Gone South…(we’re not in Oz anymore)

So for quite a while now, the Right and its attached Trumpsphere have been widely considering secession. If they can’t win an election, and a coup looks increasingly difficult, well, then, they’ll just take their ball and their bat home…and make their own country. (“With blackjack and hookers.” Okay, maybe not.)

But I gather Rush Limbaugh suggested the idea on his radio show. And then it was all over Parler, the right’s answer to Facebook (which is interesting because I thought that Facebook *was* the Right’s answer to Facebook). And, closest to home for me (I’m a resident of Texas), the head of the Texas State GOP, Allen West, went on record as saying it wasn’t such a bad idea, either. His exact words, as reported by ABC, were “Perhaps law-abiding states should bond together and form a Union of states that will abide by the constitution…”

Oh, an aside, the GOP is technically the party of Lincoln, who fought a war to preserve the union, and West is a Black man. I’m not entirely sure, but I think there might be some irony here someplace. Just a guess.

Anyway…now, normally, if Right-wing cuckoo clocks wanted to secede from the union and take their mass shootings, their racism, their sh1tty Red-State economies, their anti-intellectualism, their religious fundamentalism, and their elevated rates of Covid infection with ‘em…well, I’d say, be my guest. Let me get your hat. Write if you get work. Or don’t write. That would be fine, too. Preferable, actually.

The wanna secede? More power to 'em.

But, since I’m a resident of Texas, I can’t be quite so cavalier. If they left, they might take me with them.

So, I’ve got another idea. Instead of secession, let’s encourage the Trumpeters to immigrate…that is, find another place to build their Union of Neo-Confederated Libertarian States of Reactionary Nastiness and let them all move there. We’ll even throw in a few bucks for moving expenses.

Where should they go? Normally, I’d suggest Antartica, but that’s hard on the penguins. So, instead, I modestly propose Australia, specifically the country’s northern and western-most areas.

The regions are relatively underpopulated and the local governments are eager to recruit skilled newcomers. And the Australians are pretty tough, so even Deplorables aren’t likely to upset them a whole lot. Plus the climate is good. In fact, I’m told it feels a lot like the American South and Southwest.

And, best of all for the Trumpsters, the politics may feel familiar. After all, Rupert Murdoch (he of Weasel…I mean, of Fox News) was born there. And there is even a tradition of Libertarianism (of sorts) in Western Australia — you’ll recall that Gina Rienhart, one of the richest women in the world, and a Western Australian, famously called for Australians’ wages to be cut drastically …maybe even to a couple of dollars a day…so that the country could compete internationally.

In other words, Proud Boys, Parlers, and Mr. Allen will fit in just fine.

And, naturally, they don’t have to know…just yet… that Australia has some of the most stringent gun control laws in the English-speaking world.

We’ll just let it be a nice little surprise for ‘em.

*

Until next time…

Onward and upward

~mjt