This was always going to happen and you win no prizes for guess which state is leading the way.
Ah, Texas, you are without doubt my favorite crazy state.
If the signatories of a petition over at the White House website get their way, the Lone Star State will be going it alone. They’re not the only ones, though; the website has been inundated with people starting petitions for their state to secede. Each petition has the magic target of obtaining 25,000 signatures within its first 30 days — at that point, someone from the White House is supposed to give an official response. Texas has already gone way past that, amassing a whopping 68,000 signatures. The petition was created by Micah H of Arlington, Texas four days ago.
Below is the text:
Peacefully grant the State of Texas to withdraw from the United States of America and create its own NEW government.
The US continues to suffer economic difficulties stemming from the federal government’s neglect to reform domestic and foreign spending. The citizens of the US suffer from blatant abuses of their rights such as the NDAA, the TSA, etc. Given that the state of Texas maintains a balanced budget and is the 15th largest economy in the world, it is practically feasible for Texas to withdraw from the union, and to do so would protect it’s citizens’ standard of living and re-secure their rights and liberties in accordance with the original ideas and beliefs of our founding fathers which are no longer being reflected by the federal government.
Other states are also represented on the list of active petitions. All the usual movers and shakers are there: Kentucky Alabama, Oklahoma… though I’m not quite sure why New York and Oregon are on that list other than the fact that it only takes one person to start a petition.
Georgia, Missouri, and South Carolina are so keen to secede, in fact, that petitions for those states have actually been filed twice:
Most of the petitions include references to the Founding Fathers, the opening lines of the Declaration of Independence, or, in Tennessee’s case, just five words: “Helping the people of Tennessee.” It’s easy to think that the authors and signatories of these petitions are just frustrated at the election result, frustrated at the current state of the political system or just the state of the U.S. generally. It does make you think, though: How many of these people are deadly serious? How many people are actively trying to find ways their state can break away and become its own country?
Texas might manage on its own for a while. Like the author of the petition says, its economy is large enough it might be able to function as its own country. The others, though, I’m not so sure. Many citizens use government programmes such as food vouchers and Medicare, which the Federal government can pay for partly off the success of the economies in California and New York. I don’t know enough about Louisiana’s economic strength to say if it would survive or not. This is all obviously irrelevant as there is no way any of this will ever happen. It’ll be very interesting to see if and how the White House responds to these requests!