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The Texas Nationalist Movement (TNM) is campaigning for the Lone Star State to break away from the United States and become a fully independent country, using what it regards as the federal government's failure to control the Texan-Mexican border as one justification.
Just let the fuckers leave. Today. They can take their 2 Republican Senators and 38 Representatives (25R, 13D) with them. We'll build a wall on the border and make them pay for it.
Seriously though, how long do you think they would make it on their own? The last time they were they're own country they BEGGED the US to take them in for what, 9 years? Before we finally did.
Texas is one of the few self-sufficient Republican states. (eg. They contribute more than they receive from federal funds.) They’d survive.
That being said, their economy would be fucked because all the US trade agreements suddenly would disappear. Look how badly that affected the UK with Brexit, and then multiply it by 100.
All the tech companies in Texas would leave. As would most Democrats with the means to do it. There goes your highly educated workforce (Democrats tend to be more highly educated based on demographic data).
The US military would leave. And then there goes all the defense contractors too.
They wouldn't be self-sufficient on their own. They're only self sufficient because they're part of the US.
I’m a Texan and a Democrat. I would be out of here so fucking fast. I’d rather work at McDonald’s in California than live in an independent Texas Republic.
Also, you're forgetting an important factor: food. Texas is not part of the breadbasket, it is not known for its agricultural produce, and the amount of good soil is not enough to feed the population.
Assuming Texas dips into its slush fund to buy things like grain, it would be flat broke in a decade, with only oil fields and beef to trade (they'd lose their offshore oil rigs).
This point right here so many Texas cities entire economy is based on the military industrial complex.
I agree with your second paragraph, which actually invalidates the conclusion of the first one.
Yeah, I guess survive vs thrive is the point I was trying to make. Texas produces enough food and energy to be self sufficient, but their global economic position would crash.
and energy
Except their grid is fucked up, possibly beyond repair at this point.
Their economy would be fucked because they'd need to draw up an entire economy overnight. What is a US dollar to a non-American? What does a Texas bank look like, and how does it function differently from a US bank? Do the companies currently operating nationally across the US have the right or capability of operating in New Texas? What forms must they fill out to file their taxes? Where goes the money that was previously pouring into the Houston area due to NASA jobs that suddenly don't exist there? What about the money in San Antonio, Waco, and other towns with military bases suddenly drying up? What about the fact that the federal government owns the land those military bases are built on? What do the private companies who operate phone lines and Internet backbones do with the physical media installed in the ground which they presumably own?
The people who are cheering on secession have no fucking clue about this stuff. They lack the ability to perform a reality check. They don't even know how to question their ideas, and they don't have any independent thoughts. Their minds are controlled entirely by their political and religious shepherds.
The politicians who lead them on with the idea they might get away with it don't need to answer the questions. They say and do these things because the people who put them in power think of the argument for secession as the equivalent of a schoolyard fight. "Oh yeah, well if you won't kick the transes out of the kickball game then I'm just gonna take the ball and go play kickball over there by myself." It's stupid and childish and completely unrealistic.
I hope I'm right that Abbott, et al, have thought of all this and are only grandstanding, allowing their collective lobotomy of a voter base to rabble rouse, and won't actually go for this. It would be an absolute bloodbath when they all starve or get summarily executed as the full thrust of the most expensive military budget in the known universe blasts in to establish order.
5.2 million people voted Democratic in the 2020 presidential election (46% of those who voted). It would be a tragedy to abandon them. It would also create an ongoing threat to the stability of the remaining country. As Martin Luther King said, "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."
To add to your excellent point (that there are more democrats in Texas than the entire population of many states), very, very few people are actually a part of this “movement.”
This isn’t a real thing that normal people actually endorse, it’s a bumper sticker you see on an old beat up truck in the wal-mart parking lot.
It’s like the Texas version of flat earthers or ghost/alien hunters or Bigfoot researchers. They do exist but they are massively over-represented in the press because it’s so stupid that people can’t help but “tune in.”
Please don't leave me here.
Just learn some Spanish and Abbott will let you get on a bus to come up North, for free!
If Texass suddenly became its own country, I wouldn't expect them to be so generous to those people as to keep sending them to better places.
They'd probably decide those people should be concentrated somewhere away from decent Texans.
We can trade Texas for Puerto Rico and won't even need to change the flag! Win-win
They want to break away to become their true calling, a shithole country.
I love shitting on Texas and Florida and, well every southern state, and most of the Midwest, and quite a few states out west, but as someone who lives in one of these areas I like to remind everyone that's there's a lot of decent people living in those states. That is all.
We could just return them to Mexico. Call it an apology for the inconvenience of us keeping California and New Mexico.
If they secede the cartels will probably be running Texas within a week anyway.
Um, hello? Lots of innocent people live here.
Especially a ton of Democrats, many of them POC, LGBT etc who will become the targets on day one.
Can we agree this state/federal "laboratories of democracy" bullshit is a failed experiment? Our framers were wealthy land owners who suggested land owners be the only class be allowed to vote, they were far from infallible, and their quarter millenia old framework isn't compatible with or flexible enough for modernity.
It just makes 50 societies often working against one another instead of one with common governance. This need for systemically enforced competition and disdain for the concept of cooperation is a self-destructive cultural value.
i think it was somewhat more sensible when the main form of communication was riders on horseback but it's gotten stupid very quickly
State National Guards ordinarily fall under the control of their respective governors, but they can be federalized by a mechanism known as Title 10 status, which places them at the direct disposal of the president and defense secretary, with active duty officers taking over day-to-day command
Title 10 isn't even rare...
They do it for all types of shit, and Biden is fully within past usage if he does it here.
I'm cautiously optimistic he'll do the right thing here.
His donors don't want the instability of a full on secession
It's all fun & games till you're arrested for violating 18 U.S.C 111 & you're looking at a year Federal time, a $100k fine & never being able to work in law enforcement again.
I hope Texas police officers are aware that qualified immunity doesn't cover you when you are obstructing federal officers in the execution of their duties.
This statute outlines certain types of assault against a federal officer and the appropriate charges and penalties. Penalties for Defenses for Assaulting or Resisting a Federal Officer A simple assault of a federal officer carries a $100,000 fine and up to one year in prison. For example, simple assault is forcibly assaulting, resisting, opposing, **impeding, intimidating, or interfering with federal officers while performing their duties. As noted, physical contact or injury is not required for a conviction.** Simple federal assault is a Class A misdemeanor that carries up to 1 year in jail and fines of up to $100,000.
Actually, I don't care. The DoJ needs to start making examples out of the #fascists & their thug enforcers.
Don't forget the enhanced penalty.
(b) Enhanced Penalty.—
Whoever, in the commission of any acts described in subsection (a), uses a deadly or dangerous weapon (including a weapon intended to cause death or danger but that fails to do so by reason of a defective component) or inflicts bodily injury, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both.
Use a weapon or injure one of those federal officers and it could be 20 years plus the fine.
Don't stop there, take over the entire state government. Throw traitors to the curb and clean house
Can we just shove Texas out into the ocean already?
Lifelong Texan. Fuck it, you have my support. So tired of this.
Just add it to Mexico.
I think Florida is in the way.
As a former resident of Florida, feel free to push us in, too.
Great, they can call it "Texit" and we all know how successful that movement is shaping up over the pond.
How many times do we need to teach you this lesson, old man?
why does everyone associate the corpo owned politicians with the citizens?
sure as with other states you will find plenty of people who want otherwise for their state and grouping them in with those slime politicians and saying let them go does not help anyone
I can't see that going well, at all. Not a mutiny or fragging type situation, but a massive pencil pusher revolt.
I imagine their chain of command will pencil whip the fuck out of anything they can do that will cause issues for D.C., and as much as a headache as it'll be for the feds, it'll also be hilarious.
I hope he does it. I'll have popcorn waiting.