If At First You Don't Secede, Cry Cry Again

​The past few weeks, that great political strategist Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) has been going around wailing about how the Red states should secede from the union.  I don’t have it in me to repost any of her ranting tweets here, but a) all you need to know is that they have the word “secede” in them, and b) you can just use your imagination to think of the most lunatics things to suggest as “reasons,” and you’ll likely have it covered close enough.

And yes, of course, there are those who respond with their knee-jerk cries of “Yes!  What a great idea!!”, something akin to when a doctor is doing a physical and taps your knee with a rubber hammer, and it automatically flies up.  An action that has as much substance and cognitive input behind as this “Yes!  What a great idea!!”

But that’s pretty much all Ms. Taylor Greene needs to ratchet up her “The South shall rise again” rants of secession all the more lunatic.

I'm in awe how utterly ignorant this is.  To start with, no state has a right to secede, despite her ignorant (a word that can’t be used too much here) insistence to the contrary.  And so, you can pretty much stop there.  But more valuable is to explain why the depth of this ignorance is so deep, in order to get at least some of her constituents to make the realization that, “Oh, my, this is actually a truly, madly, deeply ignorant position for her to take and yell so loudly about because it will really crush my own life.”

There are so many things that this gibberish completely ignores if a state ever did, somehow, miraculously manage to secede from the Union.  Among them are --

It would need its own currency and monetary system.

It would need its own military – Army, Air Force, Navy, Marines, Coast Guard, missile defense system – to protect its borders and be able to fight off an invasion from being taken over by another country.  Or another state.

And if the state thought, well, okay, it at least could rely on its National Guard – nope, because, oops, there’s that “National” part of the term.  The National Guard receives equipment and funding from the U.S. Army and Air Force, and from U.S. Congress grants.

It would be off the national power grid. That seems pretty important.

It would get zero federal aid.  This is an especially big one, since Georgia, for instance, gets 34.3% of its state budget from federal assistance.  But as horrific a loss as that would be for Greene’s own state, the loss of federal aid would be overwhelmingly worse for other Red states that might think the MT Greene Plan sounds really cool.  For instance, Montana gets 46.1% of its state budget from the federal government.  Wyoming gets 44.5%.  Louisiana gets 43.7%.  Mississippi gets 43.3%.  Well, okay, you get the idea.  Can you imagine a state seceding and losing almost half of its budget?!!

There would be no federal subsidies for industries that exist in states, which might drive some of those businesses out of the states.

If any state actually could secede (it can’t), it would have no access to the federal highway system and to any interstate commerce.

It would need its own postal service.

Residents of any state that seceded, if it could (it can’t) would need a passport to travel outside it borders into the U.S.   And need to go through immigration control every time they left – and returned.  (In fact, it’s possible that they would need proof of vaccination to enter the U.S.) 

All business outside the state would require international documentation.  The added costs of doing business might also drive some corporations from “foreign” states into states in the U.S.

Every resident of Georgia over the age of 62 would lose their Social Security and Medicare benefits.  In fairness, Ms. Taylor Greene might not care about that (yet), though I'm near 100% certain that almost every person in Georgia over 62 would be furious.  And they'd first take their wrath out on her.

But let's make it easier.  Let's ignore all that and get even to the most basic: if Georgia, or any Red state, ever somehow managed to secede, it wouldn't be able to vote for Trump, Ron DeSantis or any Republican to be U.S. president. For that matter, it would no longer even have a U.S. senator or any members of the U.S. House (which, by the way, would include Marjorie Taylor Greene...)  Sitting on the outside, Georgia and any Red state that thought it was a great idea to secede, would watch the power of the Republican Party disappear.

I saw a response in defense of Marjorie Taylor Greene where the person chided Blue states for not being self-supporting and being in trouble when Red state crops and oil stop coming.  Snarkily adding that “I'm sure all that big city paper pushing will generate heat and food.”

The mind is indeed a terrible thing to waste.  Because apparently this person (and I suspect others) think there are no farms in California.  And Illinois. And New York.  And Minnesota. And... Well, you get the point.  Further, while Red states do predominate in oil production, three of the top seven oil producing states are Blue and Purple, like New Mexico, California, Colorado   Furthermore, this is why it’s notable that Blue state are strong in developing renewable green power sources.

But more to the point, faux-secession wouldn't mean no international trade (after all, if you have crops and oil, you have to sell them), just that it would be "international" and cause far more massive problems for those in states no longer in the U.S. (Like no farm subsidies, which could be devastating...)

To be clear, if any state ever seceded from the U.S. if it could (it can’t), it would, of course, cause problems for all the other states still in the Union – but – most importantly, it would be totally devastating, absolutely crushing to the state that seceded.

In the end, my hope is that the next time Marjorie Taylor Greene runs for re-election her opponent uses her insane rants about “secession” and shows her district the massive problems her "outraged" position would impact and cost them profoundly, to the extent that it would risk destroying the state, and lives of almost all those who live there.

Moreover, when your mournful cry is to secede from the United States, it would show clearly, irrefutably, how LITERALLY un-American you are.

This is just me, and I’m going out on a limb – and others may not agree -- but I don’t get the sense Marjorie Taylor Greene thinks things through…