If you live outside Red America, it's easy to forget just how different a place it is from the rest of the country. I just went to the Web site for Mitch McConnell's 2014 Senate reelection campaign, teammitch.com, and this was the first thing I saw:
Remember, that's not the title screen of a gun rights subsection. That's the title screen of the entire campaign site. That's the first thing Mitch wants you to see when you show up.
And literally every page on the site has this as a header:
Would any Democratic pol put gun control on every page of a campaign site? Would Democratic voters respond to that? I'll tell you this: we'll never beat the NRA until our side is as primed to respond on this issue as the other side is.
*****
Meanwhile, I see from the site that McConnell has released a new Web ad. It's not subtle:
I love the way he starts out with class warfare, as if the GOP is the great defender of ordinary folks -- see, at approximately 0:20, the shot of fancy silverware in front of a placecard that reads "The President," followed by a "WALL STREET" street sign -- then (at around 0:38), he begins denouncing Obamacare, as if that's another way the elites get eliter at ordinary people's expense. (Of course, if you imbibe right-wing propaganda every day, that actually seems sensible.)
Then, at the end, we get this (taken from McConnell's CPAC speech in March):
Society may change, demographics may shift, but the principles that make us a free and prosperous society never do, and conservatives -- we own these principles. We own them.That's the right-wing message, just as it's been since at least 1968: Conservatives own Americanism. Only conservatives can be loyal to America.
I've had it. Let 'em secede. Or let us secede. I no longer believe we can continue to live together in the same country.
God, guns, and plenty of stupid.
ReplyDeleteYup, I agree.
ReplyDeleteWe ARE two completely different countries.
I've been saying the same thing for years.
But how do we split it?
The problem is, that while we have Blue States, the cities and most surburbs in them, are sorrounded by a sea of rural Red.
And in the Red States, most of THEIR cities, and some suburbs, are Blue, but sorrounded by a sea of rural/suburban Red.
So, unless we want to go to some City-state system, like Italy and Germany, back in the day, it will be tough to do.
Sure, we can certainly take the coastal ME, coastal NE, and coastal W states, and some of the Northern MW ones, and leave the rest to their JesusLovesUsYesHeDoesCauseHeTellsUsSoGuns&AmmoPlutocraticFaschistStan, but what do we do with our crackers, and with the Red States good Liberals?
A hostage exchange program, for 5 years?
And then what, build that border fence along the Mason-Dixon line?
If someone far smarter than me can figure it out, I'll be all for it!!!
Through hard work and many small "grassroots" efforts we have to expose these speakers for who they are and for the people they really represent. I know both parties have the wealthy as politicians, but to think that they know better as leaders - we have to expose the money that got them into their D.C. seats and who they are answering to. We do not need to split the nation. We do (as DNC) need to get back the state governments and quickly. We were asleep heading into 2010 and it has been a feeding frenzy of laws and social change since then with the US house doing nothing while all their wishes are actually being done on the state levels.
ReplyDeleteTake at look at this blog:
ReplyDeletehttp://pleasecutthecrap.typepad.com/main/2013/04/the-republican-party-is-just-incompetent.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+PleaseCutTheCrap+%28Please+Cut+the+Crap%21%29
He republished this from before the 2012 election. These are the facts that need to be brought out to the people of the southern states and let them decide who they want "leading" them.
Also show the blue state rural people that this is the road we're heading down with their party loyalty.
Victor, that's exactly what I've run up against when I've mused about a (hopefully pacific) dissolution of the increasingly unworkable Union. The damn geography, and the damn demographics. The latter could be handled with enough good will (or its equivalent, mutual fear) on both sides, but the geography...
ReplyDeleteAnd here's the one that really stumps me: our (i.e., the current USA's) massive stash of WMD's of all flavors. Divide it? Destroy it? Give it to Sweden? (That's my top-of-the-head vote at the moment.)
I oft joke of Cascadia needing a wall, but we already have a substatial one: The Rocky Mountians. Quite easily rendered impassible. And with less than seventeen percent of our physical trade - none of that International Gamblers ones and zeros bullshit, physical trade - east, ain't nothin' east of 'em we need.
DeleteOh, and the War Machine... the bases and the silos and all that? The military resources of the Pacific Northwest have been thoroughly sucked dry. There's nothing left, no presence. Not very reassuring when you consider Korea could get lucky and drop a nuke in our back (or front) yard, but on the other with "America" now stretched out across six or seven wars on Israeli's behalf I'm pretty sure we could flip the whole show the bird and there isn't a damned thing they could to stop us.
Bear in mind out here even the "liberals" are heavily armed.
No fear.
Oh, and that ones and zeros bullshit? More than a few of us can hack that code. It's what we do.
DeleteThat and really good beer.
No fear.
BH,
ReplyDeleteOne thing to remember, to help out our Southern brothers economically since WWII, the government has given them, or, their Southern politicians have managed to finagle, a lot of the major military bases - especially, if NC goes Red.
And a lot of the missile silo's, are in what are now Red States.
I'd be curious to see what the Blue v. Red military breakdown is, as it pertians to the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, the Marines, and nuclear fire-power.
The Federal government can defeat any one state easily, maybe even a few of them, at one time.
But if they up and secede over night, however unlikely that might be, I'm not convinced that the Blue States would have any military superiority - quite the contrary...
Interesting times, intereseting times...
If this is to happen, it will have to be done peacefully.
But it won't happen.
It's just a nice thought to have in the back's of our minds, that maybe the will go, and we'll be rid of them, and build a great future for what's left of America.
But, it's just a dream.
Isn't it?
I can pretty much guarantee you that no red state will secede in the foreseeable future. Too much of the state budgets (and extrapolate that down to cities and counties) is dependent on federal largess. Here in Alabama, the department of transportation has been pushing huge boondoggle highway projects that are designed to benefit the big corporations that own tracts of land along the routes. Can't inflate the bids and skim off the top if they don't have the federal dollars.
ReplyDeleteHowever, if the country does divide, I'm claiming the AL/FL gulf coast for the Blue Nation. That's some of the most beautiful beach you'll see anywhere in the world, and I'm not giving it up. So there.
I agree, Steve, it's too late for any real rapprochement between Red and Blue. Furthermore, I think the system's rigged against the left/center on its own developing enough critical mass to effectively deal with a hopelessly sociopathic, absolutist, obstructionist GOP.
ReplyDeleteNo, the benign forces in this country are gonna need some help from the outside. Where will it come? From other countries? From the effects of natural disasters? From -- erp! -- the private sector? I'm something of an optimist in my belief that evil generally tends to burn itself out...but oh the potential damage on the way to liberation. Must mankind be such reckless teenagers all the damn time?
And demographics? I think the big money demographic will remain the most important factor, for quite some time yet. People of all races and creeds can be fooled by big money.
ReplyDeleteVictor- Yep, I know something about red-state military spending. I'm in (and from and of) north Texas. I never noticed that spending benefiting me or mine much, but there was & is no shortage of it.
ReplyDeleteKathy- I agree, our regional blowhard pols will never do anything concrete about secession. It's just another rhetorical tool to stir up the anthropoids. However, secession's one thing; expulsion from the Union... that would be another, & we've not had a civil war over that concept yet. (And I'm claiming the Big Bend for Blue Nation, myself:)
I'm already gone.
ReplyDeleteNo fear.
Um.. no offense guys, but this secession talk is the kind of nuttiness I expect from them, not us. Even if you're just kidding, you sound like loons.
ReplyDeleteThe Czechs and the Slovaks. Pakistan and Bangladesh. What's so nutty?
ReplyDeleteWe have the right to rise up against, or walk away from, the tyrannies of a minority as they.
ReplyDeleteNo fear.
Besides the Czech/Slovak and Pakistani/Bangladeshi examples, there's Eire, an integral part of the UK until the 1920's; and Scotland's having a referendum next year on independence.
ReplyDeleteNorthsecede.com
ReplyDelete