Staten Island Silliness

One of the things I've noticed about the Republican Party is that, whenever they lose elections, they want to re-write the rules or re-shape the contours of the electorate. It's not enough for them just to accept defeat and try to win next time -- oh no, they shout "VOTER FRAUD!", try to rig the game, unlevel the playing field (cheat, basically) to gain a seemingly permanent advantage.

Hence the GOP has given us things like voter suppression laws and outrageous campaign finance regulations and extreme gerrymandering of political districts. I remember back in the early 1990s when the Democrats controlled Congress and most state legislatures, Republicans yelled and screamed about the virtue of term limits until they got control of Congress and most state legislatures and suddenly shut up about term limits. 

What a coincidence!

Being a Republican means being a full-time hypocrite and liar as well as conveniently forgetting things when they stop being useful (i.e. a Democratic President having an affair is bad but a Republican President paying hush money to an adult film star to cover up an affair is good). 

Locally this GOP-inspired silliness has led the only Republican dominated borough in NYC, Staten Island, to consider actually seceding from the city. They don't like living in a city dominated by Democrats, they're sick of losing and being out of power, so they want to set up shop on their own. I remember (also back in the early 1990s) the secession movement was such a big thing in Staten Island that there was actually a referendum vote to make it happen -- until it ran in to the teeth of the law. Then Rudy became mayor and the Staten Island secession movement died.

Now it's back! 

Republican members of the state legislature and city council are initiating "studies" and drafting laws that would make it possible for Staten Island to seceded and, in some cases, join into a bizarre, illogical, never-tried-before political alliance with upstate New York. These proposals will obviously go nowhere soon in Democratically-controlled New York but the fact that Republicans here are even toying with dumb ideas like this shows how they can't help themselves -- when they can't win the game they try to mess with the referrees, damage the equipment, litter the field. 

In a couple of days, over in the UK, there will be an election that will be about Brexit, the country's attempt to leave the European Union. This Brexit thing has been going on for three years, ever since the UK bumbled into this mess via a referendum with no plan, no vision, no idea of what Brexit would actually entail. It has convulsed the country and thrown the country into a complete nightmare -- worse, in many ways, than the nightmare of Trump in this country. Many people in the UK think this election will "Get Brexit Done", that it will resolve the crises they didn't realize would even be a crises to begin with -- but Brexit is such a massive legal and political divorce that it will never, ever end. It's yet another lie, another fantasy being sold by liars. 

And whether it's Trump or Brexit or the silliness of Staten Island secessionists, all of this reminds me of the scene you see in so many movies and TV shows where a married couple gets into a bad fight, one of the spouses quickly packs up a bag and storms out of the house --- only to discover he or she has nowhere to go. It's like the people who quit jobs out of frustration -- only to realize the financial and career abyss they've flung themselves into. It's all a lot of fashionable nihilism, a neat and totally false promise of "If we just leave, if we just quit, if we just overthrow the overlord happiness will ensue." 

It doesn't. It won't. It's all a lot of silliness, a totally false bill of goods.

Just like Staten Island secessionism.