AUT: Re: [nycanarchists] The United States: an idea whose time has passed

[Andrew Farrell <afarrell30@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

A good idea for sure.  In fact the map has already been drawn up.  see
attached.

David Graeber wrote:

> (please feel free to forward widely)
>
> In the light of recent events I'd like to promulgate a proposal:
>
>
> I remember reading in The Nation some years ago, after Dukakis'
> defeat, that really we have to come to terms with the fact that
> there's two countries here, a scary reactionary fundamentalist
> country called America and a relatively sane area which should
> properly be referred to as Southern Canada. This most recent
> election has made clear that the cultural and moral gap between these
> two countries is simply unmaintainable. We are literally living in
> different universes. Therefore I propose that the blue states all
> immediately secede from the union and join Canada. Let's make
> it legal. There is, I think, a potential legal precent: if I am not
> mistaken
> the Turks and Caicos (sp?) islands are negotiating to join Canada
> even now. The results would be a contiguous nation. And the
> advantages - even apart from the obvious one of freedom from
> Bush and everything Texan -are endless. Consider:
>
>     * we'd all have health care
>     * we will be more, not less, economically viable as
> the red states leach off our tax money anyway
>     * we would no longer have to lie and say we're from
> Canada when we go overseas; it will actually be true
>     *  Canada can give up Quebec and it won't really
> matter much
>     * the new, scarier rump America will find it much
> more difficult to terrorize the world since it will have half
> the resources and population
>
> with as far as I can see only one possible drawback:
>
>     * the (admittedly not inconsiderable) possibility of civil war
>
> The other obvious problem with this plan is the resulting country -
> the present vast expanses of Canada plus two fang-like
> and densely populated extensions - would instantly
> become the largest and wealthiest state on earth, in a
> position, eventually, to become yet another predatory super-power.
> For this reason it might be preferable to adopt an alternative
> strategy, one I would dub the "deconstruct America" approach. California
> and the southwest could go back to Mexico. It wasn't legally annexed
> anyway.
> (Texas in theory could too but I wouldn't wish Texas on anyone.) The
> Great
> Plains are a disaster anyway, economically unviable, supported by
> massive welfare, and steadily losing population; I'd say give them
> back to the Native Americans. This would mean a much smaller, relatively
> harmless rump America roughly equivalent to the former
> Confederacy (minus Louisiana, if that's fused onto Quebec, but
> all that's of course negotiable, and possibly Florida, which might
> be better as an independent Caribbean-style state of its own, perhaps
> something along the lines of Cuba.) The details of course can be
> worked out. The point is that continent-sized super-states are simply
> a thing of the past. The current election has demonstrated that they
> are not viable, and are intrinsically, threats to world peace. Just as
> huge multi-ethnic empires like the Ottoman Empire or USSR have been
> breaking up over the last century in the name of democracy, the time
> has come that empires based on extirpation, rather than colonization,
> should really follow suit. A fundamentalist-dominated, aggressive,
> and militaristic rump USA could perhaps become a dangerous rogue state
> for much of the 21st century, particularly if ended up with most of
> the nuclear missiles - however as an anti-intellectual theocracy, it
> would
> probably, like the former USSR, soon loose the ability to successfully
> keep
> up with military technologies and become, effectively, containable.
> But one
> thing is certain: this state would be  a far smaller threat to world
> peace, or
> indeed human survival, than the current, obviously untenable, United
> States of America.
>     David Graeber
>     Deconstruct America Campaign
>
>
> (btw, I'm looking for someone who can print up a few hundred thousand
> stickers saying "No Longer Under US Jurisdiction". I figured we could
> distribute them everywhere.)
>     DG
>
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>
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--
Andrew Farrell
NYC



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