Marjorie Taylor Greene Has an Interesting Idea for Once in Her Life

Greene is bat-shit crazy, but I guess it just proves that even madwomen Republicans, if they drive enough nails, can finally pin a board to the barn wall. She advocates that red states (those with staunch Republican denial of the 2020 election) should secede from the nation in order to control their own destinies without leaving the Union.

A bit like having your cake and eating it, but let’s hear her out.

Secession has a good deal to be said for it, 158 years after our bloodiest war ended

What began in 1861 had the best of intentions, but the outcome of our Civil War didn’t really solve anything other than to enslave the freed slaves of the South by other means. Our united states are—and have been since then—divided racially, politically, socially, economically and philosophically.

Greene would have us recognize that

Her plan is to empower the Red States of today to live as they want, govern themselves as they wish, while affirming and further empowering the issue of ‘state’s rights’ to do so. Okay, I get that and, to be fair to Greene, it would pretty much re-establish the old Confederacy without (one hopes) the bloodshed. Looked on 158 years after Lincoln ‘saved the union,’ it doesn’t seem maintaining the union was all that great a bargain for either side.

The problems I have are Marjorie’s selection of Red States and remaining in the Union

Looked at by the terms of the last election, there are a hell of a lot of states that are red only by recent electoral majorities. And then there are states that have remained red (at least in the neck) ever since we laid down our arms a century and a half ago and patched up our wounded.

But, let’s admit the truth that many of those wounds never healed. The South was still hawking postcards of lynchings until the 1970s (hard to believe, but true). Lynching itself wasn’t prohibited by law until March 8, 2020. After multiple failed attempts across twelve decades, there is now a federal law that designates lynching as a hate crime. Not murder, but a hate crime. For 120 years, every time such a bill came up in Congress, Southern senators blocked the bill from passing.

How’s that for something to celebrate on the 4^th of July?

And, mostly in red states, Critical Race Theory (CRT) is still blocked from school curriculums. “We dare not teach our youngsters anything that would make their white constituency uncomfortable.” I’ll tell you what’s uncomfortable--more than 4,000 racial lynchings occurred in the United States between 1877 and 1950 (average 55 per year). That’s uncomfortable.

So I have a list of nominations for Marjorie’s grand idea

Ten states can take it upon themselves to pull the plug on their allegiance to the American republican experiment: Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Tennessee, Louisiana, Alabama, Georgia, North and South Carolina and Florida.

That’s about 106 million (former) Americans out of approximately 340 million and, although the selection is both mine and arbitrary, it has the beauty of an easy line between America and whatever they name their new nation. These ten states would not remain in the Union.

They would finally achieve their God-given right to deny their history, re-erect their cherished monuments, do whatever the hell they choose with their schools and live as they damn well please. Their 136 Representative and 24 Senatorial seats would, of course, be immediately vacated.

What they leave behind

Fair is fair and there is a price to pay.

But it’s a small price for those who espouse the freedom to call each other names, carry guns, run over dogs by the side of the road and live under their own law. United States law stays behind. Citizenship in the U.S. is no longer available either and it will take a passport (in whatever name they choose) or a visa to enter the United States.

Think of all the fun

They can write their own constitution, elect a supreme court, name a capitol, replace that onerous internal revenue service, design a flag, get a seat at the United Nations and rename the interstate highways left in what was once the United States.

On the further fun-side, they can build a wall between themselves and Mexico, machine-gun migrants if that is their desire and allow Donald Trump to head up whatever government they so choose, for as long as they choose. All U.S. military installations would close down, as would all American civil services. As for Social Security, those already having benefits would continue as ‘citizens living abroad,’ until they die out. Oh, and if you currently have an American passport, it’s no longer valid.

Speaking of dying out

Most (but not all) of the most divisive confrontations between conservatives and liberals in this new iteration of a smaller America would calm themselves to the point of coming to an agreement as how to pursue political solutions. We would still have an active Republican party. The Democrats would return to looking upon their opposition party as they once did—as those who value the same overall goals of our republic, offering different solutions and working out compromises. We might even decide to tax the rich, feed the poor, house the homeless and educate our youngins.

Is it possible that Marjorie Taylor Greene could be the author of such a solution?

Not bloody likely, but isn’t it a thought that brings a smile to all faces?