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Just let the fuckers leave. Today. They can take their 2 Republican Senators and 38 Representatives (25R, 13D) with them. We'll build a wall on the border and make them pay for it.
Seriously though, how long do you think they would make it on their own? The last time they were they're own country they BEGGED the US to take them in for what, 9 years? Before we finally did.
Texas is one of the few self-sufficient Republican states. (eg. They contribute more than they receive from federal funds.) They’d survive.
That being said, their economy would be fucked because all the US trade agreements suddenly would disappear. Look how badly that affected the UK with Brexit, and then multiply it by 100.
All the tech companies in Texas would leave. As would most Democrats with the means to do it. There goes your highly educated workforce (Democrats tend to be more highly educated based on demographic data).
The US military would leave. And then there goes all the defense contractors too.
They wouldn't be self-sufficient on their own. They're only self sufficient because they're part of the US.
I’m a Texan and a Democrat. I would be out of here so fucking fast. I’d rather work at McDonald’s in California than live in an independent Texas Republic.
I wish I could join, but I'll take a role as a saboteur.
Also, you're forgetting an important factor: food. Texas is not part of the breadbasket, it is not known for its agricultural produce, and the amount of good soil is not enough to feed the population.
Assuming Texas dips into its slush fund to buy things like grain, it would be flat broke in a decade, with only oil fields and beef to trade (they'd lose their offshore oil rigs).
And from what I’ve heard they use fossil water for their crops which is salinating their good soil
This point right here so many Texas cities entire economy is based on the military industrial complex.
Their economy would be fucked because they'd need to draw up an entire economy overnight. What is a US dollar to a non-American? What does a Texas bank look like, and how does it function differently from a US bank? Do the companies currently operating nationally across the US have the right or capability of operating in New Texas? What forms must they fill out to file their taxes? Where goes the money that was previously pouring into the Houston area due to NASA jobs that suddenly don't exist there? What about the money in San Antonio, Waco, and other towns with military bases suddenly drying up? What about the fact that the federal government owns the land those military bases are built on? What do the private companies who operate phone lines and Internet backbones do with the physical media installed in the ground which they presumably own?
The people who are cheering on secession have no fucking clue about this stuff. They lack the ability to perform a reality check. They don't even know how to question their ideas, and they don't have any independent thoughts. Their minds are controlled entirely by their political and religious shepherds.
The politicians who lead them on with the idea they might get away with it don't need to answer the questions. They say and do these things because the people who put them in power think of the argument for secession as the equivalent of a schoolyard fight. "Oh yeah, well if you won't kick the transes out of the kickball game then I'm just gonna take the ball and go play kickball over there by myself." It's stupid and childish and completely unrealistic.
I hope I'm right that Abbott, et al, have thought of all this and are only grandstanding, allowing their collective lobotomy of a voter base to rabble rouse, and won't actually go for this. It would be an absolute bloodbath when they all starve or get summarily executed as the full thrust of the most expensive military budget in the known universe blasts in to establish order.
I hope so too, but there's always the possibly that the situation gets out of hand and Abbott and his goons lose control of the populace and start a chain reaction they can't stop.
All it world take is for one of the many unregulated militias to engage with federal forces over the razor-wire dispute.
Other "militias" see this as the start of the war that Abbott has been promising them and follow suit.
Then you have multiple engagements that require a response from the US government.
Even if it doesn't break down into a full "civil war", people could die and tensions could greatly escalate.
He's playing with fire, and if he isn't very careful he could easily fumble it and make a mess he's not prepared to deal with.
I'm not sure they're self-sufficient anymore. If I remember correctly, that one study was from 20 years ago and was done by a right-wing think tank, and the trend for Texas was overall negative. They stopped that study basically right before Texas started breaking even.
They'd be conquered by Mexico in a hot second.
The cartels would easily take over.
They wouldn't make it through a single winter (if they got that far)
They lasted like a year before seceding with the confederacy. They’re the failstate of America
5.2 million people voted Democratic in the 2020 presidential election (46% of those who voted). It would be a tragedy to abandon them. It would also create an ongoing threat to the stability of the remaining country. As Martin Luther King said, "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."
To add to your excellent point (that there are more democrats in Texas than the entire population of many states), very, very few people are actually a part of this “movement.”
This isn’t a real thing that normal people actually endorse, it’s a bumper sticker you see on an old beat up truck in the wal-mart parking lot.
It’s like the Texas version of flat earthers or ghost/alien hunters or Bigfoot researchers. They do exist but they are massively over-represented in the press because it’s so stupid that people can’t help but “tune in.”
When a cancer invades a healthy organ, that organ is typically removed fully. That’s because, while there are good cells in that organ, the cancerous cells represent a greater danger to the overall being.
Unlike cells, liberals in Texas can move to a different state. Maybe they should.
Left leaning fella in a deep red district in Georgia. Can I move elsewhere? Physically, yes. Financially, not a friggen chance. Lots of us are stuck in place for financial reasons or even familial.
If people had to move states every time a relatively tiny group of idiots advocated for something stupid that’s never going to happen, there would be nowhere on earth to live.
Lol, you think the cancer that's infected Texas hasn't already metastisized throughout our country?
You're suggesting 5.2 million should be forced to migrate, and we should leave a cancerous state to its whims right next to our border?
They may be forced to by their own state government. It’s not my issue if Texans want to do that to themselves.
There's not a mechanism for secession from the United States. That's what started the civil war. So unless our leadership gives up on our citizens, it's not a question of being forced to. I would encourage progressive minded people to have empathy for our fellow humans and not assume that all people from "red" areas are uniformly awful.
We can trade Texas for Puerto Rico and won't even need to change the flag! Win-win
Please don't leave me here.
Just learn some Spanish and Abbott will let you get on a bus to come up North, for free!
If Texass suddenly became its own country, I wouldn't expect them to be so generous to those people as to keep sending them to better places.
They'd probably decide those people should be concentrated somewhere away from decent Texans.
Those Texans forget that current prosperity relies on being part of the Union. As soon as they leave they will be worse than just having tariffs; they'd be embargoded so hard Cuba looks like a trade empire.
I had a buddy in the army who desperately wanted to believe Texas was a fully functional country that needed no America.
They want to break away to become their true calling, a shithole country.
I love shitting on Texas and Florida and, well every southern state, and most of the Midwest, and quite a few states out west, but as someone who lives in one of these areas I like to remind everyone that's there's a lot of decent people living in those states. That is all.
There are also lots of decent people living in the countries the US bombs.
What's the difference?
If Texas secedes we can arm the Resistance and install a new regime!
It'll be fun, those CIA guys are getting a little bored anyways.
The difference is the issue being discussed. Being discussed is a state seceding from the US. What you are interjecting is a comment on the US's foreign policy.
We could just return them to Mexico. Call it an apology for the inconvenience of us keeping California and New Mexico.
If they secede the cartels will probably be running Texas within a week anyway.
I think the return window on Texas has expired, unfortunately.
Um, hello? Lots of innocent people live here.
Especially a ton of Democrats, many of them POC, LGBT etc who will become the targets on day one.
Seriously, some of the people commenting on this are either stupid and heartless.
Politics isn't just an Internet game, it's people's lives
Looks like Putin gave the Brexit propagandists a new assignment.
TNM has no teeth. They've been lobbying to secede for years. This is a ploy Abbott knows he's going to lose so he can play victim for the next 10 months to boost Republican voter turnout.
Hand it over to the cartels and see how they like living in a 'libertarian' state.
Give it back to Mexico