Approximately 13 percent of Vermont supports a theoretical secession from the United States. I say “theoretical secession” because there is little chance that Vermont will actually secede. They want a peaceful secession — the worst kind of secession. Peace has never won anyone anything but a crucifixion.
A lot of people in Vermont would have to die before America looked up from their television sets, or more accurately, changed the channel on those sets to a station which gave the deaths of countless Vermonters a cursory mention.
They’re counting on the United States to let them pack up and leave. It’s hard to fathom how a group of people could be more mistaken. They seem to have an awful lot of faith in the discretion of a government whose brutality they abhor. A large portion of this country still has wet dreams about spanking Yankees.
The president could just give Vermont to the people of New Hampshire. There’s no reason for two states up there anyway. Forty-nine state stars wouldn’t look right, so we’ll have to forcibly annex Puerto Rico, or split Texas into two: Old Mexico and New Cuba.
How the government decides to subdue one of the smallest and least violent states probably isn’t a fruitful area of discussion — I could pull off a pretty stellar Will Sherman impersonation with four Cub Scouts and a golden retriever.
Of course, Vermont thinks Canada will protect it. But it can’t hide behind Canada because Canada is too busy hiding behind Canada. If the people of Vermont want to be Canadians, they’ll have to move to there. No country is going to risk war with a superpower over four square miles of wilderness and Montpelier (the jewel of northwestern New Hampshire).
The people of Vermont are too worried about their own financial well-being to rebel in a coherent way. Every state would be better off without taxes, but secession based on personal comfort, while claiming ideological supremacy, is shameless. Vermont’s secession is clearly an empty gesture. This is about lengthening the gap, and pulling up the ladder behind them, not rebellion. It could, however, function as a sort of jumping point. After Vermonticide, some group with actual convictions could misunderstand the situation and be inspired to rebel against the system.
I’m against blind patriotism as much as the next guy but these treasonous fiends have merely switched out national patriotism for state patriotism. They want all the glory of America but none of the sludge. There is no reason to be proud of Vermont citizenship. State loyalty is a thing of the past and by all rights it should have dried up in the early 19th century. I don’t care if Utah falls into the ocean. I’d go as far as to say that I vaguely hope it will some day, so long as I’m not in Utah at the time.
The state of Vermont doesn’t belong to its citizens any more than it does to the citizens of New Hampshire. This secession is so far from happening that any reasonable person would have stopped reading this column after the first paragraph — possibly before the first paragraph.