Hit the Road, Jack or US Out of Texas!

[IamSam]

Disclaimer: No, not everyone in the South is a racist Nazi, many if not most white Southerners are honorable people, etc, etc. My own family has roots in the South going back to the late 1700's and earlier. I am proud of my Southern heritage and I've read more than one book about Southern history and culture. (There is an excellent article in Salon for those who are interested.) I've often thought about the ways in which the South has and has not changed. The following is merely an observation of a few political/regional trends both then and now. Satisfaction is not guaranteed.

The nation continues to stagger onward into the new year, hobbled by high unemployment, an uncertain economic future and a paralyzed government, held hostage by the tea party. One national poll found that the communist party is actually more popular than Congress - Commies got an 11% approval rating and Congress got 10%

A group representing a minority of Americans has so far blocked any attempts at functional government. The tea party has embraced Nancy's Reagan's "Just say 'no' campaign and broadened it to include saying 'no' to anything and everything that anyone else not tea party might be so foolish as to bring to the House floor.

The Southern states are the heartland of the tea party consituency with Texas in the lead and Florida a close second. The ideology of this "grass roots" movement is nothing new. From the earliest years of the American republic, white Southern conservatives who have lost elections and found themselves in the political minority have sought to extort concessions from national majorities by paralyzing or threatening to destroy the United States.

The most famous historical example of this is, of course, the Civil War (or "the War Between the States," as many Southerners call it). Southerners were even more angry over the election of Lincoln than they are now over the election of Obama. The South vented its spleen with the attack on Fort Sumter and the exit stage right to form the Confederacy.

It is hardly surprising that once again, having lost the November election, Southern Tea Party members began circulating petitions to secede from the Union with Texas having the greatest number of signatories.

Despite its claim of a return to the principles of the founding fathers, the tea party has little use for participatory democracy - especially when it loses a national election, but even when the party is asked to make the smallest compromise to allow the country to move forward. Better to go off the fiscal cliff, better for the US to default on its loans, better to deny disaster relief for the blue states of New York and New Jersey, better to shut down the US government than to give a single inch. The motto of the tea party is "My way or the highway," and they mean every word.

It's also important for the South to suppress voters who happen to have the wrong skin color and/or are members of the wrong socio-economic class. The presidential election antics put on every 4 years by the state of Florida are well known examples of this. There is still barely concealed resentment over the Civil Rights movement of the '60's among many white Southerners. And they still remember the Reconstruction era with great bitterness.

It is time for the United States to give the South what it has wanted for more than 200 years. Let it remove itself from the rest of the country and form its own government. Texas was once a seperate nation and many there long for it to be seperate again. Let's start with Texas. Give x number of years for its transition to independence, draw the new borders and do what we should have done in 1861 had it not been more important to abolish slavery - let the South go.

The United States could then move forward while the tea party government of the nation of Texas moves back.