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Ya-ta Boy
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994
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 Posted: Fri Nov 16, 2012 4:15 am Post subject: Your take on the current secession thingie? |
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There are about 800,000 people who have gone on the gov't site and signed onto secession petitions. The first one was from Texas (where else?) but someone from all the other states has jumped on the bandwagon and made his/her own post.
MOSTLY I think it is nothing different that the �I'm going to move to Canada if Bush is elected again� thing back in '04. Everyone feels despondent when their guy fails at the polls. Lord knows, I had to insert a coat hanger in my mouth to fake a smile when I went to school the day after Reagan won in '84. I was sure the Republic was doomed. (I was more or less right. The entire economy crashed in '08.) Everyone is entitled to his/her own disappointment.
No big deal.
However, I do think that fantasizing about running away ('going Galt' for those on the far right) when you don't get your way and invoking such charged terms as 'secession' are different. As far as I know, no one (in any official capacity) in 150 years had brought up the racist ideology of states rights and secession until Gov. Good Hair Perry did it a couple of years ago. Likely, it will be his political legacy.
I don't know about anyone else, but when I hear someone say 'states rights' or 'secession' I hear 'slavery'. I see that famous photo of the slave facing away from the camera, his back covered in welted scars from the whip. It is an historical reality. Political philosophies have individual human consequences.
Mark Potok wrote recently, �In recent years the number of hate groups has risen to more than 1,000, and the number of anti-government "patriot" groups has shot up from just 149 in 2008 to 1,274, according to research by the Southern Poverty Law Center. For months now, groups on the radical right have increasingly fretted about a possible Obama victory. Now that that has occurred, the radical right may grow more dangerous still.�
No doubt most of these groups are just a handful of culturally/racially panicked, hysterical people and will do no harm. BUT...
The word and the concept of secession is back on the table. If my contention is right that we have turned a corner and now have a liberal governing majority in control... |
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actionjackson
Joined: 30 Dec 2007
Location: Any place I'm at
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| Posted: Fri Nov 16, 2012 6:18 am Post subject: |
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Say what you will about the source but I thought this article offered a good perspective on the whole thing.
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But there's a lot of information to this story that's being left out. For example, the petitions in question are being posted directly to the White House website. That's a tantalizing detail if, say, a group of ragtag "patriots" defaced the White House website with signature requests that the government never wanted there. Or maybe if an armed militia stormed the White House IT department and force-posted the documents there. But that's not what's happening. Instead, these angry demands for freedom are being posted on a public section of the website. "Public" meaning open to anyone who wants to participate, even lunatics who think that Texas should break from the U.S. and rejoin with Mexico again or whatever. That person could be a tinfoil-hat-wearing conspiracy theorist or a bored 12-year-old kid trying to get a rise out of people. There's no way of knowing.
What we do know with like 132 percent certainty is that what's happening here is a non-issue. These are the ramblings of a small group of political zealots who actually care enough about spouting their particular brand of crazy that they figured out how to upload something to the Internet. To make the case for secession even more problematic, in case anyone is actually reading this and getting jazzed at the thought of needing a passport to travel to South Carolina, have a look at some of the signatures from that very state...
Sure, there are over 16,000 signatures, but, not even ten in, already half of them aren't even from South Carolina. If you recall, the Texas petition was somewhere in the 18,000-signature range. What are the chances that most of the people who signed this petition also signed the petitions for the other states "hoping" to secede? Suddenly we've gone from thousands of people in dozens of states hoping to break away and start their own country to just thousands of people in the country hoping that pretty much any state will secede. And, well, we've always kind of known that those people exist, right? |
Read more: http://www.cracked.com/quick-fixes/why-E28098anti-obama-states-secede21E28099-story-lie/#ixzz2COYTerJq |
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Ya-ta Boy
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994
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| Posted: Fri Nov 16, 2012 6:52 am Post subject: |
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| Yes, I know there is a contradiction between what I posted a few months ago and now. There are days (on alternate Tuesdays when the moon is full and my shoes are wet). At some point we have to decide if we are one nation or a collection of states. I thought this was decided at Appomattox, but that doesn't seem to be true. The Founders couldn't figure it out. I thought Lincoln's generation found the answer--and that was true until Gov. Perry brought it back to public discussion. |
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comm
Joined: 22 Jun 2010
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| Posted: Fri Nov 16, 2012 7:09 am Post subject: Re: Your take on the current secession thingie? |
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| Ya-ta Boy wrote: |
| I don't know about anyone else, but when I hear someone say 'states rights' or 'secession' I hear 'slavery'. |
Ya-ta's pro-secession thread
You know, I was really getting tired of all your racist secession talk in that thread. I'm amazed it took you this long to realize that smaller units of government = slavery and larger units of government = freedom. If only we could all be conquered by one grand Imperial Government, then we'd have the opposite of slavery!
Really Ya-ta... take a good, hard look at what you're posting here. I recognize that you grew up in a time when old racist bastards wanted to use their State government to impose racist laws on minorities. But you're showing an impressive lack of perspective when you advocate secession and extol the benefits... then immediately turn around and say the very concept itself is "racist" and unacceptable if someone else suggests it.
EDIT:
Surely you realize you're so full of hatred for "the other side" that you've projected negative concepts onto them that prevents them from having the same positive intentions that you have when they suggest the exact same solution that you did.
EDIT EDIT:
Nevermind.
It's pretty obvious that you were worried about there being legislation you didn't like when you made that thread, and secession was a viable solution to avoid it. And now that legislation that you do like has better odds, you see it as "racist" and inappropriate for people to secede to avoid that legislation.
Best hypocrisy I've seen all week.
Last edited by comm on Fri Nov 16, 2012 7:46 am; edited 2 times in total |
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Ya-ta Boy
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994
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| Posted: Fri Nov 16, 2012 7:16 am Post subject: Re: Your take on the current secession thingie? |
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| comm wrote: |
| Ya-ta Boy wrote: |
| I don't know about anyone else, but when I hear someone say 'states rights' or 'secession' I hear 'slavery'. |
Ya-ta's pro-secession thread
You know, I was really getting tired of all your racist secession talk in that thread. |
You wouldn't want to, like, you know, maybe, give an example of that, would you? |
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Ya-ta Boy
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994
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| Posted: Fri Nov 16, 2012 7:26 am Post subject: |
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| I recognize that you grew up in a time when old racist bastards wanted to use their State government to impose racist laws on minorities. But you're showing an impressive lack of perspective when you advocate secession and extol the benefits... |
Ummm, er, ahh, you might want to think about the voter suppression laws a range of states passed this past year. Objectively speaking, the right has not demonstrated any deep long-lasting commitment to democracy...or anything resembling majority rule recently. |
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Ya-ta Boy
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994
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| Posted: Fri Nov 16, 2012 7:32 am Post subject: |
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EDIT EDIT:
Nevermind.
It's pretty obvious that you were worried about there being legislation you didn't like when you made that thread, and secession was a viable solution to avoid it. And now that legislation that you do like is has better odds, you see it as "racist" and inappropriate for people to secede to avoid that legislation.
Best hypocrisy I've seen all week.
EDIT EDIT:
Nevermind.
It's pretty obvious that you were worried about there being legislation you didn't like when you made that thread, and secession was a viable solution to avoid it. And now that legislation that you do like is has better odds, you see it as "racist" and inappropriate for people to secede to avoid that legislation.
Best hypocrisy I've seen all week.
Arg.
No, it wasn't any specific piece of legislation. It was the total lack of legislation, if you want the truth.
Approximately half the country wants legislation of a whole range of issues, and you right wingers are standing in the way.
SOME days I think secession would be a good idea--of the progressive states and leave the conservative states to stew in their sweaty juices. |
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sirius black
Joined: 04 Jun 2010
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| Posted: Fri Nov 16, 2012 2:30 pm Post subject: |
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| I think the whole secession thing is stupid but just for the sake of argument. If a state was allowed to secede, exactly what do they get to 'keep'? The land within its borders I would think but is there any monetary gift or penalty? What about mililtary bases that may happen to be in that state? Is it theirs? |
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mnjetter
Joined: 21 Feb 2012
Location: Seoul, S. Korea
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| Posted: Fri Nov 16, 2012 5:13 pm Post subject: |
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[quote="actionjackson"]Say what you will about the source but I thought this article offered a good perspective on the whole thing.
This. If the Texas petition got on the news with 20,000 signatures on it and now is at 112,000 signatures, my guess is that the number of actual Texans who genuinely want to secede is somewhere along the lines of 50,000 (assuming that half of the signatures before being outed in the news and even more since coming into the public eye are either not in Texas or are repeat accounts of people who had already signed the petition). In a population of over 20 million, t | | |
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