Stitches

When I hear all this secession talk, I'm of two minds.

I've gotten to be the age I am in the place I find myself by generally ignoring my first reaction. The first reaction, I find, tends to be more or less in line with the popular consensus, which is pretty embarrassing, frankly. Maybe it's my over-educted critical-thinking training, but something about relaxing enough to be swept away by the currents and eddies of the mainstream makes me all squirmy. I don't want to grow a fanciful mustache or get a tattoo or be entertained by any of the Twilight movies. Societally speaking, I think those bases are well covered. Two of them at least by this guy.

Waiting to react is a proven formula. I'm not certain what would have happened had I yielded to my primary instincts when my now-ex-wife announced she was leaving, but I doubt very much it would have led to no lawyer fees and the comfortable alimony I currently enjoy.

Given the track record, for now, with regard to the secession talk, I'm going with my second reaction, which is: construct sentences with as many subordinate clauses as possible. So that's done. And my third reaction which is: aw, baby, don't be mad.

Come on, Texas. Come on, Alabama. This is Cali talking, baby. It hasn't all been bad. Remember when we used to do shit together? We still like football. None of us can get our heads around the idea of how Canada works. So we have some rough patches over stuff like abortion, homosexuality, the basic tenets of scientific methodology and the sociopolitical effects of miscegenation as a practice. These aren't deal-breakers. My cousin has been with the same lady for 11 years and she's OK with Maroon 5. Is it worse than that? How could it be? How could it be?

We've been through this before, but this will blow over. You know it. I know it. Sure, the first time the make-up sex was a little rough, but sometimes a little blood is necessary to kickstart a good catharsis.

Look, I get it. As I said very recently, I remember 2004. You feel abandoned. You feel betrayed. You feel alone. Worst of all, you feel powerless. Powerlessness among a people is a crushing weight to carry in a democracy, built supposedly on responsiveness to the will of the governed.

We felt scared and scorned and ignored after '04 and you know what? Everything turned out... well, really really bad. We got mired down in two wars and hit over the head with the worst economic collapse since the Great Depression. So yeah, I guess go ahead and feel what you feel.

But seriously, whatever you think of Obama: is it going to get worse than that?

Well, I suppose if part of the anxiety is left-over paranoia about slave revolts and revenge for the whole Three-Fifths Compromise thing, yeah, I can see how you'd have something to worry about. But take it easy. We'll all go out to a movie or something. Blow off some steam in some pop-culture consumption. That's how we do things in 21st century America.

This is me being reasonable. This is my second reaction. My first reaction, the slightly more primal one is less "good riddance" or "good luck working out those logistics" and more along the lines of:

I fucking dare you.

See? Not every charitable or very sporting. That's all stupid, unthinking, lizard-brain id responding to a challenge with a challenge. It's un-nuanced, it's uncouth and, predictably, kind of fun.

If secession were tried, there would be challenges with finances and borders and treaties, but I mean... the first thing we're going to want is all our nuclear weapons back. You think the proposed inspection regime for Iran is bad, you should just sit and imagine for a second the one that will get cooked up for Texas, where they execute the retarded on principle.

The third-level reaction, where I shoot off into the stratosphere and see things from 10,000 feet up is: this doesn't have anything to do with secession or politics. It's a cultural divide. On the one side is Mitt Romney* and the people who paid for him looking over the fence they've constructed** and seeing nothing but a nonstop pot-fueled multi-hued gay orgy on their dime. Is it that they don't feel welcome? Maybe they just don't realize that the pot-fuled multi-hued gay orgies are more of a come-as-you-are affair than the formal-invitation type.

Some of them get it, though. Comically-voiced boy-faced Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal gets it. Or, you know, at least now that the election is over he does. Bobby Jindal knows you can't expect to win a general election if you're only addressing a shrinking portion of the voting public. Maybe it's the pure cynicism of ambition, but maybe that's enough to etch in the first cracks in the bubble. You have to talk to everybody if you want to win. Because Bobby Jindal doesn't want to be King of Tea Party Mountain. Bobby Jindal wants to be president of the United States.

And probably that's where we start.

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*not a Texan
**like all fences in this country anymore, most likely with Mexican labor