America the Not So Beautiful

For the second time since I've gone back to Mass, my parish closed the service yesterday with the church vocalist (our version of a cantor) lead the congregants in a singalong of "America the Beautiful."

This time I could not stand idly by.  I refused to take part in the singing or even stand, as one is expected to do for the recessional hymn.  At first I just remained seated when I turned to the hymn numbered on the wooden placard in the front of the church and saw what it was.  But then I asked myself a question . . . what would Colin Kaepernick do?

I took a knee.

I got out of the pew and genuflected with my left foot and my right knee on the floor as the congregants sang "America the Beautiful."  Anyone could see that I was emulating Colin Kaepernick.  Surprisingly, I was not accosted outside on my way to my car.

So what's wrong with U.S. Catholics singing "America the Beautiful" in church?  Quite a few things, actually, and excuse me if I repeat myself here and there from a previous post.  First of all, it's an act of nationalism in what is supposed to be a universal church - the very word "catholic" means "universal."  Catholics in Ireland or Poland would not sing "America the Beautiful" - or any of their own patriotic songs, for that matter - in church any more than American Episcopalians, as part of the Anglican Communion, would sing "God Save the King" at one of their services.  Second of all, America is not a beautiful country.  Donald Trump and his greedy band of wealthy supporters cannot sing "America the Beautiful" while they pollute our skies with smoke, poison our waters, fell our forests, and develop our farmland into tract houses, shopping centers, office parks, and now data centers.  And neither can we.  And, Trump apparently wants to sell Yosemite National Park.

Third, it's a bad look for Catholics to sing patriotic songs when so many Opus Dei members seem to be running our archdioceses and our federal judiciary.  Why do progressives love to go after the Church for being patriarchal and misogynistic when those same adjectives can be appended to a faith they increasingly defend, Islam?  Because no one outside of MAGA has ever accused American Muslims of promoting Sharia law in this country, though Opus Dei had a hand in overturning Roe v. Wade.

But fourth - and this is a personal reason - it goes against my own beliefs.  Back when Trump got voted back into power by MAGA supporters - many of them Catholics, some of those Catholics white and Hispanic working-class males with a machismo complex - I decided that I was through with this country and wanted to, but could not, leave it.  As I have said many times, I had decided that I didn't need to leave America because America had left me.  And almost immediately after Trump moved back in to the White House (and before he began remodeling it), I became a secessionist, convinced that the United States could not longer go on as a country and that its constituent states of the Union should break up in at least ten separate countries, twelve at the most.  I can't sing a patriotic song about a country I hope goes the way of Czechoslovakia.  I cannot ignore my sentiments and sing "America the Beautiful" in honor of a country I want to see come to an end.  I felt very much the same way that I did back in May, when the pastor extolled the virtues of being an American in his homily (and when I heard "America the Beautiful" sung in church for the first time). 

So, this time, I took a knee on the edge of the pew.  And trust me, I did not want to do that.  Especially on a hardwood floor, which made it painful.  But the pain I felt pressing my knee against the floor was a small price to pay for keeping my integrity. 

Governor Sherrill

Rebecca Michelle "Mikie" Sherrill will be inaugurated as the fifty-seventh governor of the state of New Jersey, and she plans to hit the ground running with an energy emergency declaration to cut utility rates, invest more in solar energy, make housing more affordable, and improve the motor vehicle office.

That is all good and fine, but just because we in New Jersey will have a center-left governor who will pursue more humane policies than what's coming out of Washington doesn't mean we will be safe from Donald Trump.  Minnesota governor Tim Walz, who is more progressive than Sherrill is,  has ICE agents overrunning his state and is being investigated for obstructing federal authority even as Trump threatens to send the Army in.  The end. 

It doesn't take much for something to happen in New Jersey to give Trump an excuse to send federal troops or agents to New Jersey, particularly our cities, most of which have been down on their heels for so long that there are generations of New Jerseyans who don't remember a time when Newark or Camden were places people wanted to go to.   Trump sending troops to our cities, where brown people are a majority, would be a calamity.  U.S. Representative LaMonica McIver, who is black, was arrested for trying to investigate an ICE detention center in Newark that housed Hispanic migrants, as was Mayor Baraka; McIver has since been charged and three felony counts of assaulting, resisting, impeding and interfering with a federal officer, and the case is still set to go to trial.  What better way for Trump to divide the mostly black and Hispanic cities against the white suburbs and rural areas (yes, we have some)?

You know where I'm going with this.  As a secessionist, I feel compelled to promote my arguments for secession whenever and with whomever I can.  Therefore, once Governor-elect Sherrill is sworn in, I am writing a letter to her to advocate for New Jersey to secede from the Union and hopefully encourage other Democratic states - like Minnesota - to follow.  (Personally, I hope that Minnesota secedes first, and I have not ruled out writing Governor Walz to say that Minnesota to do so.)  I am making the argument to Sherrill that a soft secession - withholding New Jersey's federal tax revenue, for example - is not enough and that it is time for the United States to split into separate countries.  I am also making the argument to her that if enough states pull out of the Union, it can lead to a negotiated national divorce that effectively dissolves the Union and creates new countries without a shot being fired. 

I still support the dissolution of the Union.  I am still a secessionist.

(P.S.  Here is revised map of my idea for a post-United States North America.  I decided to put West Virginia into the Middle Atlantic republic of Lenapia instead of the Midwestern republic of Heartland, because it would be awkward to have a state of the Midwestern republic on the opposite side of the Ohio River.  I added to Heartland Montana, Wyoming and Colorado and cleaved off the western ends of the latter two state by setting the border between Heartland and the State of Deseret along the Continental Divide through the Rocky Mountains.  Gran Colorado has been eliminated; Arizona and New Mexico became a Republic of New Mexico.  The original New Mexico Territory that was established in 1850 then included the bulk of both the modern states of New Mexico and Arizona.  Click on the map for a better look.)

Secession: Take Two

In May of this year, I wrote a sample ordinance of secession of the 2025 New Jersey legislative calendar that gave the reasons for seceding from the United States in response to Donald Trump's numerous crimes.  Sadly, the number of crimes he's committed since then has grown exponentially.  I stepped back from my advocacy from secession while I waited to see the outcome of the gubernatorial election in New Jersey.  Now, as we prepare to enter a new year - a year in which New Jersey will have a new governor, Rebecca Michelle Sherrill, and a year in which Trump could try to illegally invalidate enough of the midterm congressional elections to keep the Republicans in control of Congress - I have written a slightly revised version of my original sample secession ordinance from May.

* 

STATE OF NEW JERSEY CALENDAR YEAR 2026 

ORDINANCE OF SECESSION 

To dissolve the Union between the State of New Jersey and other States united with her under the compact entitled "The Constitution of The United States of America." 

WHEREAS, the United States of America on the fifth day of November, in the year of our Lord Two Thousand and twenty-four, had elected a multiple-charged and multiple-convicted felon (henceforth to be referred to as "The Leader"), to return to the office of President of the United States, in violation of Section 3 of the fourteenth article of amendment to the Constitution of the United States that prohibits those who have participated in or directed insurrection or rebellion against the Government of the United States from holding public office of the United States; and  

WHEREAS, The Leader, upon taking anew the office of President of the United States, has unilaterally withdrawn from international agreements and organizations, has illegally eviscerated the bureaucratic institutions of said Government in violation of oversight and authority of the Congress of the United States and of the Constitution of United States; and 

WHEREAS, the Federal Government, per orders from The Leader, has used illegally acquired power to deport migrants, has committed crimes against humanity in foreign locales, and has adversely amended rules and regulations in various bureaucracies by executive fiat and without proper procedure, and

WHEREAS, many of the States that have entered into Union under the compact entitled "the Constitution of United States of America" have been adversely affected and injured by such violations of The Leader, which the Congress of the United States has refused to counteract per its Constitutional authority; and 

WHEREAS, the State of New Jersey, having entered into this compact on the eighteenth day of December in the year of our Lord One thousand Seven hundred and eighty-seven upon her own free will, and now is forced to bear witness to efforts by The Leader to breach said compact with intent to cause adversity to States whose Electors did not cast their ballots for him in the Election for the Presidency and the Vice Presidency of the United States having just transpired in the year of our Lord Two Thousand and twenty-four, and 

WHEREAS, it is the responsibility of the Government of the State of New Jersey to remedy adverse and most likely illegal actions of The Leader that go largely unchallenged at the Federal level of Government; 

 NOW THEREFORE BE IT ORDAINED, by the Governor, the Assembly, and the Senate of the State of New Jersey and the People of the State of New Jersey, that the Ordinance adopted by us in Convention, on the eighteenth day of December in the year of our Lord One Thousand Seven hundred and eighty seven, whereby the Constitution of the United States of America was ratified, and also all Acts and parts of Acts of the Legislature of this State, ratifying amendments of the said Constitution, are hereby repealed; and 

BE IT FURTHER ORDAINED, that ratifications of Treaties and entrances into Agreements with various Nations under the Constitution of the United States of America, will remain in force between the State of New Jersey and said Nations, and that ratifications of Treaties and entrances into Agreements under said Constitution illegally invalidated by The Leader, a point of reason for repealing ratification of said Constitution and subsequent amendments, will also remain in force between the State of New Jersey and said Nations, and 

BE IT FURTHER ORDAINED, that the union now subsisting between New Jersey and other States, under the name of "The United States of America," is hereby dissolved.

*

Ladies and gentlemen . . . The UNION is DISSOLVED!

When (and When Not) To Secede

It was 165 years ago today, Thursday, December 20, 1860, that South Carolina became the first state to secede from the Union in response to Abraham Lincoln's election to the Presidency.

". . . that the union now subsisting between South Carolina and other States, under the name of 'The United States of America,' is hereby dissolved."

Today I am advocating for New Jersey - or California, Massachusetts, New York, or one of the other heavily Democratic states adversely affected by Donald Trump - to take the first step of secession in the hope of triggering a mass withdrawal from the Union that will necessitate the breakup of the United States and a new arrangement for the fifty states that will result in new republics and possibly some of the states becoming provinces of Canada. 

The reasons for secession are quite clear - abuse of Immigration and Customs and Enforcement agents, illegal disruptions and contractions of government services, suppression of individual and civil liberties, crimes against humanity . . . I could go on.  To respond to those who say that secession is unconstitutional, I would argue that Trump's unconstitutional actions and the failure of the other branches of government to check him render that annoying inconvenience moot.  Again: If what Trump does is not unconstitutional, nothing is unconstitutional.  Not even secession. I admit that the chances of any state seceding are slim, but I would argue that states have plenty of reasons to secede today . . . though they have fewer reasons to secede than the slave states of 1860 and 1861 had not to secede.

Empty threats are a leitmotif of American politics (though I would argue that not all of Trump's threats are empty), and the governors of the slave states of the lower South repeatedly threatened to secede throughout the summer and autumn of 1860 if Abraham Lincoln were to be elected President.  Then Lincoln was elected.  And then nothing happened for six weeks.  The slave states suddenly found themselves having to consider whether they should actually make good on their threats to secede, and President James Buchanan urged all fifteen of the slave states to wait and see what Lincoln would do once he took office in March 1861.  In the meantime, the Southern states weighed their options.  There were already plenty of reasons for them to remain in the Union.

First of all, Lincoln, though he won a majority in the Electoral College and won the most popular votes of any of the four - yes, four - major candidates of the 1860 presidential election, was very much a minority President, having won only 39 percent of the popular vote.  As with Barry Goldwater in 1964 or George McGovern in 1972, more than six out of ten voters thought Lincoln was too dangerous and radical to occupy the White House, but thanks to a four-way campaign - the Democrats fielded two nominees,  U.S. Senator Stephen Douglas from the North and Vice President John C. Breckinridge from the South, and there was also John Bell of the Constitutional Union Party - Lincoln was able to squeak through.  Lincoln's position was so precarious that he barely defeated Douglas in New York; had he lost that state, he would have been denied an electoral majority and Congress would have had to select the next President and Vice President.

Second, throughout the 1860 campaign and after the election, Lincoln promised that he would not try to abolish slavery where it already existed; he did not have the constitutional authority or the political support to do that.  He only promised to stop the spread of slavery in the territories that had not yet become states.  Therefore, Southern politicians should have been reassured that slavery could remain legal in their own states.  

Third, the Supreme Court's Dred Scott decision, which guaranteed slaves as property under the terms of the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution, was the law of the land.  The President of the United States could not and cannot change a Supreme Court decision.

Fourth, even though the Democrats were badly divided over slavery - hence two 1860 Democratic presidential candidates, one from the free North and one from the slaveholding South - they had nonetheless elected majorities to both houses of the 37th Congress that would convene in the first half of Lincoln's term as President.  The majorities, based largely in the South, could block any legislation or presidential initiative that the Southern states opposed.

Despite these reasons for not seceding, however, the slave states of the lower South saw Lincoln's election as the first shot across their bow from a purely northern party, the Republican Party, that represented the fastest growing regions in the country - the Northeast and the Midwest - which would soon overwhelm the Southern states in the House with their greater populations and in the Senate with the likely ban on slavery in territories waiting to be admitted into the Union.  The even balance of free and slave states had been upset in 1850 with the admission of California as a free state; the subsequent admissions of Minnesota in 1858, Oregon in 1859, and, in 1861 prior to President Lincoln's inauguration, Kansas as free states meant that, theoretically at least, the slave states would be outvoted in the Senate.  The states of the lower South decided that, if they didn't leave the Union immediately, they would never have the chance to do so again and would forever remain subservient to the North.   Fatuous reasoning, to be sure, but that's how Southerners felt at the time.  So, just before Christmas 1860, South Carolina, which had attempted to nullify a tariff law in 1832 because of its dependence on foreign trade and had caused a disunity crisis for President Andrew Jackson to confront, naturally became the first state to secede from the Union.

The house was divided.

Mississippi was the second state to secede and the first to secede in the new year of 1861.  Ironically, one of its two U.S. Senators, Jefferson Davis, had proposed that the slave states could remain in the Union and form a self-governing dominion within the American commonwealth.  But when his state left the Union, he resigned his Senate seat and returned home from Washington.  Then the rest of the lower South followed, in this order: Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and, at the beginning of February, Texas.  The seven new republics weren't independent for long; they soon formed the Confederate States of America, with Jefferson Davis as its President.  Eight slave states took President Buchanan's advice and waited to see what Lincoln would do as President.  Then, after Fort Sumter was fired upon, President Lincoln called for 75,000 Army volunteers to put down the rebellion.  Angered at the call for military action, Virginia left the Union, followed by Arkansas, North Carolina, and Tennessee.  They too joined the Confederacy, and the Civil War was on. 

I don't advocate a second civil war to break up the United States when I call for my state of New Jersey to secede.  I call for enough states to secede in order to facilitate a conference not unlike the one that was held in Washington in February 1861 to avert civil war, and, this time, agree to a national divorce and not use military action to dissolve the Union.  Because when Fort Sumter in Charleston was attacked by the Confederacy, it led to a bloody conflict, and no one recalled what President Jackson had said during the 1832 Nullification Crisis: "Disunion by armed force is treason.  Are you ready to incur its guilt?"   

Climate Clownishness

When it became apparent that either President Biden was likely to lose the 2024 presidential election or the Democrats would never be able to overcome the sluggish economy and keep the White House with a different nominee, John Kerry, President Biden's special envoy for climate-change issues, was on the PBS NewsHour explaining why a future Republican President, whom most people assumed would not be Donald Trump, would honor the Paris Climate Agreement, which President Biden had had the United States rejoin in 2021 after Trump had pulled the U.S. out of it.  Kerry explained that the business sector would advise such a hypothetical Republican President to remain in the climate accord because it was good for business and good for the economy.

Fast forward to 2025.  Trump returned to power, he pulled the U.S. out of the Paris Agreement ten minutes after taking office to the thunderously vocalized approval of F-150-owning MAGA cultists present, and a good deal of the business sector capitulated to Trump's entire economic agenda.  (And I no longer watch the PBS NewsHour.) This became apparent - no, blatantly obvious - when former Volkswagen of America president Scott Keogh, now heading up Volkswagen's Scout SUV subsidiary, announced that Scout would instead develop gasoline/electric hybrid systems rather than the electric-only vehicles Scout had been created to develop.  And, while only a year ago, clean energy sources like solar power and wind power were the wave of the future, the major energy policy upheaval Trump perpetrated as soon as Biden (and Harris) was gone now envisions a future of more oil and gas - which only satisfies "public" utilities overcharging its customers for electricity and gas, Vladimir Putin, Russian energy oligarchs, American legacy oil and gas companies, and startup oil and gas companies like Phoenix Energy, which just went public and has been insufferably running ads on YouTube - which, thankfully, can be skipped. 

It is in the milieu of this brutal reality that European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced the EC's new policy toward climate change.

Von Der Leyen announced that the European Commission would focus on controlling and fighting carbon emissions from fossil fuels rather than going after fossil fuels themselves.  This is like conservatives on a local school board who believe that rap is a detriment to America's musical heritage (and it is) deciding to censor rap by banning it from student events and school campuses rather than spending more money on music education.     

When it comes to trying to heal the planet, the Europeans are America's superiors, just as they are in cinema, urban planning, social welfare, and intellectualism, but von der Leyen and her fellow commissioners seem resigned to the idea that anything they attempt to do to combat climate change that is more than what they're doing right now is going to be canceled out by Trump.  The United States is already the biggest polluter on earth, except when in some years it's China, and Trump's commitment to more carbon pollution - which he took pride in during his incoherently improvised speech to the United Nations this past September - is only going to make that worse.

To be fair, many American companies such as General Motors and Pepsico, along with even a couple of oil companies like Occidental Petroleum, are defying Trump and working with foreign governments and various NGOs to do something about climate change, recognizing, as John Kerry predicted, the positive business opportunities that dealing with climate change offers.  Many of them were active in the COP30 climate change summit in Brazil, as was California governor Gavin Newsom, who as the chief executive of the world's fourth-largest economy, is a de facto world leader. But - and you knew I was coming to a "but" - the mission statement COP30 issued was as substantial as milquetoast, and the participants who vowed vocally to continue the fight against climate change spoke with the roar of a tiger but offered the bite of a kitten. 

And while there are many states other than California who still want to be in the Paris Agreement and commit to its goals, Trump is already working on ways to prevent that, and in, for example, my home state of New Jersey, where Trump canceled federal support for a wind farm designed to reduce energy costs, Governor-elect Mikie Sherrill has her work cut out for her. Given that there is more commitment to the Paris Agreement in more Democratic regions of the United States than in Republican regions, and given that the U.S. is too divided to return to the Paris Agreement if a Democrat ever holds the Presidency again - not that we'll be welcomed back in, given that a future Republican President probably would pull us back out and cause a perpetual whiplash when it comes to American climate policy - well, bearing all that in mind, this is just another perfect argument for breaking up the United States in separate countries.     

The California Republic will join the Paris Agreement and stay in.  So will the United Republic of New England and whatever republic New Jersey ends up in.  The Confederate States will reject the Paris Agreement and stay out. 

Bye bye, Florida. 

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.

Seceding From Seceding

The weekly anti-Trump, anti-MAGA protest was today, just like every Sunday before, and after having gone for months except for when I was Europe and a couple of other schedule conflicts, I stayed home today.

I had to clean my bathroom.

Actually, it was because I was getting tired of it.

Though I did have to clean my bathroom.

The truth is, my secession campaign wasn't gaining traction or supporters.  I would bring a sign saying "NJ MUST SECEDE!" and copies of my sample state ordinance spelling out the reasons for New Jersey to leave the Union.  I would read my sample ordinance out loud.  But there were few who took copies of my proposed ordinance, and most people seemed to to ignore me.  Don't get me wrong, I'm still for breaking up the Union and having one state - not necessarily New Jersey - taking the first step with secession.  But keeping up the protesting for such a long-shot idea doesn't seem worth it, at least for now.

And besides, there's another reason.  If the Republicans get in to the governor's office next year, New Jersey obviously won't leave the Union.  it will likely, however, leave the northeastern states health cooperative and join Vermont and New Hampshire (both with Republican governors) as the only eastern states north of the Mason-Dixon line taking vaccine advice from RFK Jr.

And yes, I think Jack still has a shot.  Hey, why fib?  Because even though polls that show the GOP within striking distance of winning this campaign are Republican-leaning and thus can't be trusted enough people might trust them enough to stay home on Election Day.   And yes, Democratic strategist Simon Rosenberg, who called out such polls, thinks that the polls showing the Democrats still ahead are more accurate, but this is the same Simon Rosenberg who kept saying of the Democrats in 2024, "I'd rather be us than them." 

Besides, I'm not going to make America a better place by protesting a leader who has too many supporters to just quit his job.  I have to do a job of a different sort.  I already do such a job.  I've committed myself to continue to work on maintaining the community park and improving it when the situation demands so, such as with plantings and the like.  So, I'm serving my community,  I'm helping the environment, and I'm providing a public amenity - three things Trump is against. The best form of protest for me is to continue keeping the park up to par.

When I'm not cleaning my bathroom.

The Decline and Fall of America

I'm not going to talk about Charlie Kirk anymore, because I don't want to lose my passport and be denied the opportunity to leave the country based on anything I say getting misconstrued.  There's a bill in Congress that could allow that to happen.  Suffice to say, Kim Alexis restored her Instagram account and removed her Kirk-related Instagram post since I last wrote a post here.  Suffice also to say that I've said enough about Charlie Kirk when I said I condemned his murder even as, as I must say now, his hateful rhetoric led to the hateful action that killed him.

Since I do not give money or support to any terrorist organization, I don't think I'll end up being forbidden to travel outside the country again.  I may get fired from my job for things I've said here, but I can handle that.  Why would I get fired for that?  Because former (former!) MSNBC commentator Matthew Dowd lost his job for saying the exact . . . same . . . things.

Meanwhile, the Vice President has announced that the administration will seek to shut down liberal-activist groups, and the Attorney General is planning to prosecute hate speech, which is defined as any speech that offends the right - like, say, advocating for more public transit. Trump is planning to sue anyone who questions his finances and his businessman acumen - shut them down to shut them up.  

And if that doesn't work . . . 

 

Oh, Mama, I'm in fear for my life from the long arm of the law . . . hangman is coming down from the gallows and I don't have very long . . ..

I know that today, the anniversary day of the signing of the U.S. Constitution, is an inappropriate time to say this, but I'll say it once again anyway - it's time for the United States to break up into separate countries and one of the Democratic states must take the initiative to get the process going by seceding from the Union and starting a chain reaction that will lead to the dissolution of the country, much like Lithuania's secession from the U.S.S.R. led to the dissolution of the Soviet Union.  It's time to admit that America is finished.  And we have to finish America before America finishes us. 

Succession and Secession

Trump's disappearance a couple of weeks ago left many Americans contemplating what would happened if he died.  He has since re-emerged and proven that reports about not his death but his mere illness were greatly exaggerated.  But Washington Republicans are fearful that Trump, once considered more vigorous and fit the Biden despite his advanced dementia and his advanced weight, are fearful that his death in office would send the MAGA movement and the GOP into their own death spirals.  Or so it's been said.

"Republicans are scrambling to figure out what to do if he croaks," one Facebook user wrote of Trump.  "If he doesn’t die right in front of us - while racist rambling at a rally - they will try to pretend he is alive until the next election. J.D. Vance has zero following within the Trump cult. The cult will revolt. Project 2025 will go to pot as they need compliance to complete their most diabolical plan."

Yeah, well, I got news for you.  One thing Vance is is smart, not stupid like Trump.  That makes him more dangerous than Trump. A year ago this time, with Kamala Harris as the Democratic presidential nominee, we were trying to keep hope alive.  Now we have to keep Trump alive.  Because if Vance gets in, he will use all of the newly discovered presidential powers the Supreme Court has unearthed (like its latest ruling, that ICE has the right to roam the streets of our cities and apprehend suspect illegal immigrants at will) to make himself so powerful that MAGA will have no choice but to follow him.  To get an idea of how lawless a Vance Presidency would be like, I need only point out that, after the U.S. bombed a fishing boat in the Caribbean Sea off the coast of Venezuela and claimed the boat was piloted by a drug gang headed for the U.S. - ludicrous on its face, as it was heading in the direction of Trinidad - Vance dismissed those (including libertarian senator Rand Paul) who said that that operation was a violation of international law . . . a war crime.  Vance said he didn't give a twit (he actually used a rhyming word for "twit") what it was called.

And the rest of the line of succession isn't any better.  If Trump dies and Vance is, say, lynched by a panicked mob, House Speaker and MAGA toady Mike Johnson becomes President.  After him comes Senate president pro tempore Charles Grassley, who is so old he can call Joe Biden "Sonny."  After that comes the misfits and miscreants of the Trump-Vance Cabinet, starting with the Secretary of State.

Trump's death in office, were it to occur, would be the ideal time for those of us who advocate dissolution of the Union to strike.  Instead of letting the line of succession play out, we should find a way to suspend the government and begin negotiations for a badly needed national divorce.  We would need a plan in advance before Trump were to breathe his last.  But, failing that, Democratic states should immediately begin the process of withdrawing from the Union.  Vance is only Vice President because of his political backer, tech magnate Peter Thiel, whose opposition to democracy and belief in a global system of technology oligarchs running the show makes him the most dangerous German to walk the earth since Adolf Hitler.  For Democratic states to remain in the Union and "resist" MAGA if Vance were to become President isn't my idea of resistance; it's more like suicide.

I still say that Democratic states should secede.  I also say that we shouldn't wait for President Vance.  We should get out now . . . before it's too late.

Blood On the Rise is Following Us

This is how liberty dies . . . 

. . . with the use of force.

Trump just federalized the California state National Guard unit and sicced the troops on protesters demonstrating against ICE removing immigrants from various locations in Los Angeles.  Innocent bystanders have been arrested along with demonstrators.

Suddenly, going to the No Kings Day protests coinciding with the big Army parade in Washington doesn't seem like a good idea.  

But it is.  And anyone who can go should.  Anyone who can't go should be there in spirit at least.  Because if Los Angeles - the scheduled sight of the 2028 Olympics (it may be time for my to write another open letter to my Olympic heartthrob Janet Evans!)  - isn't safe, what locale is?

If we're not in an Amerikanisches Reich yet, we're certainly close.

When the Reichstag moment does come, prepare for martial law and curfews.  Prepare for suspension of the Bill of Rights and for executions of dissenters.

Prepare for sham elections in which Democrats - if they're not completely banned - may be allowed to field candidates but will lose in a rigged system.  Prepare for women's rights to be obliterated, and prepare for gays to wear pink triangles and for Muslims to wear yellow crescents in public.

Prepare for all art, music, cinema and books critical of the leader - or even any classic pop music, movies or literature or classical music that the leader has a problem with - to be banned as non-patriotism-promoting.

Prepare, in other words, for the entire country to become Utah.

Prepare also for separatist and secessionist movements to emerge.  The Constitution clearly means nothing anymore.  It's time to dissolve the Union and break the U.S. up into separate countries.  As soon as we get the chance. 

Secession

I want to say this.

Not only do I expect the United States to break apart into separate countries, I am for the dissolution of the Union.  I believe that the United States, under present circumstances, cannot go on.  Therefore . . . as a resident of the State of New Jersey, I am calling for New Jersey to secede from the Union.

The current situation in this federation that is the United States is untenable.  The people of the United States are hopelessly divided along political lines.  Also, Trump has destroyed the credibility of the United States as a world power with his national-security foibles and his tariffs, which have made the U.S. unreliable.  Even if  there's a Democratic successor to Trump who wants to repair and restore political and economic relations with the rest of the world, that won't be possible, because this country undermined itself by putting Donald Trump back in power in the first place.

Also, as Democratic states are diametrically opposed to Republican states on just about every issue, it has become quite clear that states like New Jersey, New York, Massachusetts and California cannot possibly co-exist in the same country with states like Florida, Oklahoma, Texas, of Alabama.  To keep the Union together files in the face of reason and sanity.  I say, New Jersey should withdraw from the Union to start the peaceful process of the dissolution of the country.  If New Jersey can secede first, that can get the ball rolling.

Of course, like South Carolina in 1860, New Jersey today is too small to be a republic and too large to be an insane asylum.  Secession would be a precursor for states to form new unions with other states, though some states, like Texas, are in fact large enough to be independent republics (please go to my post from January 2025 about the possible breakup of the U.S., as shown by a hypothetical map).  It would set the stage for an amicable split, sort of like an amicable divorce . . . not unlike the 1993 dissolution of Czechoslovakia. 

In that spirit, I offer the following mock ordinance of secession for the legislature of the State of New Jersey to consider.  I was inspired by the conservative American Legislative Exchange Council - a group famous for drafting model bills for states to pass to push a rightwing agenda - to create it, and since the  American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC, would find the idea of a liberal state like New Jersey seceding to be appalling, I am clearly trying to be a smart-ALEC.  😀  As I happen to be a reporter who covers municipal council meetings, I used an outline of an ordinance to draft this mock measure, and for good measure - more tweaking of right-wingers - I added language copying or paraphrasing not only the South Carolina secession ordinance of  December 1860 but also the Mississippi secession ordinance of January 1861.  (None of the borrowed language from those secession ordinances involves slavery, for the record.  Every word in the "WHEREAS" paragraphs, though, are my own.)

 

STATE OF NEW JERSEY 

CALENDAR YEAR 2025 ORDINANCE OF SECESSION 

To dissolve the Union between the State of New Jersey and other States united with her under the compact entitled "The Constitution of The United States of America."

*

WHEREAS, the United States of America on the fifth day of November, in the year of our Lord Two Thousand and twenty-four, had elected a multiple-charged and multiple-convicted felon (henceforth to be referred to as "The Leader"), to return to the office of President of the United States, in violation of Section 3 of the fourteenth article of amendment to the Constitution of the United States that prohibits those who have participated in or directed insurrection or rebellion against the Government of the United States from holding public office of the United States; and

WHEREAS, The Leader, upon taking anew the office of President of the United States, has unilaterally withdrawn from international agreements and organizations, has illegally appointed a naturalized citizen to a non-existent Department of the United States Government to eviscerate the bureaucratic institutions of said Government in violation of oversight and authority of the Congress of the United States and of the Constitution of United States; and

WHEREAS, the States that have entered into Union under the compact entitled "the Constitution of the United States of America" may be adversely affected by such violations of The Leader, which the Congress of the United States has refused to counteract per its Constitutional authority; and 

WHEREAS, the State of New Jersey, having entered into this compact on the eighteenth day of December in the year of our Lord One Thousand Seven hundred and eighty-seven upon her own free will, is now forced to bear witness to efforts by The Leader to breach said compact with intent to cause adversity to States whose Electors did not cast their ballots for him in the Election for the Presidency and the Vice Presidency of the United States having just transpired in the year of our Lord Two Thousand and twenty-four; and 

WHEREAS, it is the responsibility of the Government of the State of New Jersey to remedy adverse and most likely illegal actions of The Leader that go largely unchallenged at the Federal level of Government; 

NOW THEREFORE BE IT ORDAINED, by the Governor, the Assembly, and the Senate of the State of New Jersey and the People of the State of New Jersey, that the Ordinance adopted by us in Convention, on the eighteenth day of December in the year of our Lord One Thousand Seven hundred and eighty-seven, whereby the Constitution of the United States of America was ratified, and also all Acts and parts of Acts of the Legislature of this State, ratifying amendments of the said Constitution, are hereby repealed; and 

BE IT FURTHER ORDAINED, that ratifications of Treaties and entrances into Agreements with various Nations under the Constitution of the United States of America, will remain in force between the State of New Jersey and said Nations, and that ratifications of Treaties and entrances into Agreements under said Constitution illegally invalidated by The Leader, a point of reason for repealing ratification of said Constitution and subsequent amendments, will also remain in force between the State of New Jersey and said Nations, and

BE IT FURTHER ORDAINED, that the union now subsisting between New Jersey and other States, under the name of  "The United States of America," is hereby dissolved.  

I am prepared to see New Jersey accept the fact that she cannot stay in this Union.  I look forward to when we vote to get out. 

And if at first you don't secede, try, and try again.