Secession and Other Forms of Appeasement
The recent passage of the Big Ugly Bill is a blow against many of the best parts of our nation. Medicaid cuts are expected to cause millions of Americans to lose their healthcare, in addition to anticipated closures of rural hospitals and nursing homes. A massive infusion of funding to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and immigrant detention centers will make it easier for the Trump administration to snatch our neighbors off the street without due process and imprison them domestically or ship them off to foreign countries that they may have never been to before in their lives. The end of clean energy incentives is expected to increase household energy costs and hinder adoption of the clean energy sources that we need to fight climate change. This climate change is already affecting our lives locally through worsened heat waves such as the heat wave that we experienced here in Massachusetts in late June, as well as globally through more severe hurricanes and other weather disasters.
Amidst this sobering development, there has been a temptation to write off the people who live in the parts of the country that voted for the current administration. It can be tempting to give in to bitterness and believe that people in these areas deserve the misfortune arising from this administration’s policies, or even entertain the possibility of Massachusetts seceding, leaving the United States to set out on its own or along with other states whose electoral votes went to Kamala Harris in the recent presidential election. It can be easy to think that it is time to wash our hands of this messy, two-hundred-year-old experiment known as the United States of America and focus on protecting our own.
However, to give in to these tendencies is to succumb to the abandonment of the marginalized among us. This is what the current administration hopes that we will do and is ultimately a form of appeasement to the administration’s goals. Setting aside the feasibility of secession, to leave the United States would be to abandon millions of Americans who never voted for this administration, despite their states’ electoral votes counting in its favor. Many of these Americans, including voters who are Black, Native American, and/or disabled, are hindered from participating fully in democracy by voter suppression and gerrymandering. Marginalized Americans have organized and continue to organize for a better future amidst anti-democratic environments created by those in power who would silence their voices. We should support and collaborate with these fearless activists, not abandon them. Whether that abandonment takes the form of talk of secession or merely a retreat to a more insular mindset, it ignores the welfare and struggles of those in other parts of the country.
Cartoon by Ben Franklin via The Library of Congress. https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2002695523/
One might argue that those who did not vote for the current administration should simply move to Massachusetts and similar states to reap the benefits of being surrounded by like-minded individuals. Many Americans have done just that in the face of oppression, from Black Americans who moved north a century ago during the Great Migration to LGBT Americans who continue to move to parts of the country where they are less likely to be subject to small-minded hatred, and we in Massachusetts should structure our housing policy to make room for all who wish to come here. At the same time, migration does not allow us to ignore those who continue to live in parts of the country that voted for the current administration. There are plenty of people who cannot move to portions of the country with healthier democratic institutions, including many who are poor and disabled, not to mention the millions of innocent children who were incapable of voting to prevent our current situation. Moreover, many of those who are capable of moving will wish to stay and fight to protect their homes, their loved ones, and their communities.
Even if one sets aside all concern for those who live in other states under the guise of not being able to save everyone, we are bound in a common destiny, whether we want to be or not. Unlimited burning of fossil fuels in the rest of the United States will increase climate change, giving us more dangerous heat waves and affecting the crop yields that we depend upon for food. Abandonment of public health and food safety in regions more inclined to favor the current administration increases the risk of epidemics that could endanger our communities despite our world-renowned hospitals. We may lose some ground in the fight for our collective well-being in the coming years, but it would be foolish to abandon the fight entirely, and many of the problems caused by the current administration will come to us even if we retreat from them.
The current administration seeks nothing more than for us to give up and abandon our fellow Americans. To fight back effectively, we must stand together with people of good will in every corner of this tattered but still intact republic. We must do everything that we can to minimize damage from the administration’s actions by demanding action from our statehouse and our city halls to preserve our healthcare, protect our communities from the administration’s deportation machine, and continue the fight against climate change. At the same time, we must support those who fight similar battles under far worse odds. Only by refusing the temptation to retreat, whether into our commonwealth or into the despair of our minds, can we prevail against the forces of tyranny.
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