I long for the day when they get to establish their utopia of Galt's Gulch. I will buy 100 acres in that dystopia! But not to live there. Nope. Because the Conservative Paradise will do away with those pesky regulations, I will turn my 100 acres into a giant compost heap, collecting rotting produce from around the country and piling it out in the open. After all, my freedom to make money by heaping rotting garbage on my property absolutely trumps your right to not have a 100-acre heap of rotting garbage next door. Smell the freedom, baby!
About 10 years ago, there was a libertarian project started down in Argentina (I think it was Argentina--too lazy to Google this right now). Buy your place NOW!!! for the low-low starting price of $265,000 or something. The promoters got a hundred or so morons to send their dough, then just took off with the money.
Talk to a libertarian and you'll find that they're absolutely convinced they're the smartest person in the room. That is true provided they're alone.
Great! But don't limit yourself to old-fashioned organic refuse! Collect plastics of all kinds and mix it in. The philosophical conundrum presented by your freedom to pile mountains of single-use crap that never rots, blows all over everybody else's landscape,atomizes into particulates, pollutes everybody's soil and water, gets into their farm animals' and their own bodies -- it might, just might cause a little light bulb to go on in one or two heads. It could be a Teaching Thing.
This is what passes for a grievance in the MAGAt Idiocracy: if 70% of the people in a given state live in and around cities and vote for one party, and the other 30% live in rural areas and vote for another party, the 70% are going to win, not because of tyranny, but because ….. the *majority of the people* who live in the state voted to elect that party.
These fascists are like one week away from proposing that anyone who can’t hit their neighbor’s property when they throw a rock should be entitled to have their vote counted twice, LOL.
Back when I would occasionally troll wingnut blogs for the anthropology, I suggested purging welfare slackers, the unemployed, and other un-American non-producers from the voter rolls, and making voting proportional to net worth or taxes paid. For example, if you pay $10,000 in taxes, you get one vote. If you pay $1,000,000 in taxes you get 1,000 votes.
I don't think any of the commenters were millionaires, but they still found the idea intriguing.
Ahhh, succession -- about 10 years ago northeastern Colorado wanted to secede because the legislature banned fracking. The largest city there is Greeley, and then there's nothing more than tiny farming towns to the Kansas border. I don't reven remember what they were going to call it. The United Assembly of Shitburgs, Honktopia, Mayo Island and Grievance Gardens? Who knows? Wheee!
My entire life I’ve had to suffer incompetent, malevolent conservatism at the state level, and to varying degrees at the national level. But when these whiny shitbirds lose a tiny bit of their privilege, they’re nailing themselves up on a cross faster than you can bleat “secession!”
Part of me wants one of these secession movements to get their way and then be forced to grovel to the Feds to make up for all the tax revenue they've been siphoning from the urban regions. Eastern Washington is another region which does this, imagining that they are paying for Seattle schools.
From someone who has lived in both urban and rural communities (including Siskiyou County), the common opinion among rural residents is that the hardships that befall them are the result of their determination to conquer nature red in tooth and claw but the problems of city dwellers are all their own fault.
All those red states with blue stater minorities... Apparently we can't dis those states because they're only run by far right majorities, that the states aren't completely, 100% deranged, delusional conservatives. What to do with these enemies of the state -- which is what conservatives are -- is a huge problem. Maybe just thoughts and prayers for the liberal, progressive minorities.
But since Roy references that "republic, not a democracy" thing, well, they're right. Check out the Constitution. Entrenches a minority-controlled state, avoids majority rule as much as possible. Meanwhile, state-enforced voter disenfranchisement has never been stronger. But the thing is that even by the definition of republic, we're no longer even that. A republic, by definition, is responsive to the will and need of the majority of people and that is not what the US has been for the last couple of decades. The ACA was an exception till the GOP started to work it over and the Dems chose not to fight back. Old Joe, being old, seems interested in actually doing something for the majority, but that's pretty much just prospective at this point. So no, not even a republic. Then again, since it's conservatives saying we're a republic so no greater proof is needed that we're not one; no other facts needed.
BF Skinner said something about if you want to know what a police state is like, live in a small village. I've seen plenty of towns and counties that were essentially fascist feifdoms, run by racist bastards with a collection of bullies and and guys in the Militias in their off hours..The sort of Justice one gets, should you run afoul with these gangsters, depended on your class, status and pocketbook.
Maybe there are some improvements, but steroids and tRumpism has not mellowed the Constabulary in my admittedly peculiar neck of the Woods.
I said: Failed state. Two exhibits: The response to the pandemic -- all the failures were deliberate choices -- and decades of ignoring the wishes and good of the majority of the nation's populace. re the latter, a republic is responsive to and serves the majority.
Good lord, you can *sprout* buboes?? Do they come on little stalks?
What these kind-of malcontents need is good old-fashioned centralized authority, like in the UK. Gov't decides to redraw internal boundaries that go back, in some cases, to frigging William the Conqueror and beyond, for administrative convenience? Boom, redrawn. Fiat. Done. Suck it up, commoners. Oh, go ahead and mutter and whine and form "Historic County" societies, and issue charming government-funded maps showing the old lines if you want, but it's done. Whitehall has spoken.
That's the sort of thing the great middle range of Trumpism dabblers desire in their souls anyway.
Strange, since apart for the OHS link it's all news links -- though WashTimes and Fox probably qualify as dangerous spam (Fox has an autoplayer than kicks in after several minutes).
I don't think it was the links, other than maybe there being such a large number of them. I wondered if the secessionist vocabulary might trigger it--if there are a lot of garden-variety con artists operating on housebound old wingnuts alongside the pros like Ron Paul and Dinesh etc.
Here in the Southern Mountains, where folks have forgotten the place was generally (in the words of a Confederate officer)”a hotbed of Unionism and active opposition to the Confederacy”, I’ve heard folks yelling “we need another Civil War”(mostly over Civil Rights: first for people of color, amd now the LBGBT demographic..)
When I ask the folks with these sentiments, generally old or on SSI Disability, what that would do tho their monthly check, i get unfriended amd the occasional death threat.
People here in Oregon who take showers and practice personal hygiene point at those dumb fuck 'greater state of Idon'tknow' secessionists and laugh.
The pity is that the democrats are once again stepping on their own dicks. Joe Manchin can bite me and Krysten Sinema? I don't even know what's up with that one. Anyways, no voting rights bill will be a catastrophe for the country. Fucking senate, what a useless organization.
Brexit was one of those shiny things the shit-stirrers waved at the rubes. Then, like Trumpism, it took on a life of it's own and got out of control. A secession movement could catch fire pretty quickly, given the current insanity in the body politic.
On a more positive note, why do so many good rock&roll bands come out of the Pacific Northwest? Perhaps the practitioners are channeling the crazy in a constructive way.
These secessionist don't take separatism far enough. Here's my plan to take balkanization of the US to the big time.
Take the ratio of the population of our most to our least populous states, CA:WY, and you get roughly 40:1. Conservatives assert that the US is a republic and not a democracy, so the fact that CA and WY both get two senators, and an equal vote on amendments is absolutely fair and just.
Great, take them at their word, republic and not a democracy. So let's admit the district, not as one state, but as however many states we can divide it into that have the same completely fair and just population ratio to WY, that WY has to CA, which would be a bit over 1:40.
It goes without saying that I do not propose leaving it at that, 40+ little Columbias as permanent states of our republic. The idea would be to get these statelets to vote in amendments getting rid of the states.
If for some reason you think we should still have a Senate, fine, but let these senators be elected from districts of equal population. I would be happy calling the district that would encompass that whole corner of our blursed republic (present-day Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, and the Dakotas) Greater Idaho.
Yes, I look forward to living in one of the dozen states of New York City. Just think of all the extra stars for wingnut flag pins! It would necessitate bringing back extra wide lapels but 70's fashion has been unfairly overlooked for too long.
Fucking wypipo need even more power? The Seasteading Institute wasn't looney enough for them? Greater Idaho? The Founders fucked up royally forming their "republic not a democracy." Why are there two Dakotas? Combined, the population doesn't even equal Phoenix, Arizona, yet they have 4 Senators and 6 Electoral College votes. As it is, California has as many people as the 22 lowest population states combined, but those states have 44 Senators and twice as many E.C. votes. If California's population were apportioned the same as Wyoming the state would have 200 E.C. votes instead of 55. (See Glen Tomkins' comment).
I'm all in favor of wingnut states seceding, as long as they don't get to take all that sweet gub'mint money that donor states like New York and California subsidize.
The problem with the senate (aside from the fact that it exists) is that it represents so many “rotten boroughs,” as the English addressed in the Reform Act of 1832. State populations grow wildly unequally, but the borders can never be adjusted to keep the population equal for senate seats.
Even though Dakota Territory shouldn’t have been split in the first place, South Dakota still had a larger population in 1890 than a handful of existing states like Oregon, Delaware, Vermont, and Rhode Island. But then the population of the rural plains stagnated over the next century, while the borders and senate representation remained the same.
I've thought for a whi!e now that Republicans are in their Ghost Dancer phase, and elimination of majority rule makes perfect sense to them. if anything can shake the apathy out of the third of the electorate that doesn't bother to vote, maybe the threat of taking the option away might do it.
I long for the day when they get to establish their utopia of Galt's Gulch. I will buy 100 acres in that dystopia! But not to live there. Nope. Because the Conservative Paradise will do away with those pesky regulations, I will turn my 100 acres into a giant compost heap, collecting rotting produce from around the country and piling it out in the open. After all, my freedom to make money by heaping rotting garbage on my property absolutely trumps your right to not have a 100-acre heap of rotting garbage next door. Smell the freedom, baby!
You might enjoy reading “A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear”
recommended!
You could probably find some land here: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/21534416/free-state-project-new-hampshire-libertarians-matthew-hongoltz-hetling
Libertarians are like 5-year-olds who whine "why do we have to have rules?" Propose that the kid make up a game with no rules.
Adult: "Will we play it with a ball?"
Kid: "Yes!"
A: "Well, you just made a rule, didn't you?"
K: "Oh."
About 10 years ago, there was a libertarian project started down in Argentina (I think it was Argentina--too lazy to Google this right now). Buy your place NOW!!! for the low-low starting price of $265,000 or something. The promoters got a hundred or so morons to send their dough, then just took off with the money.
Talk to a libertarian and you'll find that they're absolutely convinced they're the smartest person in the room. That is true provided they're alone.
Five-year-olds are educable.
A: "Well, you just made a rule, didn't you?"
K: "Yeah, *I* just made a rule. Not you, me. As long as I'm in charge, that's all that matters."
Hence, Calvinball
Great! But don't limit yourself to old-fashioned organic refuse! Collect plastics of all kinds and mix it in. The philosophical conundrum presented by your freedom to pile mountains of single-use crap that never rots, blows all over everybody else's landscape,atomizes into particulates, pollutes everybody's soil and water, gets into their farm animals' and their own bodies -- it might, just might cause a little light bulb to go on in one or two heads. It could be a Teaching Thing.
Or not.
You can also ingest the freedom, baby!
I can say for certain your idea would appeal to a retired plant nursery worker.
This is what passes for a grievance in the MAGAt Idiocracy: if 70% of the people in a given state live in and around cities and vote for one party, and the other 30% live in rural areas and vote for another party, the 70% are going to win, not because of tyranny, but because ….. the *majority of the people* who live in the state voted to elect that party.
These fascists are like one week away from proposing that anyone who can’t hit their neighbor’s property when they throw a rock should be entitled to have their vote counted twice, LOL.
"One Acre, One Vote"
they really re wedded to the absurd notion that land votes, aren't they?
They are property libertarians, propertarians
When someone finally gives them all that government land they feel they deserve they will have many votes.
Back when I would occasionally troll wingnut blogs for the anthropology, I suggested purging welfare slackers, the unemployed, and other un-American non-producers from the voter rolls, and making voting proportional to net worth or taxes paid. For example, if you pay $10,000 in taxes, you get one vote. If you pay $1,000,000 in taxes you get 1,000 votes.
I don't think any of the commenters were millionaires, but they still found the idea intriguing.
"anthropology" seems like a long way of spelling "lulz".
Laugh now, cry later.
Ahhh, succession -- about 10 years ago northeastern Colorado wanted to secede because the legislature banned fracking. The largest city there is Greeley, and then there's nothing more than tiny farming towns to the Kansas border. I don't reven remember what they were going to call it. The United Assembly of Shitburgs, Honktopia, Mayo Island and Grievance Gardens? Who knows? Wheee!
Disappearing Up Your Own Ass To Own The Libs, A Continuing Series
My entire life I’ve had to suffer incompetent, malevolent conservatism at the state level, and to varying degrees at the national level. But when these whiny shitbirds lose a tiny bit of their privilege, they’re nailing themselves up on a cross faster than you can bleat “secession!”
Part of me wants one of these secession movements to get their way and then be forced to grovel to the Feds to make up for all the tax revenue they've been siphoning from the urban regions. Eastern Washington is another region which does this, imagining that they are paying for Seattle schools.
From someone who has lived in both urban and rural communities (including Siskiyou County), the common opinion among rural residents is that the hardships that befall them are the result of their determination to conquer nature red in tooth and claw but the problems of city dwellers are all their own fault.
All those red states with blue stater minorities... Apparently we can't dis those states because they're only run by far right majorities, that the states aren't completely, 100% deranged, delusional conservatives. What to do with these enemies of the state -- which is what conservatives are -- is a huge problem. Maybe just thoughts and prayers for the liberal, progressive minorities.
But since Roy references that "republic, not a democracy" thing, well, they're right. Check out the Constitution. Entrenches a minority-controlled state, avoids majority rule as much as possible. Meanwhile, state-enforced voter disenfranchisement has never been stronger. But the thing is that even by the definition of republic, we're no longer even that. A republic, by definition, is responsive to the will and need of the majority of people and that is not what the US has been for the last couple of decades. The ACA was an exception till the GOP started to work it over and the Dems chose not to fight back. Old Joe, being old, seems interested in actually doing something for the majority, but that's pretty much just prospective at this point. So no, not even a republic. Then again, since it's conservatives saying we're a republic so no greater proof is needed that we're not one; no other facts needed.
If we're not a democracy or a republic, then what are we?
“A cult with an army (or 3)”is an answer, to this and other questions..
The USA has been low-grade fascist since at least 80s and maybe longer. Maybe just a corporation with an army and an anthem
BF Skinner said something about if you want to know what a police state is like, live in a small village. I've seen plenty of towns and counties that were essentially fascist feifdoms, run by racist bastards with a collection of bullies and and guys in the Militias in their off hours..The sort of Justice one gets, should you run afoul with these gangsters, depended on your class, status and pocketbook.
Maybe there are some improvements, but steroids and tRumpism has not mellowed the Constabulary in my admittedly peculiar neck of the Woods.
Not arguing.
I said: Failed state. Two exhibits: The response to the pandemic -- all the failures were deliberate choices -- and decades of ignoring the wishes and good of the majority of the nation's populace. re the latter, a republic is responsive to and serves the majority.
Good lord, you can *sprout* buboes?? Do they come on little stalks?
What these kind-of malcontents need is good old-fashioned centralized authority, like in the UK. Gov't decides to redraw internal boundaries that go back, in some cases, to frigging William the Conqueror and beyond, for administrative convenience? Boom, redrawn. Fiat. Done. Suck it up, commoners. Oh, go ahead and mutter and whine and form "Historic County" societies, and issue charming government-funded maps showing the old lines if you want, but it's done. Whitehall has spoken.
That's the sort of thing the great middle range of Trumpism dabblers desire in their souls anyway.
My stupid security software decided this post was a phishing attack."Don't click any of the links!"
Strange, since apart for the OHS link it's all news links -- though WashTimes and Fox probably qualify as dangerous spam (Fox has an autoplayer than kicks in after several minutes).
I don't think it was the links, other than maybe there being such a large number of them. I wondered if the secessionist vocabulary might trigger it--if there are a lot of garden-variety con artists operating on housebound old wingnuts alongside the pros like Ron Paul and Dinesh etc.
I’m trying to remember my high school biology to interpret that shitty flag. Two X chromosomes... is it undergoing meiosis?
Here in the Southern Mountains, where folks have forgotten the place was generally (in the words of a Confederate officer)”a hotbed of Unionism and active opposition to the Confederacy”, I’ve heard folks yelling “we need another Civil War”(mostly over Civil Rights: first for people of color, amd now the LBGBT demographic..)
When I ask the folks with these sentiments, generally old or on SSI Disability, what that would do tho their monthly check, i get unfriended amd the occasional death threat.
Stick to your County Commissions and local school boards. Then wonder why nobody wants to live there.
People here in Oregon who take showers and practice personal hygiene point at those dumb fuck 'greater state of Idon'tknow' secessionists and laugh.
The pity is that the democrats are once again stepping on their own dicks. Joe Manchin can bite me and Krysten Sinema? I don't even know what's up with that one. Anyways, no voting rights bill will be a catastrophe for the country. Fucking senate, what a useless organization.
Brexit was one of those shiny things the shit-stirrers waved at the rubes. Then, like Trumpism, it took on a life of it's own and got out of control. A secession movement could catch fire pretty quickly, given the current insanity in the body politic.
On a more positive note, why do so many good rock&roll bands come out of the Pacific Northwest? Perhaps the practitioners are channeling the crazy in a constructive way.
These secessionist don't take separatism far enough. Here's my plan to take balkanization of the US to the big time.
Take the ratio of the population of our most to our least populous states, CA:WY, and you get roughly 40:1. Conservatives assert that the US is a republic and not a democracy, so the fact that CA and WY both get two senators, and an equal vote on amendments is absolutely fair and just.
Great, take them at their word, republic and not a democracy. So let's admit the district, not as one state, but as however many states we can divide it into that have the same completely fair and just population ratio to WY, that WY has to CA, which would be a bit over 1:40.
It goes without saying that I do not propose leaving it at that, 40+ little Columbias as permanent states of our republic. The idea would be to get these statelets to vote in amendments getting rid of the states.
If for some reason you think we should still have a Senate, fine, but let these senators be elected from districts of equal population. I would be happy calling the district that would encompass that whole corner of our blursed republic (present-day Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, and the Dakotas) Greater Idaho.
Yes, I look forward to living in one of the dozen states of New York City. Just think of all the extra stars for wingnut flag pins! It would necessitate bringing back extra wide lapels but 70's fashion has been unfairly overlooked for too long.
Fucking wypipo need even more power? The Seasteading Institute wasn't looney enough for them? Greater Idaho? The Founders fucked up royally forming their "republic not a democracy." Why are there two Dakotas? Combined, the population doesn't even equal Phoenix, Arizona, yet they have 4 Senators and 6 Electoral College votes. As it is, California has as many people as the 22 lowest population states combined, but those states have 44 Senators and twice as many E.C. votes. If California's population were apportioned the same as Wyoming the state would have 200 E.C. votes instead of 55. (See Glen Tomkins' comment).
I'm all in favor of wingnut states seceding, as long as they don't get to take all that sweet gub'mint money that donor states like New York and California subsidize.
The problem with the senate (aside from the fact that it exists) is that it represents so many “rotten boroughs,” as the English addressed in the Reform Act of 1832. State populations grow wildly unequally, but the borders can never be adjusted to keep the population equal for senate seats.
Even though Dakota Territory shouldn’t have been split in the first place, South Dakota still had a larger population in 1890 than a handful of existing states like Oregon, Delaware, Vermont, and Rhode Island. But then the population of the rural plains stagnated over the next century, while the borders and senate representation remained the same.
If those states secede, they'll have to give up all the welfare they get from DC. Talk about welfare cheats...
Why has Allan West joined the Texas secessionists? Does he think he'll get nicer quarters than the other slaves?
I've thought for a whi!e now that Republicans are in their Ghost Dancer phase, and elimination of majority rule makes perfect sense to them. if anything can shake the apathy out of the third of the electorate that doesn't bother to vote, maybe the threat of taking the option away might do it.