Few people know that Alabama Liberal’s first (and best) unpublished manuscript was a speculative fiction spy-drama detailing what would happen if Texas actually did secede from the United States. That was written in early 2011, when then-Texas Governor Rick Perry–not yet moved on to “greater things” like resigning from the Trump administration or “Dancing with the Stars”–floated the idea of seceding from the country over Obama’s election and/or reelection. In fact, Texas secession talk seems to flare up whenever there’s a Democratic President in office and/or they’re threatened the state might actually turn blue (Trump’s 2020 election margin over Biden was the slimmest the GOP has had this century, Ted Cruz only beat Beto O’Rourke by 2-points in 2018, and O’Rourke is polling within the margin of error in his race to unseat Governor Greg Abbott this year) and/or they’re upset that the University of Texas lost a football game. Given that, it’s perhaps unsurprising that the Texas Republican Party recently adopted a pro-secession platform at their Summer convention–which seemingly could’ve been held in 2012 or 1965 or 1865.
So why does the idea of Texas secession seem so damn unkillable? Because, on the right wing, bad ideas never die.
They get shouted down over and over and over (repealing Roe vs. Wade, “sunsetting” social security, privatizing Medicare, gutting public schools, Trickle Down Economics, deregulation that causes monopolies and corporate malfeasance, letting Civil Rights be a “state’s rights” issue which has been a proven failure for over a century), but the right wing would rather die than moderate their mindsets. “Privatizing” social security has been horrifically unpopular every time it’s ever been brought up—but there Lindsey Graham and Rick Scott are, saying that stuff this year…in 2022…nine decades after social security was started.
For secession, they’ve talked that trash for decades. Not only did Perry voice support during Obama’s first term, but lots of TX idiots have said similar things for every major decision they’ve ever not liked (federal abortion rights, integration of public schools, sane regulations on how much they can destroy the Earth, the Civil Rights Act).
They’re idiots. It’s not only extremely illegal to actually attempt secession, but this talk about “we have the oil to support ourselves” is exactly what the Southeast thought in the run-up to the Civil War.
Then, it was “we have cotton” the most valuable crop on the planet at that time, whereas oil will likely become less relevant over time. Not to mention all the oil in the world hasn’t made Libya, Syria, Venezuela, etc. desirable places to live and anyone vaguely familiar with “the resource curse” knows why. And that’s exactly what Texas would become: a pariah state with a single-commodity economy led by kleptocratic, moron fanatics with no legitimacy. [An exploration of why oil-based economies don’t really work can be found in “The Looting Machine,” which is about African countries, but easily applies worldwide.]
“Brain drain” would occur as a lot of the best and brightest would immediately leave Texas. [Elon Musk will not want his companies to be valued in “Texas Patriot Bucks” or Neo-confederate gold coins. It amazes me that right-wingers are dumb enough to think a South African plutocrat who praises China constantly and only moved to Texas for less regulations and a tax cut will give a damn about it long term—same for Joe Rogan.] They’ll be like Cuban refugees or anyone else: their assets devalued and their properties likely wiped out. There will be a good chunk who don’t move (either because they can’t afford to leave or just don’t want to) and fight an insurgency, in addition to massive hostilities on the border with cartels/gangs/the-Mexican-military possibly sensing an opening. Major companies would see the writing on the wall and relocate out of Texas.
The men who think they want secession the most (successful white dudes who have never known struggle) will find they’ve lost a good chunk of their wealth, and look for “international” American assets to buy instead—forcing Greg Abbott to pass laws against money leaving Texas to stop cash from fleeing. Overnight, the people who thought they were gaining freedom will be looking for ways to escape.
These goons are living in a “Wild West” fantasy that hasn’t actually resembled Texas in 100 years. The parts of Texas that are actually like that—West TX and parts of South Texas—are poverty stricken dumps, and the wannabe-cowboys in Dallas and the suburbs of Texas would find their cowboy cosplay a lot less fun than they think.