General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsIf Texas does secede, we should support letting the Lone Star "blue zones" secede FROM Texas.
There is no good reason to force people in places like Austin or San Antonio or any of the other blue areas of the state live forever under the bootheel of what would have to be a white evangelical police state.
We should also do that for any other blue regions in the South at some point, anyway.
Kip Humphrey
(4,753 posts)guess not.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)Texas is going to have a right-wing majority forever. We should bother trying to keep that state together as currently constituted, or keep Mississippi, Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Arkansas and the Carolinas together.
Let the right-wing white voters live by themselves in their deluded Dixiecrat fantasyland. None of those people can ever be changed, and their children will mostly be dead losses politically as well.
TampaAnimusVortex
(785 posts)I've always said (tongue in cheek mind you), that the US should be divided up along the lines of the Nolan chart. The left gets the west coast, the right gets the east. Northern get more authoritarian, southern gets less authoritarian... then people can just move to where their comfortable.
Ahh, but my submission for king of the US for a day will probably never get approved.
SCantiGOP
(13,875 posts)I have read several articles talking about the demographic changes going on in Texas. It will soon be majority Hispanic, and all trends show it becoming a Democratic state for Presidential elections in the next 10-15 years. Of course it would take much longer than that to ever reverse the drastic gerrymandering they have used to configure their Congressional districts and State Legislature.
For example, Austin now votes Democratic in national elections, but 3 or the 4 US House districts are strongly Republican because they have crammed as many Dem-leaning voters as possible into one district and added GOP suburbs to the other three.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)unless you are a right-wing homophobic white supremacist reactionary.
Is there any good reason for the black and hispanic and progressive population of the state to even keep living there?
Why should all of those people have to put up with at least another decade-and-a-half of this shit? If the state flips AFTER that, will it even still matter?
I don't want to see Texas actually secede, btw...I was just talking about what to do if it actually happened.
kentauros
(29,414 posts)Last edited Fri May 13, 2016, 05:16 AM - Edit history (1)
Then again, hate does tend to cause tunnel-vision.
The Texas Nationalist Movement, once considered a quixotic fringe group, has added hundreds of members in the years since the election of Barack Obama. According to the Houston Chronicle's Dylan Baddour, at least 10 county GOP chapters are coming to the convention supporting independence resolutions.
"Hundreds of members" out of a total state population of 27,469,114.
"at least 10 county GOP chapters" out of 254 counties statewide. Even if 12 chapters show up, that's still less than five-percent of all counties in the state.
This is a non-issue, that even the Texas GOP is against.
Right?
I feel the need to roll my eyes heavily when I see this kind of crap... and yes... it's CRAP!
KamaAina
(78,249 posts)But I would imagine that they'd be among the smaller ones, like Loving County in far west Texas, which with a population of less than 100 is the nation's smallest county.
kentauros
(29,414 posts)That's what I get for calculating on a cold
Also, 'smallest' might be correct for population, but not the size of the county. Those west Texas counties are larger than many whole states in area!
KamaAina
(78,249 posts)The latter comprising Manhattan. Not sure which is which.
kentauros
(29,414 posts)though we do have a town named Manhattan
I wasn't talking about smallest counties everywhere, only the smallest in population in Texas, and the largest counties in Texas by area, which are larger than whole states elsewhere in the country.
Wikipedia's List of Texas Counties is a good resource, as you can also order it by any of the columns, such as county population and area
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)And this thread is not about hate...it's about trying to protect the powerless in the Lone Star State.
It's pretty much impossible that the gerrymandering in legislative and congressional districts there will ever be overturned.
kentauros
(29,414 posts)but in the minds of the DU Texas-Haters contingent, all they need to see to make their day is "Texas" and "secede." It's like candy to them.
And as I live here, I do not feel the gerrymandering is permanent. Nothing in permanent.
KamaAina
(78,249 posts)Do they all have airports like Tempelhof within their limits that we could use to supply them?
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)Some days, the "Republic of New Afrika" idea makes a lot of sense.
KamaAina
(78,249 posts)I strenuously objected because we'd lose New Orleans.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)KamaAina
(78,249 posts)One blogger proposed a city-state called the Ile d'Orleans.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)meow2u3
(24,775 posts)East Texas was (I'm not sure it still is) Bigotry Central when I lived in TX. North Texas is Snootsville (my family can attest to that). IDK about West Texas, but South Texas appears to be sapphire blue.
If we only could get the Latino voting-age population to register and vote, even if it's in Spanish.
Fumesucker
(45,851 posts)Except unlike the Commies I wouldn't put it past those red staters to shoot down our supply planes.
Ich bin ein San Antonian.
AgadorSparticus
(7,963 posts)Definitely get rid of East Texas. Total armpit of the state. But everywhere else is GREAT!! Especially S. Texas! I love the valley--although some people think the Rio Grande Valley is an armpit too. But I don't care. I love the valley. And yes, I am biased.
lonestarnot
(77,097 posts)LostOne4Ever
(9,292 posts)[font style="font-family:'Georgia','Baskerville Old Face','Helvetica',fantasy;" size=4 color=#009999]Like me! Cause I live in the [font color=scarlet]RED[/font] part of the state!
How about we just round up all the rightwingers, and shoot them to the moon instead![/font]
LanternWaste
(37,748 posts)It's a movement no more popular than the Reconquista movement. There hasnt been any recent polling, but a 2009 Rasmussen Reports survey found that 31 percent of Texans say the state has a right to secede but just 18 percent of Texans would vote to secede from the U.S. if given a choice. Three-fourths of Texas citizens say they oppose secession.
For context: that 18 percent figure is identical to the percentage of Americans who say they favor allowing their state or region to secede from the nation, according to a 2008 Zogby poll. So Texas is no more secessionist than, say, Alaska. Or Rhode Island.
Additionally, a lot of half-witted and under-educated people believe the urban-myth that TX can secede with impunity; however Texas has no more right to secede than any other state-- it can divide itself into five states should it choose to do so, but that's irrelevant to the idiotic premise held by Texas legislators and US citizens alike that TX has some special right to become an independent nation-state.
Jerry442
(1,265 posts)Try, if you want, to work out how a state would secede amicably from the Union while treating all issues of land ownership, assets (especially military), debts, contractual obligations and so on as equitably as possible.
Doesn't take long to reach the conclusion that amicable secession is an oxymoron. There are far too many issues were the parties couldn't possibly reach agreement and there would be no higher authority to appeal to. Secession could only happen at gunpoint.
We tried that once. Didn't like it much.
blogslut
(38,021 posts)Thousands of delegates were hammering out the party's platform in Dallas on Friday when language was proposed backing secession.
That drew applause and Republican Party Chairman Tom Mechler was briefly booed when he cut off debate on a related matter...
Oh look. It didn't happen for the bajillionth time.
puffy socks
(1,473 posts)Berlin was split in half but was surrounded by East German territory. West Berlin had progressive political views of West Germans, East Berlin was part of the Soviet Union owned and operated East Germany.
The only aircraft of the three Western Allies were allowed to fly to or from West Berlin; civilian traffic was principally served by Air France, British European Airways (later British Airways) and Pan Am. River traffic was hugely important to the survival of West Berlin, conveying around five million tons of cargo a year to the city, but was subjected to numerous inspections and petty restrictions by the East German authorities.[8] Rail traffic was excruciatingly slow; locomotives and train crews had to be changed at the border, the East German Transport Police (Trapos) carried out inspections using sniffer dogs to uncover stowaways, passports and visas had to be processed at border stations and the condition of the track was so poor that trains were limited to a maximum speed of 70 kilometres per hour (43 mph).[9] Road crossings were fairly straightforward but slow because of the extensive border formalities and inspections. Drivers were required to stay on designated transit routes across East Germany.[10]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossing_the_inner_German_border
Or, like the Gaza strip, conservative Texas would have control of what goes in and what goes out. They could starve progressives to death in ghettos.
silvershadow
(10,336 posts)just to get their hackles up.