I live in Texas and had a couple friends who were on that bandwagon. I asked them had they thought about going toe to toe with the US Marines while bombers are over Austin and drones over everywhere else. All i got back was silence. The union will be preserved at any cost, there's precedent for that. No state will secede without defeating the US military first.
https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/files/cow/imce/costs/soc...
You assumption that Texas would have to go toe to toe with the US Marines is a big assumption when many Marines are from Texas or would be politically sympathetic. If it came to it, the US Military would likely face a large breakdown and crisis within itself.
That's not true. The overrepresented regions are basically the South and the West. The Midwest “flyover states” and Northeast are the most underrepresented areas.
And while the South is overrepresented, (Also, military recruitment isn't necessarily politically representative of the states it is drawn from; sure, the Deep South is overrepresented, but that's also a big part of the reason the Blacks are super-overrepresented in the military (making up nearly triple the share of the military as of the country at large.) And Southern Blacks politically don't look the same as “the South” more broadly.
I just don't think the secession people have thought about the level of violence required to actually secede. And even then what happens next? A blockade and sanctions then the entire state slowly starves to death or submission. Maybe Texas could form an alliance with Mexico.. ok now the United States declares war on Mexico. I don't think Mexico would want that.
the whole secession story just falls apart after 10 minutes of thought.
If the US didn't goto war to preserve the union then the US, as defined the US constitution, ceases to exist. There is no provision in the constitution laying out the right (or even the method) for secession.
Sure there is. It is called the amendment process, and requires a supermajority vote.
Unless, you are going to claim that using the amendment process, officially, as laid out in the constitution is some treasonous act, that the military would stop.
(Funnily enough, I have see people make this silly argument! That it is unconstitutional to use the official constitutional amendment process, and is treason!)
You can't aim a gun at someone to changing their beliefs, much less kill your way toward that goal. What you will do is create more and more costly asynchronous warfare, as we have seen with people in other nations that our military has tried to subdue (ie Hearts and Minds). Modern communication has created and maintained rebel organizations over great distances with little investment and minimal effort. What's worse is modern warfare usually empowers the targets of that military effort. eg Running some tanks over to Texas is basically agreeing to destroy those tanks when they are inevitably captured or left behind, because it's too vulnerable and expensive to bring them back from the front lines (which would be everywhere), as the Russians have learned.
Obviously a lot has changed since 1861 but it seems odd to act like it's totally inconceivable
The incentive and reasoning is a lot weaker than in the 1800s, so I wouldn't say similar. Now it's more of a nostalgic fantasy and it's known that the sentiment endures.
> Obviously a lot has changed since 1861
That's the point.
Texas has a bit of a unique history compared to other states, it was it's own country at one point and they made sure that we learned it, even in US history courses. Part of what makes the idea realistic is that the state could support itself, if it had too. There are major air & sea ports/trade, energy, food, defense, medical, technology, research, etc. While it seceded from the union, it really didnt do much in the civil war - but the most telling is that it still went with being a part of other states instead of becoming a Republic again. The idea of being an independent country is more of having this mental place to escape too when things are not going their (currently republican) way. The 180 the state did from its heighten Independents/secession rhetoric during Obama to going full-on Trumpism kowtowing is dizzying.
And unlike the first Civil War, the United States didn't have the means to destroy the rest of the world should their weapons fall into the wrong hands. The world has an interest to concern itself and intercede. When you say the end of the empire is going to be bad, that's not the half of it - it's almost unthinkably bad.
There are things that can be done with no dependency, but they themselves are not as useful without dependants. Take cobalt mining for example; it's not something you need anyone else for, but once you got all that cobalt, who's going to process it? Who is going to buy it?
Same goes for more fundamental things like wheat and corn, either you do it at a small scale where you can't really live off of the returns, or you do it at a large scale but now you need dependants to buy it off of you.
(in the concepts I wrote I assumed independence from an isolationists perspective which isn't realistic but somehow does seem to coincide with the not-very-well-thought-through independence wishers)
Generally, in the country in the Europe I've lived in, the people who want to secede are those who don't want to see their taxes go to the country's lazy and scammy region (almost all countries have one).
A lot of that money goes to roads and infrastructure, so it's a little more dramatic than it sounds, but importation of goods would take a hit if those roads degraded, let alone if someone put Czech hedgehogs and foxholes at the state line because your stupid ass didn't look at the logistics of secession.
If you think Brexit was stupid, imagine Idaho deciding it didn't want food from out of state anymore.
An explanation I've heard for this is that the people upset with overpaying taxes aren't the people getting welfare benefits, but they see those people and think that the benefits are not deserved.
And medicare/medicaid/social security total to ~half of all Federal spending in the US, so that's not nothing.
How is this any different than when some rich techie on HN says "I know it's not good for me personally but I want higher taxes because that's the right thing to do"?
For all its touted net-contribution to the federal budget California would not survive on its own, as it depends on electricity from other states and water from the Colorado River (a shared resource between several states). To be sure, California puts these shared resources to extremely productive use and pays back the value to its neighbors, but this kind of interdependence probably would not exist if California went rebel.
If a civil war or rebellion did break out I don't think it'd happen along state lines. The kind of power the states now wield actually depends on the existence of the union, so I don't see them wanting to destroy that relationship.
but they want to secede from existing states, not from the union
Now, of course, if you were at war, such dependency would hurt, for sure. But on the long term, country borders don't mean that much to capitalism.
(I have no data, but as suspect it's actually only a small minority of local politicians clinging to keeping a large part of a the small part of the pie.)
I suppose the metro government has something to keep in here too (national waters in Mediterranean see, maybe ? Links to the drug cartels ? No idea.)
But I suspect the French government that will announce true indépendance for Corsica would be met by forks and pitches _from_ the Islanders.)
> the same states that generate less federal tax revenue than they spend
False.
Nearly all the places that talk about secession are the same states that generate less federal tax revenue than they spend. Which is both why it would be a terrible idea, and why people get upset about it. Few people who know they are getting a handout enjoy having everybody else know it, and it makes them bristly.