The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

Many years ago, Aaron Burr tried to create a new country by forging a cabal of Southern US plantation owners, politicians and army officers in his bid to carve out a nation state in what is now Texas.  The so-called Burr Conspiracy rocked the fragile nation.  President Jefferson, whom Burr had served under as Vice-President, had to issue a warrant for his arrest.  Burr was charged with treason but claimed he was just setting up a plantation for himself in what was then Mexico.  Since no formal agreement was ever made, Burr was acquitted but politically scarred for life.  He was considered as much a traitor as Benedict Arnold.

Flash forward to 2022.  We have Donald Trump acting as a president in exile, not quite sure what his next move will be.  He's established his Mar-a-Lago residence as a proxy White House where leading Republican figures visit him on a regular basis.  It is here and at his second home in Bedminster that Trump and his advisors plot their course of action.  

We are led to assume they are just trying to work out a midterm strategy to take over Congress in November.  All sorts of wild-haired ideas emerged over the last year, such as Trump running for the US House seat from his Florida district.  This would enable him to be House Speaker should the Republicans win the House, giving him a sizeable platform to successfully run for president again in 2024.  Some Republicans even fantasize impeaching Biden and Harris and making Trump president before 2024.  

However, Trump loyalists and GOP faithful finds themselves at odds in these midterm primaries, pitting their chosen candidates against each other.  GOP leaders like McConnell worry that the MAGA Senate nominees in Pennsylvania, Ohio and Georgia won't fair well in the general election, potentially costing Republicans the Senate. In fact 538 currently has the Democrats favored to make gains in the Senate.  While Trump still has a lot of clout in the GOP, the overall mood of the country is very much anti-Trump, especially in the wake of the FBI raid of Mar-a-Lago for stolen classified documents.  Anyone who ardently supports Trump at this point does so at his or her own political risk.

But, there is an alternative.  A very unlikely alternative should the Republicans lose in November, but one that has already been discussed in some of the more ardent red states.  Secession.  Texas Republicans are actively considering a referendum in 2023 should Republicans fail to gain control of Congress.  While such a move is illegal, it didn't stop Texas when it joined the Confederacy in 1861.  Burr was no longer around at the time of the Civil War but he probably would have smiled in his grave knowing he set such wheels in motion.

Trump has long inspired the rebellious nature in conservatives disgruntled with what they regard as liberal policies.  He is very much the iconoclast, as was Burr.  Not as clever, of course.  Burr kept his intentions under his hat, where Trump is not afraid to publicly air his intentions. He's already shown his support for Texas when its Republican Party chose to reject Biden's 2020 win.  This is rather amusing as Biden didn't win in Texas.  You can only reject your own state results.  You can't reject some other state's results, but no matter.  I'm sure Trump would support a secession bid should it come to pass.  After all, he was all in favor of Brexit, and would have liked to see the entire EU unravel under his watch.  Why not here?

The United States already appears to be unravelling at the seams.  The country is so deeply divided that any story or issue sparks tensions.  Republicans are trying to treat Biden's student loan forgiveness plan as another socialist grab bag, forgetting that many of the corporations and industries they support got debt forgiveness under the PPP, resulting in a This You social media backlash that exposes their hypocrisy.  But, we live within our own bubbles.  It doesn't matter that some conservative pundit got $71,000 in debt forgiveness thanks to the PPP, Steven Crowder will continue to chide liberals over student loan forgiveness because there is nothing conservatives love more than to "own the libs."

We may scoff at these secession bids as social media ploys, but few took the early rumblings of secession seriously back in 1860, or for that matter Aaron Burr's conspiracy.  Nope, we tend to look at these wild-hair ideas as attention-seeking until it actually happens.  Then we are forced to respond in ways we don't really want to.  

The Lincoln White House limped along during the Civil War for two years before Lincoln finally came to the sad realization his troops actually had to retake the southern states if he wanted to restore the union.  So, Lincoln removed General McClellan and other stubborn generals with ones who would be more aggressive.  The end result was the bloodiest war in American history but he restored the union.

I sincerely hope it doesn't come to that but it wouldn't surprise me if it did.  I think a lot of Trump's supporters are inspired by events in Russia and Ukraine and would love nothing more than a war of their own. They're armed to the teeth with their own private militias like The Oath Keepers.  The very same people who stormed the Capitol but didn't quite have the guts to completely take it over.  Maybe it was just a dress rehearsal?

For those who say this insurrectionist impulse is so unusual, they need to look back in history to see that it has always been there.  It just takes a spark to set the wheels in motion, as was the case when South Carolina chose to secede rather than make itself subordinate to a Republican president it felt would emancipate slaves.  Ironically, Lincoln didn't do so until two years later when he was left with no choice but to do so or risk European countries entering the war.  This wasn't even the first secession attempt for South Carolina.  The state had considered it back in 1830 but Andrew Jackson squelched it immediately.  As ludicrous as a secession bid may seem today, we should watch Texas very closely.

Likewise, we should closely follow Trump as the DOJ is finally doing. He has a tendency to telegraph his next move.