How To Secede Without Really Trying

By Judith Gayle | Political Waves

This was the week that Scotland did not secede from the United Kingdom. I’m sure the relief was palpable at Balmoral castle, where the Queen and her entourage no doubt celebrated by staying up past their bedtime and taking extra lemon in their tea. Oh, I kid the royals (a Bill Maherism.) While the Scottish vote was decisive to remain aligned with the UK, I suspect that a good many Scots are seething over their failure to break away. Satirist Andy Borowitz summed up the core of their disenchantment with a faux-statement from Queen Elizabeth II:

The Queen ended Friday’s address to the Scottish people on a conciliatory note. “Let us all, each and every one of us, move forward now as one great nation, enjoying the benefits and the history of our glorious and historic union,” she said. “Even the forty-five percent of you who are wankers.”

I understand the Scots’ fierce necessity to flex their muscles for independence, and I confess I’m a tad disappointed they didn’t achieve it. My paternal grandmother, one of seven siblings, was born a McDiarmid, a first-generation American clan so proud, thin-skinned and contentious that I only dare mention their scratchy communal disposition now that they’re all dead. Orphaned young and scattered across the Midwest, they found one another by the time they were adults, and although each was a true original, it was obvious that they’d each been popped out of the same defiant, determined DNA mold. Based on personality traits alone, seems to me that if anybody should have their own definitive slice of the pie, it’s the Scots.

The UK comprises England, Northern Ireland (the Republic of Ireland seceded in 1922, no longer part of the UK), Scotland and Wales. It seems like a no-brainer to suggest that the United Kingdom hasn’t been united since — well — ever, really. Anybody remember a blue-faced Mel Gibson as William Wallace, he and his clan showing their bare rumps to the attacking British army? Three hundred seven years after they were safely in the fold, the Scots still chafe under British rule. And we surely don’t have to discuss the Irish at length, do we?

While I’m no anglophile, having a great-grandparent from Scotland as well as one from Ireland tells me that such an alliance was no match made in heaven, as history bears out. And now, due to promises made by nervous Brits, governmental autonomy gained by the Scots in exchange for their ‘no’ vote will likely tilt the mix to offend the other members of the federation. Britain’s fun is just beginning, I suspect.

We can understand that, here in the New World. We have a dicey and unruly federation ourselves, one so split and mangled that somewhere in the ethers the spirit of Ben Franklin is surely not surprised that his skeptical projection of the U.S. as “a Republic, if we can keep it” has yet again been validated. We could say this epidemic global push for independence — the Arab Spring, the split in the Ukraine, Catalonia rallying to remove itself from Spain, yadda — comes orchestrated by the Pluto/Uranus energies that require necessary transformation, and we’d be accurate, but nothing so monumental as the kind of stimulus these generational outer planets kick up should be taken lightly.

Not for nothin’, Uranus is known to enjoy exploding us into the stratosphere to deposit us on the other side of our illusionary rainbows, and we’d better like it a lot when we land, ‘cuz there’s no going back. It’s the ‘necessary transformation’ portion of the revolutionary experiment that we too often file away for later in the exhilarating prospect of having new-found freedom. Autonomy from the status quo — whether a remediation of what was, or a new template for what might be — requires courage, collaboration and foresight, and these can’t be relegated to an afterthought if a soft landing is desired.

We should probably take a closer look at how that works before we jump into the fire, leaving behind the frying pan, don’t you think? Maybe we better do that now! A recent poll shows that a remarkable 23.9 percent of us here in the U.S.A. think seceding from the union is a dandy idea, and it can’t come as a surprise that the majority of those are from the Republican party and rural areas in the West. Over a third of those polled in the Southwest support the idea, with activists in Texas demanding that secession be put on the statewide ballot this coming November.

Doncha just love this statement from a 59-year old Texan supported by disability? “Texas has everything we need. We have the manufacturing, we have the oil, and we don’t need them.” Reminds me of the gent that warned the fed to “… keep your government hands off my Medicare,” during the rise of the Tea Party, led by Ringmaster Glenn Beck and his squat assistant in the Bozo nose, Rush Limbaugh.

Yes, while we’ve lost count of the ridiculous commentary and the social and international challenges since then, you’ll be shocked to learn that Beck held us all in thrall a mere four years ago, with each day a grind, since. Time does not fly, it appears, when you’re not having fun; it crawls. And it feels as though we’re moving through molasses, thanks to the dead-in-the-water obstruction we’ve endured for the last six-plus years.

That’s what is driving the secession debate: frustration with government. And, once again, that’s the result of a broken system based on gerrymander and the staggering inequity that has put dark money in charge of elections (illustrated now, only a few weeks out from the mid-terms, with multi-millions in Koch-inspired attack ads being lavished on swing states) and lobbying concerns (e.g., ALEC) in charge of writing our legislation.

One more time, I will make the argument that it is NOT both parties responsible for this debacle, although I will give the Dems damned few points for their effort to bust out of the financial model that reduces their activity to “more of the same.” The argument over false equivalency seems never resolved, yet blaming both parties for this deadlock is to remain blind and deaf to the extremism on the right. Government complicity in authoritarian behavior aside — and another topic entirely — it is not the liberals who support the ascendency of the plutocratic model that now rivals not just the Great Depression, but the Gilded Age before it. And because both sides are equally passionate about their convictions does NOT mean that both sides are equally rational.

What happened at the turn of the last century seems remote from our circumstances today, but it’s worth noting that between 1989 and 2013, the U.S. median household income fell by around one per cent. When the middle class doesn’t have discretionary money to spend, things slow and stay that way. The big money that seems to keep the Dow lifted, constantly flexing and rising, has to do with speculation — betting — and the fat profit being made has to do with investment and, increasingly, inheritance.

Truth to tell, not all of us are in the market. In fact, over 50 percent of us live from paycheck to paycheck (more meager now than at any time in the last quarter century). Think of it as a kind of slavery, because that’s exactly what it is, and do realize that when there are fewer economic gains to go around, the people are pitted against one another in distribution wars that exacerbate our differences: social, ethnic and financial. Is that by accident, you might wonder? And can you hear the one percent, laughing all the way to the bank?

To segue a moment: on that note, I hope you’ve been able to watch some of the Roosevelt chronicles this week on PBS. It’s another of Ken Burns’s triumphs, a melding of history and personality that fleshes out our past as well as the psychology of those who influenced it. Teddy’s almost sadistic adoration of war tells us a lot about how we became interventionists, while FDR’s defiance in the face of rejection of his “socialist” programs can’t help but illustrate what is missing in our policy-making today. We often rule by dynasty, here in the United States. Sometimes that’s a good thing, sometimes not, but it’s worth a careful scan to realize that we who fought a bloody war to remove ourselves from the elitism of monarchy, still find the “known knowns” so comforting that we have a natural resistance to risking change.

Is that what happened in Scotland this week? The percent of Scots that were undecided, lulled by the promises of London politicians, seem to have shifted based on their hope that they would gain more freedom to rule themselves (although as Cameron finds himself re-drafting the whole of the UK to accommodate those who want the same deal, some of those promises may quickly change.) The Scots are a very progressive lot, egalitarian risk-takers. Their push for autonomy came at the same time that the UK decided to double-down on conservative austerity measures, flying in the face of metaphysics (and common sense) that tells us we can’t starve ourselves out of poverty consciousness. No doubt a great many Scots felt they could do better by themselves, for themselves.

And so, apparently, do Texas and rural areas in California, Nevada and elsewhere across the country. A good many of these rebels are as wary of the Commie Pinko Gay and Deranged Lib’ruls messing around in their free market, their for-profit and their fair-skinned patriarchies, especially in matters of taxation and redistribution of wealth, as they are determined to protect their lineage of white, male privilege and classism. Righty pundit George Will — no longer on Sunday prime time, now a FOX News contributor — explained it well in Burns’s Roosevelt series. Before FDR, the American government was responsible for mail, roads and defense against foreign attack; except for those, it was every man for himself. FDR changed the entire working plan of the Republic, and not everyone (especially his own peers, who hated him for what they saw as his betrayal of their class superiority) approved.

There is a certain romance in thinking one’s state could do a better job itself than what’s happening in Washington, D.C., and that depends entirely upon the state, of course. Personally, I would certainly have to move quickly, given the lock the Baggers have on this state’s congressional doings. While my uterus is no longer in production, there are too many regressive influences here that can only be borne so long as there is federal ballast to keep delusions from sinking the riverboat “Show Me.” I doubt I could manage the innate (and baseless) smugness that I already endure if three were no checks and balances. Yet if we all decided to move to where we’re among the like-minded, then how does that translate into a tolerant, well-adjusted and functional Republic?

Part of our problem today, say the experts, is that the gerrymander — along with the politicization of the religious movement (and, according to Bill Maher, the strident lies and propaganda sent out over the airwaves at FOX News) — has brought an inevitable distillation of the like-minded to align disproportionately, influencing political outcome. That’s how a state designated ‘purple’ in the elections of 2008 and 12, coming close to electing an African-American president, can still tolerate and even encourage the disheartening racism we’ve witnessed in Ferguson. And that’s why the Pea Patch can have a blue streak a mile wide from quietly retired union folk completely unrepresented by the Good Old Boyz Club that reigns supreme locally, with the help of the fundamental churches and crony capitalists.

Missouri is nothing special in terms of its rural provincialism, except for the occasional lefty like me. Each of the states has its divisions and specifics, like 50 little serfdoms, all struggling with their internal affairs. And so, like Scotland, we remain divided today, and hoping, in this election year, that the promises we’re hearing from those in power mean something. There is speculation that because of growing populism — the sort that put Scotland in the headlines — government will begin to take the desires of the people seriously, but perhaps we should tell that to Mitch McConnell and his band of merry obstructionists. He does not fly in the face of progressives these days, so much as the whole of a weary nation that wants the Congress to do what it’s paid to do: work for the good of the American public. And the likelihood of that happening is slim, while, as Mike Lux tells us, the Republican party is a “wholly owned subsidiary of Koch Industries,” coming clean with their radical agenda in leaked secret tapes, including but not limited to:

The minimum wage (which leads to Nazi-ism) should be abolished; homeless people should be told to “get off [their] ass and work hard like we did”; and government should get out of the business of anything except the police force, military, and judicial system — no Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, public education, student loans, clean air or water rules, national or state parks, food safety, Wall Street oversight.

There you have it. A pre-FDR America, as explained by George Will and approved by Ayn Rand-lovers everywhere. Either pull yourself up by the bootstraps or get your neck stepped on by the all-American corporate boot, because that’s the dream of American freedom and self-determination pushed by big money today. It’s a dismal projection, creating the nation as even more divided than it is now: a portrait of Orwell’s cowed and unquestioning worker bees, or worse, a populace grimly convinced it’s doing ok because it prefers the red pill to the blue one that Neo selected.

As always, this is about money. Clearly, we cannot sustain a collaborative government if we are so completely corruptible, and unless we get big money out of the halls of governance, nothing is going to change for the Pubs or the Dems or any of us, for that matter. The Pubs recently stopped a vote on overturning Citizens United, after stringing hopes along by allowing a debate on the issue. Did we really think they would approve an actual vote? And would it have looked any different if it had happened in your own statehouse, or mine? Seceding from the union won’t change anything in our polarized nation if the system itself is corrupted.

That defines the challenges ahead, and speaks to the decisions we face. As a populist, I can’t help but believe — passionately — that those changes can only happen from the bottom up, each of us bringing our best to the collective consciousness of our nation, and our world. That most of us are ruled and manipulated by the fewest of us has always amazed me. Someone forgot to tell us that we not only outnumber those who scold and intimidate, but that we can, and always do, outlast them in the end. We’ll have another chance to put forth the public will in a few weeks, and the planets have conspired to bring us any number of opportunities in recent months to get on to ourselves, to rethink the internal hurdles that have walled us off from one another and kept us mute. Perhaps we’ve listened to something besides the buzz of PR and the beat of war drums in these last months, perhaps we’ll vote an expansive conscience rather than a repressive ego. Perhaps we’ll risk more and cower less.

But whatever happens in November — the best case scenario or the worst — will not let each of us, individually, off the hook for determining our own future, nor does it give us a reprieve from our responsibility to one another and the world. The late, great Howard Zinn put it this way:

We don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.

We need to be less concerned with what our neighbor has, and more with what s/he is. We need to hold out a hand in friendship to teach those who buy their friends that there is another way. We need to get a clear picture of the difference between the desperation of those in need and the discontent of those who want. We need to remember that the widow’s mite was more powerful in its faithfulness and compassion than all the riches that wouldn’t fit through the eye of a needle. If we’re going to succeed as a nation, well into the 21st century, we’re going to have to begin to live up to the principles we say we hold most dear.

The Scots may not be finished with their rebellion, although they did not win the day, and it seems pretty clear that we Americans are not through with ours either. With an infinite succession of presents ahead of us, then, we have a living, vibrant and egalitarian future to create, a new and loving era to establish, and a compassionate, open heart to express. We will never complete our push for a nation conceived in liberty until we realize that unless the whole of us can thrive, none of us can.