Seven Reasons You Should Move to a Secession State

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With his latest cabinet pick for Secretary of State–the CEO of Exxon–Trump is making it abundantly clear he is the key agent for the Oligarchs in the United States. Not even the CIA’s assessment that Trump is Putin’s pick can stop him. So Putin and Trump and their American Oligarchs will be moving quickly to dismantle the American government and constitution. Their efforts will be structural, outside of public attention, and obscured by whatever latest sideshow Trump concocts. By 2018 there will be little left of American government to oppose him; it’s doubtful there will be elections in 2020, at least elections under the Constitution.

So, besides moving to another country–which this blog is designed to help you do–what can you do?  As the government fractures, federalism might be a good place to focus energy for positive political change. The Oligarchs are genuinely afraid of empowering local progressive democracies in the US or abroad (for example, Scotland). So secession movements might be the best place to rally. Here are seven good reasons you should move to a secession state.

  1. Strength in Numbers. The Oligarchs are taking over governments through fake populism exercised at the ballot box. But they can’t win–even with voter suppression–if decent people stand up to them. The more we are, the more difficult it becomes for them. So move to those Blue States, especially the ones with healthy secession movements. And if, in the process, Red States become more Red, and, like Kansas and Wisconsin and Indiana, sink into economic decline, poverty and ruin, even the stupidest of fake populists might recognize that it’s time to oppose the Oligarchs and the GOP.
  2. Local Control and Influence. It’s said that all politics is local, but working at the local level for independence from the United States will connect you to the community and engage your efforts in a way that is direct. You’ll be able to see the value of the work you do played out before you, instead of disappearing behind some organization in Washington DC.
  3. Rescaling the Economy. The power of the Oligarchs comes directly through their control of global resources. Rescaling economies and asserting local control over resources–be they oil in Alaska, timber in Cascadia, or intellectual firepower in California–directly cuts into the bottom line of the Oligarchs, and limits the financial resources that they have available to undercut democracy.
  4. Connections to Anti-Oligarchs. Acting locally and driving secession will engage you with local business leaders and wealthy people and may reinforce for them the need to oppose the Oligarchs, and the opportunities that can be found in local democracy.
  5. Justice and Law. The more that political decisions are driven down to the local level, the more transparency you’ll have with regards to the law and justice. It’s easier to address injustice when it is local and direct.
  6. Rationality. Even with people you disagree with, it is easier to debate issues rationally when they are framed from a common environment and shared community interests.
  7. It Will Get You Out of the Virtual and Into the Real. Part of the takeover of democratic states has been enabled by the Internet, hacking, and the virtual debates we’ve been having. Face-to-face local political activism is a great counterbalance to the cascade of fake on the Internet.

So there you have it. Move to a secession state and help dismantle the Oligarchy. Below are links to some of the more popular movements:

Alaskan Independence Party This party has been around since the days when Alaska was a territory, and they have party platforms that seem embalmed since then. But Alaskan secession for whatever cause will only help the other secessionist movements.

California Secession This has popular momentum. It may not lead to an actual Calexit, but a popular vote for secession would radically destabilize the Oligarch agenda.

Cascadia Secession This has been a movement for quite some time, and is only picking up steam.

Hawaii Independence  and the Hawaiian Independence Party Are real entities, dedicated to overturning the coup white planters made against the Hawaiian kingdom in the 19th century.

New Hampshire has a very active independence movement, and is encouraging people to move there and join them.

Texas Secession There’s a lot of risible historical revisionism with regards to the civil war on this page, but the point here isn’t so much historical accuracy or social justice as it is leveraging this movement into local control for all the states.

Vermont Independence and Vermont Republic — Both from the land of Bernie Sanders.

The HSBC Expat Explorer

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Here’s a guide to researching your exile: HSBC’s Expat Explorer. This Oligarch lending institution, famous for its money laundering operations, also provides an outline to living abroad, mostly so you will set up your financial management in exile with them.

The Expat guide evaluates countries based on three different criteria: Economics, Living Experience, and Family Benefits. It then surveys about 27K expats (based on the comments on the site, mostly UK expats) and asks them to assign a rank to their experience. There’s no accounting for accuracy or rigor here, but the survey does provide a quick and simple way of getting a bead on the various opportunities you have for setting up your exile, albeit one skewed towards the subjective opinions of people with higher incomes.

What the Expat Explorer doesn’t do is provide any real information on managing the immigration process or bureaucracy in these various countries.

 

It’s Worse Than You Think

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If you’re like me, you found the election fairly brutal and exhausting. I spent an enormous amount of time trying to influence friends and family, to no end. The contrast between the candidates and likely outcomes for the future could not have been more diametrically opposed. And yet, so many acted as if this were another “normal” election, or simply embraced an unreasoning reality, and were impervious to evidence and discussion. A lot of people are still acting that way, as if Trump, an extraordinary business failure with no intellectual curiosity or discipline, will somehow “grow” into the office. As if he will keep his campaign promises, however contradictory and impossible. This is folly and madness. This is whistling past the graveyard.

But there you have it. The election is over. For the most part, they are all over. America will now become a two-party state similar to Mexico under the PRI, which is to say a one-party kleptocracy, where the Democrats are a ineffectual Potemkin party circling the electoral drain for the purpose of convincing the electorate they still have choice. The GOP will gerrymander and voter suppress every local, state and national election from this point forward. And the Supreme Court will validate those efforts, and reinforce them. Poll taxes and property qualifications will likely be back in time for the 2020 election.

In the meantime, the level of theft and economic predation will be extraordinary. The Republican party, following the model they set in Kansas and Wisconsin, will break every union and pension left from the 20th century. They will privatize everything. And that presents an enormous challenge for millions of us. If you’re approaching retirement, you will see both Social Security and Medicare privatized; when the next crash comes, in a few years, whatever earning you had paid into those government accounts will be wiped out. Health care will become increasingly difficult to afford, even as you need it the most. If you’re starting a family, home ownership will become unaffordable, as the deregulated economy and enormous government deficits drive inflation and lending rates to new heights. Already the GOP is rolling back overtime and minimum wage. Two and three jobs will not be enough to keep you out of poverty. If you’re young and looking forward to college, you will find it increasingly out of reach, and meaningless. Save the military, you have no job prospects. Kleptocracies hire on the basis of who you know, not what you know, or what you can do. The fix is now in, and unless you are in on the fix, you are out. There will be favelas and colonias in every American city in five years. If you are still here, you will likely be living in one.

On the other hand, the sheer incompetence of Trump and his toadies insures that government will be chaotic and slapdash. As was the case with Bush, an administration so shot through with blind stupidity will undoubtedly fail at protecting the homeland from terrorists. When that attack occurs, the response will be in full cover-your-ass mode, and so the fear mongering will reach fascistic levels very quickly. And with the most extraordinary police and surveillance infrastructure in history at their disposal, including data-mining and drones, even the clowns governing the country will be able to do serious damage to civil liberties and freedom of expression. And anyone of draft age in the next four years is at risk as Trump lashes out.

So, yes, it’s bad. And it leaves you with few options. If the Comey letter taught us nothing, it is that political reform within the United States is impossible. It may be that some of the secession movements on the West Coast might have the ability to blunt the coming disaster, but it’s a long shot.

Which leaves you exile. And exile in a very troubled world where Putin is waging war on the European Union via the type of disinformation and faux-populism that has already succeeded in the UK and US. Where he is waging a genocidal war in Syria precisely to flood Europe with refugees to destabilize the political order. Where the fragmentation of international order and law mean that there will be no effective framework to combat global warming, at this last moment. So there are few places safe from the attack of the Oligarchs.

But you do have a right to live your retirement years with the savings you earned in your career. You do have the right to health care, to education, to living free of fear, to living free of ecological calamity, and free of war and legalized theft. The Second World War taught us that you can’t reform fascism from within. So this blog is a place to share ideas about where we can start rebuilding outside of the United States. To identify countries and cities and places that still embrace reason and fairness and tolerance and diversity and compassion. Places where we can wait out the coming economic collapse and war, and start to rebuild.

We want this site to be a clearing house to help you move away from America. If you want to share, please comment or contact us.