It's Happening: Secession Heats Up Across the West

Secession is a subset of the nationalism wave.

In As Goes California, So Goes the Nation, I discussed how social mood would increase the amount of secessionist sentiment:

Secession is coming. Secession at the state level will slow the push for national secession, but the creation of more states will turn America into even smaller and separate identities that will make the nation as a whole more ungovernable. However, in terms of social mood, these movements have to strike at the right moment and if there is enough state secession, it could suck the energy out of the secession movement as social mood then improves. If these movements fail, there will be an organized national effort that will likely erupt when the U.S. suffers a fundamental economic crisis, perhaps with the U.S. dollar at stake. When such a fundamental crisis erupts, anything goes.

Secession demands will erupt at whatever level of government allows it. Let states break apart into smaller states and they will remain united. Think Catalonia in Spain and Scotland in the UK, both of whom want to stay within the EU. A similar trend is seen in the U.S. where parts of states want to declare independence or merge with a neighbor: Secession fever spikes in five states as conservatives seek to escape blue rule

“Oregon is controlled by the northwest portion of the state, Portland to Eugene. That’s urban land, and their decisions are not really representing rural Oregon,” said Mike McCarter, president of Move Oregon’s Border for a Greater Idaho. “They have their agenda and they’re moving forward with it, and they’re not listening to us.”

The U.S. does not have a good argument against secession. The State Department supports most secession movements around the world. It has intervened militarily to defend secessionists, most controversially in Kosovo. As U.S. power wanes, it will fall victim to its own promotion of self-determination. Both political parties have secessionist tendencies. Democrats have "sanctuary cities" that ignore federal immigration law. Many states ignore drug laws. Republican areas have created "second amendment sanctuaries" in anticipation of future gun control legislation. Any attempt to centralize power and pass "one-size fits all" legislation will spark constitutional crises. Diversity has exacerbated secessionist sentiment. Diversity will explode in the next two generations as whites become a minority in the USA.

Additionally, should the U.S. dollar eventually loses its reserve status, the federal government's ability to use the purse will weaken. Depending on how things shake out, it's possible areas such as Silicon Valley or the oil patch from Texas to North Dakota and Alaska, or the breadbasket, will become the main source of government funding as happened in Canada.

National Post: Nearly 80 per cent of Albertans think the country is in the midst of a unity crisis: poll

One-third of Canadians think Alberta is the greatest threat to national unity, while 50 per cent say it is Quebec. Twenty-three per cent of Canadians expect that Quebec will separate in the next decade, while 19 per cent of Canadians think Alberta will secede in that time.

The most troublesome numbers for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government may be that in both Alberta and Saskatchewan 78 per cent believe that Ottawa has “lost touch with average people” from the two provinces.

Alberta could join the U.S. and touch off a crisis there. It could declare independence and break Canada into pieces. It could spark secession movements in natural resource U.S. states who could form a continental power from Alaska to Texas. Many possibilities open up once "the red line" is crossed.

Government becomes more robust as power moves to the local areas and more fragile as power flows to the increasingly unstable center (the root of diversity is div, division, divide). If the government doesn't allow local control or reformation of states, secessionists will escalate their demands to the national level and threaten the larger union.

Finally, it cannot be stressed enough that social mood will determine whether this secession wave becomes an historical oddity like Western Canadian threats to secede in the 1970s, Quebec and Scotland's failures, or whether it completes like Brexit. What is different this time is that these are the good times. Social mood is relatively positive. Prior secession waves peaked with negative social mood, high unemployment, historically low stock prices, high inflation, and positive demographic forces. Western Canada is already threatening secession, but the economy could see a downturn far worse than the 1970s. U.S. states want to break apart, but record high stock prices and a strong dollar has not added the bitter economic fights that come out when spending gets cut. Demographic forces will turn highly negative with aging and increasing diversity. Inflation could soar, stock prices could tumble, unemployment could climb. Consider what would happen to the Canadian currency if Alberta was seriously moving towards independence. It could accelerate the very forces that will push the movement to victory. These secession movements have years and perhaps decades to grow, with underlying societal forces likely to work in their favor.

It seems impossible today, but remember how many people thought Brexit and President Trump were impossible only hours before they happened.