Turn Off the Faucet

We’re at a point in our his­to­ry where, I’ll be hon­est, I think we should run with the fact that we are a fed­er­at­ed repub­lic. There is no “nation” that is the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca, it’s right there in the name. We are a union of nations, each with its own con­sti­tu­tion and gov­ern­ment. Frankly, cen­tral­iza­tion seemed great when every­one across the board was in the busi­ness of real­iz­ing that through com­bined effort we can improve the qual­i­ty of the whole even if it meant the greater bur­den of expense was car­ried by only a few of those states.

How­ev­er, at the age of thir­ty-five — one of those cyn­i­cal, but still weird­ly rugged­ly opti­mistic (make it not make sense) mil­len­ni­als who has not got­ten a break since we came of age and lived through the nev­erend­ing fuck­ery of ⁹⁄₁₁ and the for­ev­er wars, the sub­prime mort­gage cri­sis, the Great Reces­sion, the stu­dent loan cri­sis, the hous­ing mar­ket cri­sis, the plague, and now what­ev­er the hell this is — I want to final­ly declare, as a north­east­ern­er who can no longer be embar­rassed by accu­sa­tions of lib­er­al afflu­ence and elit­ism; that I, along with so many of my peers, am enter­ing my Vil­lain Era and with it cul­ti­vat­ing a lev­el of vin­dic­tive­ness that can no longer be contained.

So, with that said, I think it’s time, as the ide­o­log­i­cal right adopts and twists the jar­gon and log­ic of the ide­o­log­i­cal left, that we do like­wise and assert loud­ly the sov­er­eign pri­ma­cy of the state and, when we have done, pass leg­is­la­tion in our state hous­es that with­draws from the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment the annu­al tax con­tri­bu­tions of cit­i­zens of states like New York ($290B), Cal­i­for­nia ($290B), Con­necti­cut ($52B), Mass­a­chu­setts ($120B), Penn­syl­va­nia ($140B) New Jer­sey ($140B), Illi­nois ($140B), Min­neso­ta ($100B), Col­orado ($60B), Michi­gan ($77B), and Wash­ing­ton ($102B), most of which receive less in fed­er­al fund­ing than they con­tribute, and which togeth­er make up half of the total population.

Any oth­er state (the rest of New Eng­land? Ore­gon? Delaware? Mary­land and Vir­ginia? Maybe North Car­oli­na and Geor­gia?) that would like to join this inter­state con­fra­ter­ni­ty could, as well.

Blue and pur­ple states with either large urban pop­u­la­tions or more gen­er­al­ly lib­er­al pop­u­la­tions that wish to uncou­ple them­selves from the fed­er­al clus­ter­fuck, could togeth­er eas­i­ly wield $1.5 tril­lion or more annu­al­ly between them and devel­op exact­ly the pro­grams that we demand. To reduce the bur­den of health­care costs, to improve our edu­ca­tion­al out­comes and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty advan­tages, to low­er the cost of hous­ing, invest in next-gen­er­a­tion nuclear and retool our min­ers and drillers to advance deep-bore geot­her­mal gen­er­a­tion there­by effec­tive­ly elim­i­nat­ing Texas’s econ­o­my and becom­ing inde­pen­dent of fos­sil fuels and vari­able ener­gy sources, invest in local man­u­fac­tur­ing capac­i­ty, retro­fitting exist­ing vacant or under­uti­lized brown­sites, secure and expand our agri­cul­tur­al pro­duce, gen­er­ate stronger insur­ances more gen­er­al­ly against indi­vid­ual and col­lec­tive crises, estab­lish sov­er­eign wealth funds to bet­ter weath­er future calamities.

Between Penn­syl­va­nia and Min­neso­ta, we’ll still be able to source, refine, and dis­till enough petro­le­um for the unavoid­able but bless­ed­ly non-com­bustible uses nec­es­sary — sol­vents, lubri­cants, sundry chem­i­cal feedstocks…

It is a very few places that sub­si­dize most of the coun­try and since those who con­tribute the least and receive the most are so dia­met­ri­cal­ly opposed to their own inter­ests or are bliss­ful­ly unaware of how much they take while con­tribut­ing so lit­tle, I say, we with­draw from their sub­sidy and build the pro­grams we want for ourselves.

They may come to rue the day, but it will no longer be our prob­lem. Why should we dis­burse for­eign aid to states that can­not seem to help them­selves, lift them­selves up by the boot­straps? Let Texas and Flori­da bear the bur­den for the rest of their com­rades should they wish to. Oh, and I’m fair­ly cer­tain that the only amend­ment the cur­rent Supreme Court actu­al­ly does hold sacro­sanct is the tenth, so there might be a fight­ing chance.

I’m not say­ing vin­dic­tive­ness and manip­u­la­tion is a good and eth­i­cal thing, but I’m tired of pre­tend­ing that we don’t have the abil­i­ty to play this game if we want to. For once, we should actu­al­ly be the vil­lains instead of the bogey­man we’re made out to be.

Also, I’m so fuck­ing done.