State of the Disunion

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA)

Marjorie Taylor Greene’s call for a “national divorce” this week, in context of her personal history, is spectacularly dumb. Though she’s tried to clarify that she doesn’t mean Fort Sumter-style secession, her fear of the federal government going “woke” is an extension of the dog-whistle ploy used since George Wallace, associating federal power with any attempt to make laws less bigoted. We can safely ignore her demand on her own terms.

That being said, however, I find something appealing about partially disaggregating federal power. Not in completely abandoning a central government, since I read enough history to know that weak federal authority provides shelter to bigots, kleptocrats, and grifters. Rather, watching how power is currently distributed in America, we’re trying to run a 21st-Century government with a 19th-Century organization. A Digital Web nation with Pony Express offices.

In particular, our Senate and Electoral College were written with no expectation that America’s population could become so unequally concentrated. In 1789, when most Americans worked in either agriculture or artisanal craftsmanship, and long-distance travel meant difficult overland slogs on foot or horseback, the idea that the population of Manhattan or Los Angeles might exceed entire states was unthinkable. In 1800, America’s largest city, New York, had barely 60,000 people.

Our state lines are drawn along 18th- and 19th-Century influences. Though four territories gained statehood in the 20th Century, all were circumscribed by domestic and international borders drawn in the 19th Century, or by geography. California remains our most populous state, but within lines drawn in 1853. That includes its ruler-straight borders with Oregon and Nevada, impervious to population density or geography, a hallmark of White settler colonialism.

America’s current internal borders don’t reflect their population or economy. Most of America’s growth economy comes from a few packed urban areas, resulting in massive wealth concentration. People move to places like New York, San Francisco, Seattle, and Chicago to find work, but need three jobs to afford rent, because nobody’s building sufficient housing. Meanwhile the things that make life liveable, like art, culture, and neighborhood pubs, keep getting priced out.

One proposed map for the State of Jefferson

Meanwhile, the places where workers extract minerals, grow food, and otherwise make actual stuff, continue dwindling. Nebraska, where I live, has whined constantly about “brain drain” since I arrived in 1992, and probably longer. Even within the state, net migration is leaving the rural west and moving to Omaha and Lincoln. Entire counties have responded by pulling their claws in and hoping the Eisenhower Era returns quickly.

Surely there’s a better way.

I first learned of the State of Jefferson movement over ten years ago, though it’s apparently existed since the Great Depression. A coalition of citizens in primarily rural counties in northern California and southern Oregon want to secede from their existing states and form a new one. The new proposed state would be the only consistently Republican state on the West Coast, and would significantly jostle distributions of Federal power in Washington.

Now, the State of Jefferson movement is far from perfect. First, it’s riddled with racists who resent how California has become relatively welcoming to immigrants. Second, its values are often contradictory. It wants to direct local tax revenues locally, despite being a primarily agrarian region dependent on federal subsidies. It wants law-and-order policing, even though cannabis is the region’s only lucrative crop. Jefferson is a satisfactory abstract idea, probably.

Despite its problems, Jefferson has virtues. Residents of rural northern California and southern Oregon have more in common with one another, culturally and economically, than with their respective state population bases. Requiring Siskiyou, California, to follow laws written in Los Angeles and San Francisco is frequently counterproductive. And indeed, original Jefferson complaints remain valid: major agricultural roads remain unpaved, devaluing their output.

Similar complaints accumulate. Laws written to protect or constrain Chicago, wind up applying to Illinois generally. (Change place names appropriately for, say, Wisconsin, Washington, Louisiana, etc.) Federal regulations written to rein in Manhattanite fiscal recklessness choke cash flows in Wyoming and the Dakotas, undercutting rural development. One-size-fits-all lawmaking generally hits poor, rural, agrarian areas hardest, in often invisible ways.

Therefore, though Marjorie Three-Names’ ridiculous Palestinian two-state system is a non-starter, I find something appealing in a system that rewards local knowledge and regional interest. Relaxing the federal stranglehold on disparate local areas, within agreed-upon limits, could unleash regional ingenuity.

No, I don’t yet know how to disaggregate federal power without empowering cranks. But it’s definitely time to start discussing the process, before local friction overtakes the federal system.