Soft Secession = Irreni Urgency

Soft Secession

In my last blog post I predicted the future, namely that tech companies like Google will start paying their employees in foreign currencies. How confident am I that this is going to happen? I give it a likely confidence on the scale of unlikely-to-most-likely in the next five years because these companies are already world companies, changing the currency of employee payment is a technicality. Giving everyone in the world a bank account in a foreign country is already happening.

In this blog post I am predicting the future once again in the form of soft secession. California already has three different initiatives to either break up the state or secede from the US. These will all fail because hard secession is too disruptive. We no longer live in a relatively primitive world of 1860s when our last revolution happened. The world is now too intertwined and co-dependent for revolution to garner popular support.

Soft secession, however, is already upon us. It has already happened in the form of sanctuary states. California has defied Federal law by implementing sanctuary city and sanctuary state laws in defiance of Federal law. They have suffered no consequences. Previously marijuana became legal in Colorado and California even though marijuana is still classified as a Federal, Schedule 2 narcotic. Gay marriage did not defy Federal law but gay marriage is a case of state's asserting their rights. Gay marriage could become a form of soft secession if conservatives manage to overturn gay marriage or outlaw gay marriage outright. If that were to happen then states where gay marriage is legal would openly defy Federal law.

The trend of defying Federal law by the states is called soft secession and this will accelerate is the prediction.

The Tax Reform bill of 2017 was called "The Revenge On The Blue States" by my tax accountant. For a party supposedly against redistribution of wealth the Republican party certainly passed one in 2017 by redistributing wealth from the blue states to the red states. California and New York are both contemplating soft secession options. In California the state is considering payroll tax deductions to be now classified as charitable donations and not a tax. At the end of the year if a citizen does not pay enough State "charity" then they will receive a tax bill. California is considering this because the tax reform now only allows $10,000 in write off for mortgage interest and State income tax combined. Add up your mortgage interest and your State income tax and you can now write off $10,000 maximum of the two amounts combined. Millions of  Californians are looking at mortgages well above $500k due to the housing market and $10k will not cover mortgage interest let alone state income tax for tax write off.

I bring this up because the political war, and make no mistake about it this is political war, between Americans is just getting started and is being fought by both sides. This is not just California being the only bad actor.

I'm writing this essay because of something I read yesterday. Masha Greene pointed out that many Americans are now feeling adrift because of Trump. She stated that millions of Americans are now wandering  how can it be in 2018 some politician being caught saying, "grab them by the pussy", is not immediately disqualified to be President?

Another word for adrift is un-American.

I've been a consumer of right-wing media since its inception in 1990s. Right-wing media came about due primarily to the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine in the 1980s.

Right-wing media has always been about one thing: making money hating Liberals. And this hate primarily takes the form of calling Liberals un-American. Liberals are called godless, socialist, communist traitors as stated by all right-wing media going on forty-years now.

Right-wing media hasn't changed in forty-years because selling hatred of Liberals is easy peasy money. Any talent-less hack can make money at it and AM radio is replete with right-wing, liberal attack machines.

Up until Trump the right-wing hate machine maxed out at about 20-30 million Americans, or roughly ten percent of the country.

Greene's point is that Trump changed all that in two ways. First more Americans are feeling compelled to join team Trump. That's obvious. What I hadn't thought about is the identity crisis Greene makes clear: "Can I be American in a country that would elect someone as antithetical to everything I believe in is right?" This identity crisis was exacerbated yesterday when Trump nominated another conservative to the Supreme Court. Nothing surprising there and nothing else could be expected. But think about if the Supreme court becomes 6-3 conservative majority? The identity crisis will have another wave if Ginsberg dies or otherwise needs to leave the court and Trump appoints another conservative judge giving the court a 6-3 conservative majority. When this happens this will ensure the rise of soft secession in my view.

The calculus to come to this conclusion is straight forward.

Un-American Calculus

1. Liberals are un-American propaganda. Right-wing media has asserting this trope for forty years. Now imagine a Liberal who is normally apolitical who temporarily tunes into politics to try and reconcile a personal identity crisis due to "grab them by the pussy." What are they going to hear? What they are going to hear is propaganda that Liberals are communist, socialist traitors. Things will fall into place at that moment as this person thinks, "I can't identify as Trump because he's the polar opposite of who I am. A traitor is the polar opposite of a patriot. Therefore I am a traitor and un-American." Now the normally apolitical Liberals are forced to either identify American and support Trump, or identify un-American and not change their identity. It is not hard to predict how this will turn out. People rarely change their identity. This is a case of be careful what you wish for: Trump right-wing Americans are going to convert the apolitical Liberals into traitors by wishful thinking propaganda stating they are.
2. Liberals are godless propaganda. The corollary to this propaganda is that one cannot be a both Liberal and be a Christian. This country is seeing a steep spike being godless with Millennial and younger. The youth are traditionally far more liberal than senior citizens. While I do not expect conservatives to ever wake up to the fact they are manufacturing traitors by falsely accusing half of this country of being traitors, I do believe they will come to regret with equating being a Christian with being a conservative. This country being majority Christian in population can easily fall below 50% in the next twenty years. Again, another case of be careful what you wish for.
3. Courts are the last bastion for Liberals. If Conservatives can be counted on for one thing it is this: a total lack of self awareness. Conservatives are correct in observing that the courts are the last bastion of Liberal politics in 2018. Conservatives believe they can achieve total political victory once the Supreme Court has a 6-3 conservative majority. Their lack of self-awareness and what they  fail to realize is that once the Liberals check out of Federal politics this is permanent. This has consequences. This makes soft secession the only remaining Federal option and states like California will begin to openly defy Federal laws at an accelerated pace.
4. World politics is on the side of Liberals. Trump's trade war with the entire world, including Canada, pits 100% of all conservatives in the U.S. against the entire world. Well guess...just guess...who the entire world is going to side with when it comes to Conservatives or Liberals? Couple this notion with the identity of Liberals being un-American. The Conservative party has been hell-bent for forty years demanding Liberals recognize that they are traitors. With the rise of Trump the Liberals are taking Conservatives up on this un-American identity proposition. The world will back Liberals and a self-fulfilling prophecy of Conservatives will be realized. They get the extreme pleasure of labelling Liberals as traitors being correct. What do you think the odds are though of Conservatives successfully taking on the entire world along with the un-American Liberals? Like I said, lack of self-awareness.
5. Impossible Federal politics for Liberals. Trump shifts the political landscape from right-wing propaganda being for 20-30 million people to a main-stream order of 100 million. Packing the courts with a 6-3 conservative majority will be the final nail in the coffin of Federal politics for Liberals. Liberals will come to see Federal politics as impossible and  will just lose interest in Federal politics.

The future is uncertain. Lots of things can happen. For example, gerrymandering could be fixed or the Electoral college could be done away with. But here's the one thing I think is the most certain: Liberals will continue to check out of Federal politics. The Democratic party died from attrition. The Liberals have abandoned the Democratic party. The socialists and other factions will most likely never gain national traction. In some respects the Democratic party fate is the political fate of atheists: there is no there there. Atheists have nothing common just because they do not believe in gods. Having nothing in common does not a political party make. Further the elite rich Liberals play on a world stage now comprised of multiple countries. Why would they ever give that up? Google, Facebook and Apple are far more likely to pull stakes and leave Silicon Valley so as to establish a new enclave in say, Greece, than they are to capitulate to conservative American politics. Because lets face it, capitulation is the only offer on the table by conservatives.

I predict the Democratic Party pieces will be picked up by what is now the Republican Establishment and become a center-right party formally. Its voting base will never exceed more than half that of the Republican party because the left will be absent.

Soft secession is already happening and based upon the un-American Calculus I outlined above it will continue to expand. Soft secession power is something one can directly control as opposed to the fickle Federal, national voting, politics. Once California and other states become completely convinced that soft secession is they way to go there will be no turning back. What's the Federal government going to do about it? Washington has already declared tax war on the Liberal states  with the 2017 Tax Reform bill. The game is already afoot. Will the Federal government call out Federal troops and go to war on a soft-secession? I think not. So soft secession will succeed.

How likely is soft secession happening? It already is but an acceleration is the prediction and I give this a likely on the scale of unlikely-to-most likely because it is already happening. 

I wrote this essay to convince myself and you that the urgency to start Irreni World Scale is upon us. While Irreni will take two-hundred years to complete, even in a partial form Irreni World Scale is Democracy friendly and will support our aging, failing system to help prevent American Democracy from having total collapse.



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