You know who they are. They know who they are, and they know exactly what they are doing.
There's a lot of hyperbole in our political discourse. Over the years, Ann Coulter has clubbed the word "treason" over the head, dragged it into her cave and hate-fucked it to death. This is the same person who called Bill Clinton a "rapist." Michael "Savage" Weiner has taken to calling the president of the United States a security threat.Glenn Beck alternates weekly between saying the U.S. is headed for fascism or communism.
People react differently when they hear pejoratives of this species. However, there's one particular electric fence that can't be pissed on without getting me into a froth. Call me old-fashioned but talk of secessionism really steams my clams.
I've been trying to figure out why this is. It doesn't seem logical for me. I wasn't alive to see the Civil War or its aftermath. Aside from a distant relationship on my mother's side to Confederate Major General George Pickett, who famously led an unsuccessful infantry assault on the last day of the Battle of Gettysburg, I have no real connection to the bloodiest conflict in our nation's history.
So why should secessionist talk bother me more than, say, when my own Senator Inhofe calls climate change the biggest hoax in American history? Or when Sen. John McCain says the president is robbing from our childrens' piggy banks to help save this economy? Or when Rush Limbaugh repeatedly calls for the president to fail?
I suppose it's because I appreciate the wonderful contrasts that make up this country.
I love how you can spot a flaming liberal like myself in Oklahoma, the reddest state of the union. I love how even Berkeley, California has a chapter of the College Republicans. I love how you can go to a place like Eureka Springs, Arkansas and buy a T-shirt with an elephant fucking a donkey right next to the "America: Love it or Leave it!" shirt.
America. Love it or leave it. I would never ask that of a conservative. Even the ones who frustrate me the most, whose views I find chilling and repugnant. Even those who would have me leave this country that I love so much.
I try to take full advantage of the Internet by speaking with people from around the world. Most of them tell me they would love to visit America someday. And each one of them wants to see a different part of our land.
Some want to see the kitchy brilliance of Disneyworld. Some want to take in the majestic monuments to democracy found in Washington, D.C. Some want to follow the path of the American dream along Route 66. Some crave the bright lights of Las Vegas or the tranquil beauty of a Montana mountain range.
And I hope people do come here, and learn to appreciate everything we have to offer in our cities, small towns, natural wonders and all the vast empty spaces in between. I hope the people they meet are proud representatives all, of their country, its culture and ideals.
This is why secessionism is so repulsive to me. It indicates a lack of appreciation for the sum of all of the many varied parts of our country and the people that make up those parts.
Here at Daily Kos, I've met Vermonters, North Carolinians, Tennesseans, Texans, Nutmeggers, Sooners, Hoosiers, Down Easters, Bay Staters -- and within each state there are even more diverse groups and subgroups to be identified and cataloged.
We are beautiful on our own, but what's even more wonderful is that we share the same home. As different as we are, we are all Americans. As strikingly alien as our homes would seem to one another, we each have equal voice in determining the direction our country.
To take a piece away from this whole would be to remove something unique and valuable. We are Out of Many, One, and to remove even One would subtract from the grandeur of the Many.
I realize that the people who say these things have no real intention of actual treason or secession. But their words nevertheless bruise our national identity. They do harm to the marvelous fashion in which we are knitted together.
That is why the idea of secession sets me off. It makes me feel the way I imagine some must feel when they see a flag being burned. To me, it signifies a basic, essential lack of appreciation for the most basic fact about our country. If you know nothing else about us, you know we're the United States of America.
To those who talk of cutting this country into pieces over petty, trumped up or wholly invented grievances, listen to the words of the greatest Republican to ever live:
It is now for them to demonstrate to the world that those who can fairly carry an election can also suppress a rebellion; that ballots are the rightful and peaceful successors of bullets; and that when ballots have fairly and constitutionally decided, there can be no successful appeal back to bullets... Such will be a great lesson of peace: teaching men that what they cannot take by election, neither can they take it by war; teaching all the folly of being the beginners of a war.
Abraham Lincoln
Address to Congress,
July 4, 1861