wasn't there already a false flag operation about this?
I'm aware there is already a right-wing call for California to secede, namely Yes California. I distinguish my position from theirs by the following differences:
I call for Washington and western Oregon to secede as well. Louis J. Marinelli only wants California to secede—not just that, he only wants western California to secede. I am not satisfied with stealing only that much away from the Union. His purpose in his proposal is to weaken California, and rid the Union of its influence. My purpose is to weaken the Union, and rid California et. al. of its influence—and prepare the progressive states to conquer the Union, and liberate its people from fascism.
I call for all progressives everywhere in the nation, and everyone whom the values of progressives defend, to move to California, western Oregon, and Washington. We want the refugees of the right's mistreatment. We want to take them from the right. The working class they tread upon. The outcasts they villainize. The women they objectify. The children they beat and rape. Not for any nefarious purposes. At least not primarily. We want to take these people away for one nefarious purpose: that of destabilizing the Union, leaving it lesser for their absence. Leaving it to cry and whine as it realizes how badly it really needed them, and how weak and vulnerable to attack it is without them. But primarily, we want to protect them, from the hateful, abusive, murderous lynch mobs they call their friends and family. Louis J. Marinelli wants California's hands off the people he considers the communal property of the fascist in-group. I want us to rally those people, against the fascist in-group that would lay claim to them—that is, against the likes of him, and the monstrous hoards of people who think of others the same objectifying, marginalizing way he does.
I will at least give Louis J. Marinelli this: he wants peaceful coexistence. But this is only because he wrongly believes peaceful coexistence is still possible. He thinks that if California secedes, we will miss the Union, but the Union won't miss us, and the Union will be better off without us, and we worse off without them. He believes even if this is so, we won't go to war to try to be allowed back in, and he no doubt believes that if we did, we would lose. That's his pathetic little conservative wet dream. I propose to secede in a way that will make the Union miss us, while we will not miss them, and will be better off without them, and if they go to war to take us back, we will have a plan to win—and even if they don't, we will eventually attack, because the Union cannot be left to stew in fascism. Marinelli envisions a docile, regretful California, tamed and exiled by the Union and left to starve. I envision the Union's beating heart ripping itself out of the chest cavity, growing big beefy arms, snapping off all the Union's ribs, and eating them.
If this isn't another false flag operation, or a branch of the prior, then why does it sound like satire?
Because I am so very, very, very angry, and heartbroken, and plagued with a deep, deep spiritual sickness, over what the United States are about to become. Anything I could possibly say about it is inherently going to sound like a really childish satire of itself, because—I'll be the first to admit this—my faith in humanity is lost, my mind has been shattered, and I am no longer capable of reason.
I've become what I stand against: I've become hateful. I'm not going to say something like, "I sit here calling the right hateful, but I'm the hateful one," because that's not true. The right are the hateful ones. They retain claim to that title, because even if I were trying—and frankly, at this point, I might be, I don't know, it's hard to tell—even then, there's no way I could ever be as hateful as them. They are the best at being hateful. It's no contest. Their hate is leagues more advanced than mine. But they have made me hateful. They have made me loathe them, completely and utterly, to the point that no respect for their personhood remains within me. Only desire to see them bleed out on the pavement, crying for mercy—the mercy they never afforded others, and mercy their false god will not be there to afford to them. I want them to die in agony.
In this mental state, how could I not sound like a parody of myself? I am a parody of myself now. That's what they've done to me. And I suspect I'm not the only one. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy: this is exactly what they always insisted on pretending we were, and now, and only now, we are that, because of them. In their profound wickedness, they created their own monster, and now it's going to maim them. As well we should. At this point, that's what they deserve. A zombie-eating monster, a radiant beast of steel, to wipe out a pandemic infestation of mindless zombies, and pave the way for the living to return safely.