A REPLY TO THE BLUE STATERS WHO ARE SECEDING

 

 

The following “letter” is making the rounds on Face Book.  Such a great letter deserves a reply.

DEAR RED STATES; WE'RE LEAVING.

We've decided we're leaving. We intend to form our own country, and we're taking the other Blue States with us.

In case you aren't aware, that includes Hawaii, Oregon, California, New Mexico, Washington, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois and all the Northeast.

We believe this split will be beneficial to the nation, and especially to the people of the new country that includes Puerto Rico, U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam and Washington D.C.

We also get the vast majority of the major shipping ports. So good luck with getting goods in or out of the country affordably.

We also get Costco, Starbucks and Boeing. You get Texas, Oklahoma and all the slave states.

We get stem cell research and the best beaches.

We get the Statue of Liberty. You get Branson, Missouri.

We get Intel, Apple and Microsoft. You get WorldCom.

We get 85 percent of America's venture capital and entrepreneurs. You get Mississippi.

We get two-thirds of the tax revenue; you get to make the red states pay their fair share.

Since our aggregate divorce rate is 22 percent lower than the Christian Coalition's, we get a bunch of happier, intact families.

Please be aware that California will be pro-choice and anti-war, and we're going to want all our citizens back from Iraq at once. If you need people to fight, ask your evangelicals. They have kids they're apparently willing to send to their deaths for no purpose, and they don't care if you don't show pictures of their children's caskets coming home.

With the Blue States unified, we will have firm control of 80 percent of the country's fresh water, more than 90 percent of the pineapple and lettuce, 92 percent of the nation's fresh fruit, 95 percent of America's quality wines (you can serve French wines at your state dinners) 90 percent of all cheese, 90 percent of the high tech industry, most of the U.S. low-sulfur coal, all living redwoods, sequoias and condors, all the Ivy and Seven Sister schools -- Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, the Penn, Princeton, and Yale; and Mount Holyoke, Vassar, Smith, Wellesley, Bryn Mawr, Barnard, and Radcliffe colleges; plus UCLA, UCB, Stanford, Cal Tech and MIT.

With the Red States, on the other hand, you will have to cope with 88 percent of all obese Americans (and their projected health care costs), 92 percent of all U.S. mosquitoes, nearly 100 percent of the tornadoes, 90 percent of the hurricanes, 99 percent of all Southern Baptists, virtually 100 percent of all televangelists, Rush Limbaugh, Alex Jones and Rand Paul.

We get Hollywood and Yosemite, thank you.

Additionally, 62 percent of you believe life is sacred unless we're discussing the death penalty or gun laws, 44 percent say that evolution is only a theory, 53 percent that Saddam was involved in 9/11 and 61 percent of you crazy bastards believe you are people with higher morals then we lefties. (See that part about divorces. ...)

Oh, and you can have all the new COVID-19 cases since you're too dumb and self-centered to wear masks.

Peace out.

We are the people of the Blue States

 

Dear Blue States,

It was so nice to hear from you.  What an interesting proposition.  It turns out, all the comparisons to 1860 are true; the Democrats really do favor dissolution of the Union if they cannot have their own way.  (And, apparently, the late unpleasantness of 1861-65 wasn’t "just" about slavery.  See, e.g., Professor Jonathan Turley’s article at https://jonathanturley.org/2010/09/24/uncivil-action-was-lincoln-wrong-on-secession/.)  But I digress.

So, you've decided you’re leaving and taking your Blue Buds with you to “form our own country.”   That’s nice, dears, but we will just have to see about that. 

You may get LA, San Francisco, and Sacramento and the burned out remains of Portland and Seattle, but a whole lot of Californians, Oregonians, and Washingtonians would be very glad, indeed, to see you go.  When you leave the United States and form whatever little Baltic States you imagine, applying the West Virginia principle, we will be glad to wave goodbye to those who are seceding from us and to welcome, as President Lincoln said of West Virginia, those who are seceding to us.

About Puerto Rico, U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam and Washington D.C. Not that it matters in your opium dream, but territories cannot secede. They will still belong to the United States (a nation of which you will no longer be a part.)  You’re leaving, remember?  You can take whatever part of your former States that really want to go—we won’t stop you—but you get only those parts that affirmatively want to do so. You don’t get to pick and choose. Can you spell referenda? 

Shipping ports?  Really?  Boston stopped being a major port shortly after the tea leaves settled.  We will still have Baltimore, Norfolk, Charleston, Savannah, Mobile, New Orleans, Galveston, San Diego, and St Louis. And don’t be so sure that New York City/Newark, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, will still be “major ports.”  Where will the goods shipped there be going?  They are merely ports of entry.  If the tariffs we will place on goods shipped into those city-states when they try to leave for the United States, shippers may realize shipping through those ports is too costly.  Explain empty docks and piers to lots of unemployed stevedores , warehouse workers, and associated employees.  But you will finally have your dream:  you can all pay your “fair share” to support all those folks your departure put out of work.

Starbucks and Costco, you can have.  Boeing?  Wanna bet?  With you gone, Boeing can quicken its move to South Carolina, reopen its works in Wichita, and build new plants in places where the ratio of sunny days to rain is something significantly more than 1:1.  Hey, Seattle, explain that to all your out-of-work aircraft workers.   Tesla and the space industry are coming with us, too, thanks to your one-party California government who told Mr. Musk to get out.  Intel, Apple, and the rest of Silicon Valley may decide that they want to stay in the United States in with the rest of the Central Valley rather than the garbage infested streets of San Francisco.  

Stem cell research is an interesting point.  What makes you think all research hospitals and universities are limited to your States, especially your little city-states.  Sure, funding may—may-- depend on State research grants, but with the tax base you will have in your enclaves, don’t expect that there will be much spare cash to do much of anything.  The best beaches?  You’ve got to be kidding.

“We get the Statue of Liberty. You get Branson, Missouri.”  OK.  Fair trade.  One is a statue from France and the other, along with Nashville, Memphis, and New Orleans, is a home to a truly unique brand of culture.

Venture capital and entrepreneurs?  Those folks do make (or lose) tons of money, but in this computer-centric age, they can do it anywhere, and in a country that will have the US dollar, all of the gold in Fort Knox, and commercial rents that will please their accountants. You get whatever you wish to call your new currency, but it won’t be backed by much.  Here’s an idea that should appeal to you: call it the ruble.

No, we get two-thirds of the tax revenue.  You get whatever you can squeeze from burned out, unemployed stones of your city states.  And believe me when I say that anyone who has any income or assets will flee your “fair share” pipe dream.  Explain that to all the folks who have lived on government largesse for nearly a century.

You get a bunch of happier, intact families, eh?  Want to bet? 

So, “California will be pro-choice and anti-war,” you say.   Perhaps any part of the former State of California will be, but you may want to re-think that choice thing.  You’re going to need to breed a lot of children to work to support your welfare State.

 Our citizen-soldiers are welcome to return to you as soon as their enlistments are completed.  Some may actually take you up on it, but when they realize that their VA benefits that they got for actually enlisting are going to look awfully good to your tax collectors, they may just stay here with their country-men and country-women who actually appreciate their patriotism and sacrifice.

Now, about fresh water.   LA is going to get awfully dry and thirsty when the Colorado River diversion goes away.  Pineapples?  Assuming that all of Hawaii goes with you, perhaps, but I doubt that you will see them.  They will be too expensive for you once the new nation of Hawaii turns its face west to Japanese and Chinese markets.  With all that water from the Colorado River, I doubt that we will be short of lettuce.  The high-tech industry is very portable:  your model leader, Comrade Stalin, proved that whole industries can be transported over mountain ranges in very short order.  And we will have the population, the roads, and the money to do just that.  And, of course, the Central and Silicon Valleys may just decide that being Americans is a lot better than being whatever you decide to call LA, San Francisco, and Sacramento.  I mean all of those are Christian (Roman Catholic) names and we know that you detest the “dogmatic Catholic faith.”

Coal? We’ll survive.  All living redwoods, sequoias and condors? Sadly, there are not as many of those left after your Californian governor let the forests burn. 

So you figure you are going to get all the Ivy and Seven Sister schools -- Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Penn, Princeton, and Yale; and Mount Holyoke, Vassar, Smith, Wellesley, Bryn Mawr, Barnard, and Radcliffe colleges.  By my count that is 15 schools.  We will still have Penn State, Illinois, The Ohio State University, Purdue, and I’ll bet the faculties of those 15, plus UCLA, UCB, Stanford, Cal Tech, MIT, and others will suddenly decide that living in a destitute city-state that cannot support those schools is a bad deal. 

Sorry to hear that you don’t like “fat people” but you won’t have to worry about that anymore.  You’re going to be on short rations pretty quickly.

Tornadoes are truly mean and vicious bastards, but we have managed to survive them since we got here. Same for hurricanes.  But we get very few earthquakes, so it’s a fair trade all around.  Southern Baptists, Catholics, Jews, and others, we’ll be glad to have.  Sorry that your new constitutions are not going to include the First Amendment guarantees that our Constitution includes.  Hollywood you can keep.  Yosemite is ours.

As to the rest of your rant, well you have always been really good at ranting.  We won’t miss that.  Covid?  Really?  And NYC and California have done so well, so we will treat it and find a cure for it, and we’ll even share it with you after all of our own citizens are cared for.

Finally, remember the last reconstruction.  You aren’t going to believe some of the amendments to our Constitution you are going to be forced to ratify in order to come back.  Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Tennessee, Mississippi, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas will remember.  Or maybe not….  We can have that conversation when you come groveling.

In the meantime, don’t let the door hit you on the way out. 

I am a citizen of the United States of America.