Not So Polite Dinner Conversation – Secession! and a smidgen of geology

Isn’t “pout-rage” such a great word?  It fits just about anyone who takes a fit when something doesn’t go their way, from three-year olds, to theocrats who can’t watch women’s vaginas when they want to.  

One of the best examples of this pout-rage is the calls for secession from the United States of America.  Poor things, they didn’t get their way so they want to take their balls and go home!  

I’m all for Texas to leave the USA (alas Austin, you seem trapped).  Indeed, I’d be happy if the states of the old “confederacy” would all up and leave.  I’d feel sorry for those trapped in such a country.    

I love alternative histories so what indeed would happen to an “independent” Texas or a new confederacy?  Hmmm, well, health care would become based on prayer and that’s all.  Can’t have anyone thwarting “God’s Will” with any science, you know.  No vaccines, no chemotherapy, no antibiotics, no surgery. And women’s health care, pshaw, they don’t need more than their husbands can give them. The tragedy of Savita Hallapanavar would repeat it self again and again. Nothing could be allowed that dared to be based on that horrible awful no good very bad “evolutionary theory” or the scientific method, so no modern grains, no specially bred cattle, etc. 

Everything would stop dead in advancement, with children being taught that one god created the universe less than 10,000 years ago.  Soon they’d run out of their own fossil fuels (can’t have that dreaded efficiency and good gas mileage!) and foreign oil?  Perish the thought!  But that clean energy stuff, or energy efficiency, well, nothing could be spent on researching that.  They would probably have some nice guns though it would be hard to have such things if they really were honest and went back to first century technology as they seem to want to.  

Water would also be an issue since well. We know that the Ogallala aquifer, the water source from glaciers that we’ve been drawing from since the Dust Bowl, will very likely cease to be a major player in the water supply.  Recharge rates seem to consistently be less than withdrawals (yes there aer a few places where it seems to be the opposite but the size of the areas are vastly different), and with the climate becoming warmer, and thus drier over continental centers, it would seem to mean that withdrawals from the aquifer will only increase, especially since a seceded confederacy would no longer care about efficiency and conservation (those simply awful things that the federal government now oversees) That means the agriculture in many of the states who have citzens who wish to secede would have much less water than it does now.  Perhaps even before then, they would run out of fossil fuels to run those pumps that pull water from the aquifer.   Would they accept non-Christian water for their drought stricken lands?  Would they try to take it, with their sticks and stones? Or would they simply pray for rain?  We’ve all seen just how “effective” that’s been….  (BTW, watch Ken Burn’s The Dust Bowl, fascinating and scary stuff). 

And then there is that problem of one religion.  How many versions of Christianity would be in these newly “freed” lands (of course no other religions, how dare you think so? Are you for sha’ria law? Are you?  😉  )  Will the evangelicals accept the Mormons with open arms or would they go back to calling them a cult?  What about Roman Catholics, those Papists who obey the Vatican?  Would they be deemed a cult too?  Oh, this doesn’t bode well for Catholics like Tom Monaghan, who wants to build his very own Catholic town in Florida, where its citizens will be ruled by “strict Catholic teachings” e.g. no contraceptives sold, no porn, etc.  Gee, what would the Christian Exodus  group say, protestant flavor theocrats who were *sure* that people would flock to South Carolina or Idaho to be “pure”.  What they don’t realize is that Christians all think they are pure and all have the “right” answers, which of course they disagree on. It’s about as amusing as the attempts to convince libertarians to move to New Hampshire.  How long would it be until each sect of TrueChristians decided that they and they alone needed to be in charge?  A decade? Less? Those nice guns would surely get some exercise against their fellow secede-ers.    

How far can one secede from everyone around you?  We have states seceding from the USA, and then one county secedes from the state. Those counties that sustained hurricane damage must be offending the Lawd! They deserve their fate and they should be shunned!  And one town secedes from the county? And one street, ah, they’re sure that they have the only “true” way, so they decide that they won’t let people travel on their road.  

Seems Aunty Entity might fit in really well there.  Well, if she weren’t a woman, of course.