Secession

I see that there are a bunch of petitions for states to secede (I like to link to Fox News stories so conservatives can’t complain about biased sources) from the Union after the president was re-elected. These make great sensational headlines which further push people into “us” and “them” camps. Of course, the first thing I thought, and the first thing any critical news consumer should have thought, was: It makes sense that there would be an increase in secession petitions after every election, so this is probably not news. I set out to prove my theory and provide a tiny bit of context to these stories. (You’re welcome, journalists.)

First of all, no state is really going to secede. These are symbolic gestures from a tiny fraction of Internet users seeking attention. I don’t even need to do any research to know that. It is in no way a vast avalanche grassroots uprising, or whatever people will try to say about it (I don’t know if they are saying that, but I have no doubt that someone will). The only reason we are even hearing about it is that you can digitally submit and sign these petitions over the Internet. If people had to actually go around to houses and convince people to get out a pen and sign a physical piece of paper, 50 states would not have secession petitions. (Once again proving my theory that instantaneous global communication in the hands of ordinary people will be the downfall of society.) So no worries there.

Second, a handful of states have had secessionist movements that have been around for a while, including Alaska, Hawaii, Texas, and, for some strange reason, Vermont.

Unfortunately I can’t find what I’m looking for, which is a nice list or graph showing a spike in petitions after every election, but that’s probably only because nobody has put that data on the Internet yet. Not even Data.gov, which has an unbelievably esoteric set of obscure data about the U.S., including—I am not making this—“U.S. Tomato Statistics.”

But what I did find was a handful of articles with at least some minor attempt at providing context:

Secession Petitions: What They Mean In The Context Of History. I love this quote from Dr. Sean Busick: “If you’re serious about the secession, you don’t ask the federal government’s permission.”

MSSU professor says secession petitions a positive sign. “It would take an act of a state legislature, in conjunction with a governor, in order to formally secede from the union.” Internet petitions are not legally binding.

Secession petition signer says he doesn’t want Tennessee to secede. Sorry, but this quote made me laugh: “I think that we should be a united front, but we’re not. We have a president that divides.” It sounds like he thinks we are supposed to be a nation of Republicans, but somehow half of them were tricked into voting Democratic. And I continue to be baffled over how Congress always seems to escape any blame for their divisiveness.

Okay, well I’m bored of this research now. This is why I stopped delving into deep political issues … it is incredibly time-consuming to find “the truth” in politics, and nobody wants to listen to reason anyway. People actually enjoy arguing about these things.