https://www.texasmonthly.com/politics/texas-secessionists-2019/
This is The Atlantic article to which the Texas Monthly was responding. .
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/12/the-secessionist/600739
Now I have blogged on how the Texas Nationalist Movement has over represented itself and the support isn't as extensive as they claim in terms of activists. However, the Texas Monthly article is wrong and misleading by trying to say the support for Texas secession is miniscule or a trivial few.
They refer to the 2016 Texas State Republican Convention and that the issue was raised, what they don't mention, and don't mention in the article about the state convention for which they provide the link, is that the vote against secession was 16 to 14 with one abstention in the platform committee. This is not a marginal group of people and a reasonable sample group of representative Texas Republican Party leaders.
What is also not mentioned is that Texas Boys State voted for secession.
https://www.chron.com/news/politics/texas/article/Texas-Boys-State-votes-to-secede-for-Union-11247209.php
But more importantly opinion polls have showed a fair degree for support for secession. One of them showed that 60% of Trump supporters in Texas wanted to secede if Hillary Clinton was elected in 2016.
The Texas Monthly article tries to assert that the support for secession is trivial.
It’s not impossible to imagine things like the 2016 floor debate going differently at a future GOP convention—we do live in unpredictable times!—but for now, you can fill a few stadiums with people who like to fantasize about the idea of secession, but that still leaves a whopping 98.7 percent of the state full of people who are happy where they are.I am not saying that there is a serious mass movement for secession in Texas at this point and if Donald Trump is re-elected in 2020 there won't be for at least four more years.
I am not saying even with Donald Trump not re-elected that it is a sure thing that there will be a mass secession movement.
I am saying two things.
1. This Texas Monthly article is very selective in what it chooses to evaluate the potential for a Texas secession movement in Texas and the extent of support and possible support.
2. Secession movements have a habit of going from obscurity to being significant. As scholars have pointed out nations are imagined. Imaginations are not cast in concrete but are full of flux. Secession is also a topic that is discussed much more now days. We see nations will real secession movements and real possibilities of secession.
If there is wide spread alienation in Texas from the national government the Texas nationalist movement could suddenly be a mass movement.
What Texas Monthly is scared of is that some fund manager may start thinking things about what their funds exposure is to Texas mortgages. The moment there is even rumor that some fund managers are thinking of limiting exposure Texas real estate mortgages will have to pay a point or have maybe higher down payments or something.
Even worse will be trying to get corporations to locate to Texas when other potential sites will point out that they don't have a secession movement or the potential of armed right wing militias.
Then there is the issue of recruiting talent to Texas. They probably don't want to face even the remote possibility that there children will have to apply to immigrate into the United States. No one wants to move to loony land.
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