Reason #235,278,384 to Secede From the Union

Well, it looks like we won't invade Greenland after all.  Trump announced that a framework for a deal the benefits the United States was established with NATO that will make a war with Denmark over Greenland unnecessary,  I guess that means that, for now at least, I can plan my next trip to Europe after all.  But with every move Trump makes, it is becoming more likely that I will have to do what I should have done when I was in France and Germany last year - stay in Europe and send for my cats.

Trump didn't really want Greenland.  He just wanted to upset the apple cart.  As Rick Wilson of the Lincoln Project said, the mere power play Trump perpetrated against Denmark only ruptured NATO, which was what Trump wanted.  It was never about Greenland.  Just as likely Trump doesn't want to annex Canada.  He wants to disrupt the relationship between Canada and the United States and sever the ties between the two nations.  He doesn't want peace, although he campaigned for the Presidency against forever wars in other parts of the world.   He wants more power over the Western Hemisphere, as his attack on Venezuela proved.  He wants hegemony over as much of the globe as he can acquire.  Quite, bluntly, he wants to do what Madonna (another Madge-Trump comparison) told Dick Clark on "American Bandstand" what she wanted to do - "Umm, I want to rule the world."

At Davos this week, other nations made it clear that they were not pleased with Trump.  Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney made that much clear when he said that his nation would continue to preserve and protect its values and its commitment to human freedom and dignity in the face of a more belligerent American foreign policy, meaning that Canada and other second-tier powers had to stand up to superpowers like the United States.  Trump swatted away Carney's comments, insisting that Canada owes its existence to the United States (actually, Canada owes its existence to the British Commonwealth, but that's another story).  But Trump's direction is clear.  The trade wars he has started against Europe and Canada with his tariffs, coupled with his decisions to use hard power to enforce American priorities in not just Latin America and the Middle East but in other Western nations, make Trump and the United States a danger to the planet.  Which is precisely why Prime Minister Carney entered a new trade deal with China that freezes out the U.S.  And seventy-seven million people in the U.S. voted for all this in 2024.

Oh yeah, I ought to tell you about Trump's interview with Fox News' Maria Bartiromo, who, according to breaking news, still can't talk.  He told her that the United States has always carried the weight of defense in NATO and not only said that the U.S. doesn't need the military backing of its allies but added that their participation in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.  That came as a shock to British, German, French, Lithuanian, and yes, Danish soldiers who lost their lives coming to the aid of Americans after 9/11.  (Denmark lost more soldiers in Afghanistan than any other nation per capita.)  Is Trump aware that the United States is responsible for only 39 percent of NATO's defenses?  Is he aware that, even though the U.S. spends more on defense than it should, 39 percent is still less than half of NATO defenses?  I'm sure he is, because he's asked for a 50 percent increase in the already-bloated military budget, which would compensate for the loss of NATO support if the alliance becomes only a Canadian-European pact but would also starve America's already-emaciated social programs.

No sane politician at the state level, at least no sane Democratic politician at the state level, should want to be part of such a nation.  As for what the United States used to be, well, I'd like to recall what Kamala Harris said a year and a half ago: "We're not going back."  (Ironic, no?)

Oh yeah, don't forget Harris' post-election assurance that turned out to be a lie: "It's gonna be okay."

For my state and for several states in the Northeast, the Great Lakes region, and the Pacific Coast to remain in the Union is suicide.  It's time to get out.  And hopefully, a wave of secession can break up the U.S. into separate countries so that no one post-U.S. nation can ever achieve the hegemony that the U.S. has long since had.   I am for the dissolution of the Union.  I am a secessionist.

I Am Still a Secessionist

A lot of pundits are hailing Tuesday's election results - in which the Republicans got slaughtered - as a sign that America has bottomed out and advocates of democracy are fighting back.  Well, that's as may be.  I still say that the United States should be broken up into smaller countries.

Why?

Well, for one thing, this guy is still President.

This guy, the same guy who stood silently by like a mannequin during a Health and Human Services Department event in the Oval Office when a man collapsed and a gaggle of folks at the event - including Dr. Mehmet Oz, the Medicare and Medicaid administrator, who is in fact a medical doctor - rushed over to help him.  We are still being "led" by a psychopathic sociopath who has about as much empathy as a stuffed lion.   

And even if the military overthrew Trump and his gang of MAGA morons tomorrow, too much damage has already been done.  The United States is the most distrusted and most despised nation in the world because of Trump's foreign policy - USAID gone, NATO weakened, deference to Putin - and the U.S. would not be welcome if it ever tries to re-enter the Paris Agreement or the World Health Organization.  At home, he has eviscerated social services and destroyed the the law enforcement and national security apparatuses, and these systems will take generations to rebuild - if they can be rebuilt.  And what Trump and Project 2025 didn't decimate, the ongoing government shutdown did.  Heck, since the government is shut down with no hope of reopening it, why don't we just terminate it right now by dissolving the damn Union?

What has been done to this country is irreparable.  The 2026 midterms aren't for another year, yet it is already too late to undo the damage that's been done.  It is all in smoldering ruins.  Which is why I still believe it is time to break up the U.S. into separate countries.

And, again, here's my map of what I think a post-Union central North America should look like. 
 

I am serious about this.  You might say I'm dead serious.

Wanted: 2028 Democratic Presidential Nominee. No Women Need Apply.

I'm going to blunt and come right out and say it: The United States will not have a female President in our lifetimes.  That includes babies born today who live to be a hundred.

We need a white male Democratic presidential nominee.  Preferably a Protestant.

As a Catholic who voted for Kamala Harris, I am embarrassed by this statement, but I stand by it.  The presidential election of 2024 definitively proved that a woman can't get elected President of the United States.  Donald Trump is the second worst major-party presidential nominee of all time, surpassed only by himself when he was nominated by the Republicans in 2024 after the GOP nominated him in 2016 and 2020.  He made it clear that would govern as a fascist dictator during the 2024 campaign.  Yet when it came to a choice between a female presidential nominee - and a black female presidential nominee at that - and Donald Trump, the nation chose Donald Trump.  He won every demographic except for two - black women and white men married to black women - while many Democrats stayed home.

And when the Democrats ran a white woman - who was also a Methodist - in 2016, Trump defeated her too. 

Two highly qualified women lost to a megalomaniac con artist.  I'm sorry, but in this case, two strikes is out.

Democrats who once celebrated the fact that a black woman and an Italian-American woman sat behind President Joe Biden at presidential speeches to Congress in 2021 and 2022 have to realize that we now have two white men with Anglo-Saxon names sitting behind a lapsed-Protestant President of German and Scottish origin because the Democrats have a problem reading the room when they nominate presidential candidates.  Kamala Harris lost not just because she couldn't communicate with voters - or at least she couldn't communicate with voters once the consultants took over.  She lost because too many voters - including many black and Puerto Rican men - tried to picture Harris in the White House and just couldn't bring themselves to see it.  Democrats love nominating female candidates for President because they want to make a statement.  Statement made.  Now we have the National Guard occupying Los Angeles like the Wehrmacht goose-stepping through Paris. 

So, assuming we get to have a presidential election in 2028 in which there is more than one candidate and neither of those candidates are named Donald Trump (because if one of them is, it means that the Constitution has been terminated and the election is rigged), Democrats have to ask themselves this: Do they want to make a statement, or do they want to win?

So forget about Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer, Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, Minnesota senator Amy Klobuchar, and especially New York senator Kirsten Gillibrand (who currently runs the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee - oh, yeah, that'll help the party win back the Senate in 2026!) as the Democratic presidential nominee for 2028.  And most definitely forget about Kamala Harris - Democrats don't rerun failed nominees of the past.  

Also, forget running another black man - many white voters think Barack Obama is one black President enough for awhile.  So that rules out Governor Wes Moore of Maryland, and besides, the failed presidential ambitions of his two predecessors have proven once and for all that governors of Maryland do not get elected President.  Vice President, yes (regrettably; I'm just old enough to remember Spiro Agnew).  President, no.  

And not even every white man in the Democratic Party is right for the 2028 presidential nomination.  Governor Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania? Jewish.  Representative Jake Auchincloss of Massachusetts?  Jewish.  Governor J.B. Pritzker of Illinois?  Jewish, and also so squat, large and heavy-set, you could show a widescreen movie on his back.  He doesn't look like a President.  No Jews.  No Orthodox Christians either, least of all Greek Orthodox, because Greek-Americans, as Michael Dukakis proved, can't get elected President.  Vice President, yes (I'll cite the late and unlamented Spiro Agnew again).  President, no.

Also, no Catholics.  John F. Kennedy faced accusations in 1960 that he would bow to the Vatican.  John Kerry lost in 2004 because it was feared that he wouldn't bow to the Vatican (then under a Curia more conservative than the Republican Party).  Now that we have an American pope who's so woke he's almost a Unitarian, there are fears once again that a Catholic President would bow to the Vatican.  We need a white male Protestant, one with executive experience (sorry, Chris Murphy) as a governor.

Andy Beshear, the governor of Kentucky?

Andy Beshear.

But then, as I am a secessionist who believes that New Jersey should leave the Union and form a new country with five or more of the other Eastern states north of the 36°30′ parallel line or become a Canadian province, that's none of my business.