Texas secession: not the question you think it is?
The Complexities of Breaking Away from the USA
Photo by Felipe Vieira on Unsplash
From Newsweek:
Texas Independence Group Issues New Legal Warning to GOP
The group ["Texas Nationalist Movement (TNM), an organization supporting the state's independence from the union"] has long been campaigning for the state's independence, taking concrete steps in this direction in 2023. Last year, the conservative group filed a petition with the Texas Republican Party trying to get the question of whether the state should secede from the nation on the 2024 GOP primary ballot.
Despite the fact that the group collected nearly 140,000 signatures, the Texas GOP refused to accept the request, saying that the petition failed to meet necessary requirements. Specifically, the party said that the group failed to deliver their request on time and that the signatures weren't properly collected, with many being electronic—which is not allowed under state law.
by framersqool:
And here we see the box being built by the governor of Texas, in which to become entrapped, either as soon as his usage of rhetoric creates a public perception that his motives regarding federal border policy are secessionist ones in search of a cause of action, or as soon as some further-right junta from with/within the Texas elements of the national GOP takes matters into their own hands, and deposes or otherwise dispenses with that governor, for not being secessionist enough.
It could be credibly argued, in light of this current impasse over concertina wire across a park in a border town, that the biggest opponent of, and obstacle to, Texas' secession is... the currently-serving governor of Texas (!)
It cannot have escaped the man's notice that for Texas to secede from the United States would also require the Texas Republican Party to secede from the American GOP.
Huh.
And so where would some hypothetical President of the Republic of Texas, presumably (for the sake of argument) its final serving Governor of a now-former US State, having overseen such a secession, then get his political support, from only among citizens of a newly-independent Texas nation, with his entire historic relevance now assumed by all as the governor who oversaw it? Would an embryonic and newly-nationalist Texas Republican faction simply throw its full weight behind such a chief executive in this brand-new office, or would that Texas President become its first target? (Or, is he already?)
Any serious effort even to bring the topic of Texas secession into the public dialogue may or may not be part of some larger right-wing factional plot. That an organization may have been able to go through the motions of assembling a petition drive, and see it struck down ultimately over a quite convenient list of technicalities (to rival the most obfuscational political moves made in the Russian civil service & judiciary over the past two years, faced with their own further-right internal groundswells to keep contained these days), does not in itself mean that Texas independence is a particularly desirable, or even popularly-endorsed, notion today, on the part of any substantial portion of tens of millions of Texan American citizens.
There is little reason to assume that its governor at this very moment, amidst a quite serious constitutional standoff with the DC administration over border policy, is also simultaneously plotting to create a brand-new nation out of thin air and against inevitable and substantial resistance from DC with all its formidable array of powers, and by such a move, overnight, create several hundred miles of brand-new international borders to defend, from the Gulf coast of Louisiana all the way around (Arkansas and Oklahoma) to the far southwestern desert remoteness of New Mexico.
But this doesn't mean that Texas secession is not a serious contingency, at this very moment, worthy of considering.
I cannot envision any such move being made from the governor's office downward, now or at any other time in the future (unless unforeseen events drive the current political situation in some whole new and far more reactionary direction.)
I can, however, much more readily hypothesize that some kind of internal power grab might come to provoke such an eventuality, by means of a coup or other takeover plot, by stripping power from this governor, probably from among his own erstwhile ideological allies, namely some faction or coalition of Republican Texans of a more Lone-Star-Nation persuasion than himself.
Yes, Texas seceding would be a stupid, ill-considered and petulant move, and it would unleash generations' worth of unforeseen and unintended consequences upon millions of human lives, whether Texas managed to remain in the declared-independence business going forward or not.
But it is the extent to which doing exactly that might be a serious commitment on the part of some force or faction, with the tools to make it happen anyway, that I think we need to be thinking about just now.
Removing Texas from the USA means removing its forty votes in the Electoral College, which essentially spells a Democrat and probably the incumbent US president himself, winning this year's election.
I daresay more Texas conservatives want to see the last of this Biden creature, than want to see the end of their being defined the world over as Americans first and Texans... also. Making America great again carries a lot of water in Texas, but I'm not at all convinced that those same demographic groups see making Texas even greater as its own country as a path worth following.
The first internal political crisis to attend any hardcore move into declared independence within Texas itself would almost certainly become a showdown between its own right-wing and far-right political elements, if the far right had not already succeeded in thwarting GOP power and substituting something far more radical in its place. It can as easily be envisioned that secession itself would come as news both dangerously controversial and deeply unacceptable, to some overwhelming and multi-factional majority of Texans, especially once the choice of whether or not to remain American citizens has been taken out of their hands entirely.
Any 'civil war' to ensue might well be confined to within Texas itself, between Texans, as the stunned and cautious remaining forty-nine States look on in utter indecision, and await eventual outcomes, too bound by their own considerations to declare for either side, down in Texas, too openly.
Twenty-five conservative governors sending armed assets from their respective National Guard forces may or may not be in favor, however abstractly, of making such moves in service of Texas secession, as this is not the issue on the table to begin with. These border-related Article 1/Tenth Amendment disputes over the powers of States versus those of the federal government are.
Texas declaring independence, whether now or at any other time, is an entirely separate consideration, a circumstance that I'm quite sure every Guard member from every State is going to be thinking about, while they serve in the uniform of both their country and of their own home State, sent by twenty-five commanders-in-chief far from home and family to faraway Texas: why are we here?
I doubt very seriously that helping to disintegrate their own country by helping one of its States break away is their answer.
Right now what I think I'm seeing is two old political operators, a liberal American president versus a conservative Texas governor, each of whom thoroughly disapproves of the other or at least gets a lot of public support for saying they do, each becoming further and further entrapped in rhetorical boxes entirely of their own making.
What either or both of them may do once thus fully-entrapped, once self-cornered into only making more and more radical decisions for lack of any other way forward, will come to affect every other American, whatever either of them says or does from here on.
Personally I see no good faith or sincere conviction on display in either of their careers that I'd regard as reliable quantities, in assessing the current Texas-vs-DC standoff: I mostly see a couple of politicians having a dick-measuring contest, for lack of a less dismissive term.
But they've both boxed themselves into having to prevail, or lose some serious face, to say the least...
And neither is as powerful or as deeply-supported a figure in his own right, as they both want us to think they are.
Not everything, to borrow a pop-culture axiom, is about them.
It's what America on the whole goes on and does, in reaction to which of two men's macho saber-rattling has to come out with one having the bigger (stick?) to wield, that I'm keeping my focus on.
Half of my home town lies in Texas, and any new international Republic of Texas border would divide this community literally right down the middle: I need to consider what these events might come to mean.
Fortunately for me and my bicycle, and my lifelong revulsion toward having to show officials my papers in any circumstance just to go about living my life, all the stores I shop in here in town are (within a couple of blocks north of the line) On The Oklahoma Side.
At least there's that, if this helps to clarify my own context here.
framersqool
Thoughts from an aging bachelor of no particular consequence who is in command of more opinions than facts (but occasionally the facts, or the lack thereof) and can make a thing seem worth writing about.