The Great Divide | Miles Franklin

White House website deluged with secession petitions from 20 states

As I wrote last week after the election that in my opinion our nation is now more divided than at any time during my lifetime. I read last Friday that a petition was circulating Louisiana to secede from the Union. At the time they had something like 1,600 signatures and needed 25,000 by Dec. 7th to be taken seriously and require a White House response. Then to my shock this morning, the above link from the Daily Caller was posted at Drudgereport. Texas now has a petition with 15,000 names and 18 other States also have petitions.

I normally try to not write about topics that are “sensational” and require “conspiracy theory” (not that in some cases “conspiracy fact” does exist) and un-provens to arrive at a conclusion, I try to connect the dots of “coincidences” in many cases. In this case, the fact is that there are now 20 States where a secession petition is circulating. Do any of these petitions result in an actual secession? In my opinion I doubt it… for now. But what it does illustrate is just how pissed off people have become and how divided we have become.

If you asked me, this episode is merely one of “seeds” being planted. If you went back and read 1,000’s of tweets prior to the election you will find that many Obama supporters were threatening to riot were he to lose. Even before reading about any of these tweets I had already begun to ponder what a Romney win would do, particularly in the inner cities. Reading so many of these threats of violence only confirmed what I had suspected could occur. Would there really have been riots? My guess is that yes, we would see many cities on fire or still smoldering today.

It just occurred to me while writing this that what is happening in Europe is in a strange way the exact opposite of here in The States. In Europe there are bankrupt sovereign nations which do not want to leave the Union and instead want to remain to live off the federal teat. Here (yes I know, there are several states that are in fact insolvent but for the most part are not petitioning) we have states which are petitioning to leave the Union so as not to be dragged down with it into a fiscal black hole.

As a next logical “dot” to think about, what will happen when Illinois or even California needs a bailout? Will states with balanced budgets remain silent and allow a bailout to happen? This question is really not hypothetical because we will surely see various deficit states hit the wall sooner or later.

The above was written late yesterday, Texas has already gotten the 25,000 signatures required as of this morning so I suppose we should get a White House response even if it is “Shut up, go sit in the corner and put a dunce cap on. We have more important things to do.” But seriously, this movement has a very good chance of growing and at some point turning into a showdown. The important thing here is the thought process; it is more or less a split between the have’s and have not’s, between those who pay taxes and those who receive government benefits, between those who understand that a country cannot continually borrow and go further and further into debt versus those who either don’t know or don’t care that the country is bankrupting itself.

I don’t have any idea how this will work out. It will probably morph in various directions several times. If history is any guide, the odds are that violence will be a part of it at some point. The only bloodless coup that I know of (I am sure that someone will point out others) was the breakup of the USSR. The only thing that I do know is that people are angry. On one side they are angry because they watch their hard earned money being taxed and given away to others who don’t work, on the other other side people are angry that they don’t get enough “benefits.” One can only hope that a “just” solution can be found but the anger seems to be escalating and was just ratcheted up several notches after the election. This bear’s watching closely.

2 Comments

suzanne on November 13, 2012 at 8:24 pm

Nice article.
However… I never took the concept of a bunch of teen twerps on twitter threatening to riot seriously. In places like the northeast and Illinois where socialism is rampant, probably so.
Truth is, both parties are collectivists.
Romney winning would have just given us 50 days of peace before the next generation of facist nastiness started up. That’s it. Romney spent the last 30 years laundering drug money for the Bush crime family.
We’ve been watching the housing bubble for the better part of 12 years. We’re seeing the bailout bubble, food stamp and tax bubble now. When the system can’t continue to dole out the goodies, we would likely be staring at upheaval and a series of real secessions taking place.
Here in Texas, we’re really tired of that “anchor baby” policy on immigration overwhelming our taxpayer safety net with non taxpayers. We’re tired of the “war on drugs” killing 30,000 people a year along our border with Mexico… why do you think we’re all packing heat down here?
If Texas seceded, Oklahoma would likely join us… both have it in the state constitutions. Shoot… the taxpayers have been petitioning for redress of grievances for over a decade and got ignored. It’s time we called out the feds and their power grabs.

Don Carrick on November 13, 2012 at 9:33 pm

Quite frankly it is not just citizens of some states, it is citizens all over this country, citizens of all state who are in a secessionist mood. What it comes down to is what John Adams said prior to the American Revolution, “A third of us are torries, a third of us are timid, and a third of us are true blue.” If one thinks about it it could be argued that people whose first language is Spanish are now deciding who the President of the United States will be, and that President is promising to give them our money if they elect him. You say that you feel the nation is, “more divided than at any prior time in your life.” I say it may be more devided than at any time since the Civil War. I would quote Alexander Tyler on the subject of Democraies: “A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse over loose fiscal policy, (which is) always followed by a dictatorship.” As you say, “seeds have been planted.” As for me, “give me liberty or give me death.”

suzanne on November 13, 2012 at 8:24 pm

Nice article.
However… I never took the concept of a bunch of teen twerps on twitter threatening to riot seriously. In places like the northeast and Illinois where socialism is rampant, probably so.
Truth is, both parties are collectivists.
Romney winning would have just given us 50 days of peace before the next generation of facist nastiness started up. That’s it. Romney spent the last 30 years laundering drug money for the Bush crime family.
We’ve been watching the housing bubble for the better part of 12 years. We’re seeing the bailout bubble, food stamp and tax bubble now. When the system can’t continue to dole out the goodies, we would likely be staring at upheaval and a series of real secessions taking place.
Here in Texas, we’re really tired of that “anchor baby” policy on immigration overwhelming our taxpayer safety net with non taxpayers. We’re tired of the “war on drugs” killing 30,000 people a year along our border with Mexico… why do you think we’re all packing heat down here?
If Texas seceded, Oklahoma would likely join us… both have it in the state constitutions. Shoot… the taxpayers have been petitioning for redress of grievances for over a decade and got ignored. It’s time we called out the feds and their power grabs.
Don Carrick on November 13, 2012 at 9:33 pm

Quite frankly it is not just citizens of some states, it is citizens all over this country, citizens of all state who are in a secessionist mood. What it comes down to is what John Adams said prior to the American Revolution, “A third of us are torries, a third of us are timid, and a third of us are true blue.” If one thinks about it it could be argued that people whose first language is Spanish are now deciding who the President of the United States will be, and that President is promising to give them our money if they elect him. You say that you feel the nation is, “more divided than at any prior time in your life.” I say it may be more devided than at any time since the Civil War. I would quote Alexander Tyler on the subject of Democraies: “A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse over loose fiscal policy, (which is) always followed by a dictatorship.” As you say, “seeds have been planted.” As for me, “give me liberty or give me death.”