brendan halpin

I am a member of the generation that got its American history from Schoolhouse Rock. It omitted a lot of things and sanitized many more, but the songs were good.

Especially “No More Kings.” It’s propagandistic and ignores the native population of North America’s existence, but the idea that New England led the way in rejecting a monarchy did stick with me. (Yes, I know that one of the reasons they rejected the monarchy was because the monarchy wasn’t genociding the native population as quickly as the colonists wanted.)

Of course, now we have a monarchy again. (This is the effect of the Supreme Court’s decision in Trump v. US, which held that a president has “absolute immunity” for “official acts,” which of course means just about anything.)

Like in the 18th century, New England needs to lead the way in throwing off the shackles of monarchy by seceding from the United States of America.

Frequently Asked Questions: (I mean, technically “never asked questions” but anyway..)

Are you serious?

I am probably half serious. Radical changes are underway in the United States of America, and I think it’s foolish to reject any possible solutions out of hand. I don’t think sitting around and hoping the tide turns at the midterms is a viable strategy. Who knows if there will even be midterms?

New England consistently (well, intermittently in the case of New Hampshire, but still) votes for governments between center right and center left. Our representatives in congress are among the most liberal the country has. And yet we’re stuck with a hard right government enacting policies none of us want and making us pay for them. I’m really tired of our fate being decided by voters in swing states far from New England. It’s time we stop settling for the government Florida wants and start getting the government we want.

LOL, but New England is too small to be a country!

LOL, no it’s not. Our population of 15.1 million people would make us the 75th most populous country on earth, right behind Zimbabwe and ahead of Portugal, Belgium, and every country in Scandinavia. (By area we’d be 88th, right between Syria and Cambodia.)

OK, but who’s gonna do all the federal government stuff like highways and air traffic and food safety and..

We are.

Won’t that be expensive?

I don’t know, but right now we’re paying a LOT of money to a federal government that has cut almost everything valuable. Our federal taxes are basically just funding ICE and fighter jets at this point. If we want a functional federal government, we’ll have to fund it with our taxes. We can do this if we stop paying taxes to the fascist government of the USA.

But I have friends and relatives in other parts of the country!

Me too! I also have friends in other countries! And we have different governments! It can work out!

Won’t the fascist USA start a trade war with an independent New England?

Almost certainly! Which will put is in extremely good company! We’d be able to trade freely with everyone in the world except the USA! Which would mean, among other things, New England would be the place to come for cheap coffee and electronics!

Won’t the fascist USA invade New England to make us behave?

I certainly wouldn’t rule it out. And I have no Red Dawn fantasies of performing sabotage on an occupying army whilst shouting the name of the University of Michigan’s football team.

But I will say this: if they did put troops in our streets to force us to remain part of the USA at least we could hold our head up high. At least the rest of the world, and posterity, would know that we are the people who didn’t quietly accede to or collaborate with fascism.

Don’t you love this country?

My, what a complicated question. But, I mean, yes and no. I love many of the things that fascists hate—the way the US has been a crossroads for all kinds of cultures, for example. The fact that this country was ahead of most of the world on issues of women’s equality and equal marriage. I love our art, especially our music and movies.

But I don’t have any particular affection for a system of government that was designed to protect the interests of slaveholding rapists. I don’t love the cruelty that seems baked in to the culture of the United States. The racism, the xenophobia, the innate and false sense of superiority that many Americans have. I don’t love the guns and the violence. And I don’t love the myth of meritocracy that we all carry around in a spectacular display of doublethink. Anyone who’s ever had a job knows that merit has very little to do with who gets promoted, and that the people who make the most money are usually the people who do the least meaningful work, yet many people still believe that this is a country in which anyone can make it if they only work hard enough.

I don’t love the cult of conformity that exists in our suburbs. I don’t love the intertwined secular religion of jingoism and Christianity of cruelty that hold so much power here.

But also I’d like to question the assumption behind the question. (Yes, I know I’m the one who asked the question. Bear with me.) The question presumes that patriotism is necessarily a virtue. But it’s not. It’s like being hardworking—not necessarily a virtue, depends entirely on what you’re working for.

Caring for your neighbors, being kind and empathetic and wanting the best for everyone in your community—these are real virtues. And right now patriotism seems to be in direct conflict with these. Why should I be loyal to a country that hates me, my family, my friends and my neighbors? Where’s the virtue in that?

Okay, this is an interesting thought experiment, but you know it will never happen, right?

I know that good things very rarely happen if you don’t advocate for them. I lived in Scotland in the 1988-89 school year. The SNP was considered pretty much a fringe group. The Proclaimers advocated for them, but they were pretty far outside the mainstream. Until an SNP member ousted a Labour MP in Govan, which I guess is part of or near Glasgow, I don’t feel like looking it up. Scotland is still not independent, but Scotland was able to win huge concessions from the UK government in London in order to get more of a say in how their country is run. The SNP is not some fringe party anymore. (My understanding is that they’re so mainstream that they’ve become the establishment with all the attendant problems of that status, but if you’re Scottish and reading this, feel free to correct me.) And Scotland sucks less than other parts of the UK right now because the devolved government has been able to soften the blows of London’s idiocy.

My point is that in my lifetime I saw what started as a fringe independence movement make tangible changes to improve the lives of people in a small country. We can do that here too.

Do you have any arguments for New England independence that will convince the rest of America that this is a good idea?

Yes. We’ll take Connecticut off your hands.