Once upon a time, there was a mighty nation named the United States of
Bubba. Bubba used to be part of a much larger country called the United
States of America but, fearing government infringement on their states'
rights, Bubba seceded from the union and founded its own neo-confederacy
and named it Bubba.
Bubba's national motto was "Fuck, Yeah!
Fuck you!" and its flag consisted of a revamped Confederate flag with a
giant red, white and blue finger pointed at the rest of the earth in the
center.
For many of the people in these new United States, this was a paradise. The Bill of Rights was trashed except for the Second Amendment, the only part of the original constitution that survived from the original 50 states. Now, people could own as much guns and ammo as they wanted without the government tracking their sales and activities (as with the old United States.). But in Bubba, it didn't matter how many children were accidentally or deliberately killed with guns because, you know, Freedom!
And just as more guns was the answer to gun violence, as austerity and
more sacrifices by the destitute was the answer to crushing poverty, the
answer to runaway corporate greed was less regulations and fewer
liberals screaming to shackle the invisible hands of the Free Market. In
Bubba, there is no Congress. There are only lobbyists and the Bubban
Legislative Exchange Council or (BLEC) providing model or draft
legislation that this libertarian utopia would adopt.
Among
the traditionalist legislation proposed by BLEC was the right to shoot
and kill people on your property whether or not you felt threatened, the
right to defend your home using the Castle Doctrine against police
barging into it with BLEC-inspired No Knock warrants that always seemed
to end in bloodshed (Which was OK because, well, Freedom!).
Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid that fostered a culture of
dependency had been obliterated and replaced with understaffed and
overwhelmed clinics, food banks, churches and bread lines that never
seemed to have enough. This allowed the citizens of Bubba to get back to
their traditional roots of hunting and fishing until all the game were
killed off without any meddlesome Fish and Game authorities because,
well, Freedom!
Unregulated industry, now free from the
onerous demands of environmental groups and federal agencies of the
evil, liberal United States of America, immediately produced a smog
across the landscape that never seemed to go away. People in Bubba began
to die at alarming rates of various types of cancer as well as ecoli,
salmonella and cholera while Big Business shrugged its broad shoulders
and denied responsibility. Those who complained of this were visited by
corporately-employed right wing paramilitary groups and given a stern
talking-to because, well, Freedom! Free Market!
Rising
temperatures from the smog produced bigger and better hurricanes,
especially across the Gulf States of Bubba but since there were no more
disaster agencies or environmental impact reports or disaster relief
that would've required spending offsets that could no longer be made,
that left the burden of reconstruction on individuals now freed from the
burdens and obligations of that liberal evil named Altruism. And it
wasn't called reconstruction because, well, that brought back unpleasant
atavistic memories of the Civil War.
In the utopia that was
Bubba, people of color, liberals, gays and bisexuals, Democrats and
feminists were either barely tolerated or banned outright through
excommunication. The new nation was run by a few hundred ultra wealthy
elites who kept stressing, like the Communist Party of old, that poverty
was a virtue and is still a better way to live than under a liberal
culture of dependency that gave a free ride to old people who'd toiled
at their jobs for a half century or more. Those ignorant enough to point
out this neo-confederacy named Bubba suspiciously resembled the Nazi
Germany the ruling elite pretended to hate while nonetheless emulating
from top to bottom were immediately shot.
The smog
cover across Bubba was as impenetrable as Venus' clouds and satellite
photos could no longer see the land mass. Since the Bubban constitution
consisted of only the Second Amendment, that meant the poor were free to
kill each other off (the several elites who controlled Bubba were, of
course, exempt). Soon, the right wingers began to splinter, divide and
subdivide with neighborhoods and even individual homesteads at war with
each other, with Aryan Supremacy groups waging open warfare on the KKK,
state militias conducting guerilla insurgencies against evangelical cults
with no trained, professional constabulary to interfere, no fire
departments to put out the constant infernos and no EMS services to save
lives.
But it was all worth it because they'd purged the
bothersome, micromanaging liberals who'd called for gun control,
regulations tightening clean water and air laws, better inspections of
food, a higher standard of education for all and commonsense drug laws
not written to feed the bottomless avarice of the Free Market of
for-profit prisons.
Yes, with the last of the liberals
finally purged from the neo-confederacy of the United States of Bubba,
the people were now free to be fleeced, poisoned and subjugated by
billion dollar corporations. That's not to say Bubba was perfect. What
began as an admirable attempt to establish one, true religion quickly
degenerated into open warfare with Methodists fighting Baptists,
Lutherans battling Mormons, Catholics fighting everyone and so forth.
But they all could at least agree on one thing: That the all-inclusive,
largely secular Unitarians that allowed homosexuals in their flock were
pure evil.
With no central government to assist in times of
natural disaster, parents losing children to gun violence and cancer
from polluted earth, skies and water, with no security for those too old
and weak to work, nothing but private health insurance with $10,000
deductibles, $50 co-pays and premiums costing thousands a week, Bubba
had at last achieved the Utopian Dream:
A much shorter life span and a lifetime of stressful and unchallenged hatred, racism and paranoia in exchange for the tyranny of liberalism. Because, as any Bubban can tell you, there is nothing that can kill an empire or great nation faster than actual progress.
Of course, I'd make the requirements somewhat onerous. Have to pay for all the Federal infrastructure [airports, Interstates, parks, ...] and pay their share of the national debt [which seems to be one of the biggest reasons they want to leave in the first place!].
And there is the issue of CITIZENSHIP. Do we require that residents of the seceeding state give up American citizenship [I'd vote yes!]? Of course, afterr 10 years their passports would expire and I'd vote to not renew. But in any case, US expats living the the new nation would be just that -- expats living in a foreign nation.
I'd also require that once seceeded they must remain a separate country for 50 years. No "buyers remorse".
But then, won't happen. The states that make the most noise about secession are the ones least likely to go away because they get so much from the US.