Chuck Thompson - Better Off Without Em: A Northern Manifesto for Southern Secession

ALSO BY CHUCK THOMPSON

To Hellholes and Back

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Religion: Georgia, Kentucky, End Times,
and the Rise of KKKristian Zombies

Football: Louisiana State, ESPN, BCS,
and the Gridiron Delusion of the SEC

Education: Arkansas, Mississippi, and the Three Rs of Southern
SchoolsRevenue, Resentment, Resegregation

Economics: Florida, Texas, the U.S. Military,
and the Fiscal Future of Secession

Hang out in my living room on any national election night and at some point in the evening, usually around 7 p.m. Pacific time, youre almost certain to hear me scream something like: Why in the hell does the United Statesand by extension the entire free world, capitalist dominion, and all of Christendomallow its government to be held hostage by a coalition of bought-and-paid-for political swamp scum from the most uneducated, morbidly obese, racist, morally indigent, xenophobic, socially stunted, and generally ass-backwards part of the country?

Catch me after some earnest academic with Cambridge and Ivy credentials has to appear on NPR to defend evolution against the latest onslaught on public education from Book of Dipshits creationists, and youll likely bear witness to a Thompson rage-gasm along the lines of: What in Christs name happened to that confederation of Mason-Dixon mouth breathers that got them so intimidated by science and facts and book larnin that they cant even walk past a library or look through a microscope without quoting Habakkuk and Deuteronomy to each other until the threat of intellectual enlightenment goes away?

Crack a beer in my TV room on any autumn Sunday when the BCS college football rankings come out or, God help you, kick back on my sofa the week the annual bowl game matchups are announced and the Southeastern Conference is once again gifted a national championship opportunity based on some rigged illusion of the down-home gridiron greatness of a conference that wouldnt know its latest recruiting violation from a kicking tee if it ever left home after September to play in the snow, sleet, or any genuine football temperatures, and youll definitely need to stop me from slashing my wrists before hearing me wail in agonized sports martyrdom: Vanderbilt? Kentucky? Mississippi State? You call that strength of schedule? Youre honestly standing there and telling me with a straight face that nonconference wins against Troy State, Charleston Southern, and Florida International, at fucking home , are legitimate?

Stop by when a brain-dead zealot is yammering her way through a hypocrisy-laden justification for simultaneously being pro-life and pro-death penalty while some mewling cipher of a FOX News reporter bobs his head in vacant acquiescence and... well, you already know how the rest of this Stars and Bars tangent goes.

And you already know how it goes because (a) Youve said or felt pretty much the same things yourself about the slave states at some point or (b) youre from the South, have people there, or otherwise possess a degree of affection for the region such that youre sick and tired of its honor being traduced and its culture blamed for every American malady by hillbilly-bashing, know-it-all knob polishers such as myself (however impressively informed and well intentioned we might be).

You already know most of the other backwoods-bumpkin insults that I could layer into this opening salvo because if theres one thought that at one time or another has connected American minds from Seattle to Savannah it is this: Its too bad we didnt just let the South secede when we had the chance.

A short time ago, I began scribbling down notes for a book with the working title The Divided States of America. Id gotten the idea from a brilliant website of regional/tribal drumbeating that lays out the case for something called the Republic of Cascadia. The site is the brainchild of a guy named Lyle Zapato, a mystery man who refuses to be interviewed by anyone other than Daljit Dhaliwal, the semi-hot, bob-haired London-born Punjabi Sikh former host of PBSs Worldfocus.

Rather than being tied to the vagaries of a federal government with an agenda that, beyond national defense, rarely lines up with local needs, the more or less like-minded residents of Cascadia live in a paradise of mist-shrouded mountains and mossy forests; a utopia of organic composting and innovative light-rail transportation where all the cows are grass-fed, all the chickens roam free, many of the herbs are smokable, plastic bags are outlawed, citizens mail their post-consumer-waste commitment-ceremony announcements with Cascadian Postal Authority stamps honoring such cultural touchstones as proper kayaking protocol, and nonobese children salute a flag emblazoned with a pinecone resting on a field of tolerant rainbow colors.

The philosophical underpinning of Cascadia is simple: shared values, cultural norms, and manageable geographynot the chance tentacles of history and insatiable federal bureaucracyare what unite, or at least what should unite, a given population.

Cascadia works in the imagination because to a large degree it already exists in real life. That imaginary beer you were drinking during my BCS football meltdown? An uncompromised, unfiltered golden wheat Widmer Hefeweizen brewed, bottled, and sucked down like teat milk every day by the masses in Portland, Oregon.

Better still, the concept is eminently transferable. With Cascadia as inspiration, I began imagining the U.S. map carved into similarly cohesive cultural blocs.