Further Foolishness From Fools

Typing under deadline (The public library-imposed deadline of "Finish before your time is up, or it does not get published!!") probably has its advantages in discipline & whatnot, but sometimes vital points are neglected, ignored or forgotten. So we now return to yesterday's L. A. Times op-ed concerning secessionism, & a part of it to which we didn't get. This part, about the second North American secessionist convention:

The delegates settled on a list of principles they called the Chattanooga Declaration. "The deepest questions of human liberty and government facing our time go beyond right and left, and in fact have made the old left-right split meaningless and dead," the declaration read. "The privileges, monopolies and powers that private corporations have won from government threaten ... health, prosperity and liberty, and have already killed American self-government by the people." The answer, it went on, was that the American states "ought to be free and self-governing."

Yet another clue is offered to these clowns. (We really should charge for our clue-providing services). If you think that the United Snakes are dominated by corporations, just imagine how well your piddly little state (or its legislature & executive branches) will resist further corporate depredation. Look, for example, at our own beloved California & how it was under the thumb of the Southern Pacific Railroad at the turn of the last century. Frank Norris wrote a book about it, referring to the SP (on whose commuter trains the editorial staff here used to ride to school each day, up & down the San Francisco peninsula) as The Octopus. If you're so fucking worried about fascist corporations, step one is public financing of all political campaigns. Try working on that before you decide to try to secede. (Not very nihilistic of us, we know, but common sense can prevail, even here.)