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[–] 169 points 2 years ago (14 children)

The Texas Nationalist Movement (TNM) is campaigning for the Lone Star State to break away from the United States and become a fully independent country, using what it regards as the federal government's failure to control the Texan-Mexican border as one justification.

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.

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  • [–] 64 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    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.

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  • [+] 46 points 2 years ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (6 children)
  • [–] 101 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 30 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    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).

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  • [–] 18 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    I agree with your second paragraph, which actually invalidates the conclusion of the first one.

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  • [–] 10 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 child)

    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.

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  • [–] 52 points 2 years ago* (13 children)

    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."

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  • [–] 27 points 2 years ago

    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.”

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  • [–] 35 points 2 years ago (4 children)
  • [–] 42 points 2 years ago* (1 child)

    Just learn some Spanish and Abbott will let you get on a bus to come up North, for free!

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    [–] 85 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (5 children)

    Can we agree this state/federal "laboratories of democracy" bullshit is a failed experiment? Our framers were wealthy land owners who suggested land owners be the only class be allowed to vote, they were far from infallible, and their quarter millenia old framework isn't compatible with or flexible enough for modernity.

    It just makes 50 societies often working against one another instead of one with common governance. This need for systemically enforced competition and disdain for the concept of cooperation is a self-destructive cultural value.

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    [–] 50 points 2 years ago (10 children)

    State National Guards ordinarily fall under the control of their respective governors, but they can be federalized by a mechanism known as Title 10 status, which places them at the direct disposal of the president and defense secretary, with active duty officers taking over day-to-day command

    Title 10 isn't even rare...

    They do it for all types of shit, and Biden is fully within past usage if he does it here.

    I'm cautiously optimistic he'll do the right thing here.

    His donors don't want the instability of a full on secession

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    [–] 34 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 child)

    It's all fun & games till you're arrested for violating 18 U.S.C 111 & you're looking at a year Federal time, a $100k fine & never being able to work in law enforcement again.

    I hope Texas police officers are aware that qualified immunity doesn't cover you when you are obstructing federal officers in the execution of their duties.

    This statute outlines certain types of assault against a federal officer and the appropriate charges and penalties. Penalties for Defenses for Assaulting or Resisting a Federal Officer A simple assault of a federal officer carries a $100,000 fine and up to one year in prison.
    
    For example, simple assault is forcibly assaulting, resisting, opposing, **impeding, intimidating, or interfering with federal officers while performing their duties. As noted, physical contact or injury is not required for a conviction.**
    
    Simple federal assault is a Class A misdemeanor that carries up to 1 year in jail and fines of up to $100,000.
    
    

    Actually, I don't care. The DoJ needs to start making examples out of the #fascists & their thug enforcers.

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  • [–] 23 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Don't forget the enhanced penalty.

    (b) Enhanced Penalty.—

    Whoever, in the commission of any acts described in subsection (a), uses a deadly or dangerous weapon (including a weapon intended to cause death or danger but that fails to do so by reason of a defective component) or inflicts bodily injury, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both.

    Use a weapon or injure one of those federal officers and it could be 20 years plus the fine.

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  • [–] 31 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Don't stop there, take over the entire state government. Throw traitors to the curb and clean house

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    [–] 22 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    Can we just shove Texas out into the ocean already?

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  • [–] 18 points 2 years ago (6 children)

    Great, they can call it "Texit" and we all know how successful that movement is shaping up over the pond.

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    [–] 16 points 2 years ago

    How many times do we need to teach you this lesson, old man?

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  • [–] 14 points 2 years ago

    why does everyone associate the corpo owned politicians with the citizens?

    sure as with other states you will find plenty of people who want otherwise for their state and grouping them in with those slime politicians and saying let them go does not help anyone

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  • [–] 14 points 2 years ago*

    I can't see that going well, at all. Not a mutiny or fragging type situation, but a massive pencil pusher revolt.

    I imagine their chain of command will pencil whip the fuck out of anything they can do that will cause issues for D.C., and as much as a headache as it'll be for the feds, it'll also be hilarious.

    I hope he does it. I'll have popcorn waiting.

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  • [–] 14 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    Then go arrest Greg and beat him senseless for being a pos traitor.

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