Secession Petitions Pour in: What's the Real Effect?
In the wake of the presidential election, a wave of petitions have been submitted to the White House in which citizens of various states are announcing their desire to "secede" from the United States.
These citizens are so fed up with the country, in other words, they want to opt out and start their own.
Yahoo's Jeff Macke, who often sympathizes with the right-wing view of things, says this secession chatter actually helps Democrats—because it makes Republicans look like crazy people.
The reality here is that there's no legal mechanism by which states can secede from the nation. The White house is being good-spirited by offering to respond to any petition that gathers more than 25,000 signatures, but the most this gesture will do is make the signatories feel listened to.
Joe Weisenthal, Deputy Editor at Business Insider, likens these secession petitions to "comments on an Internet chat board." They're just a handful of Americans exercising their First Amendment rights to bellyache, not proposing anything serious.
And leaving aside the legality of secession, when you think about the reality of what it would involve—economically, militarily, and practically—the petitions do seem ridiculous.
Yes, there are important problems we need to address in this country. Yes, the electorate is sharply divided, at least at the extremes. Yes, compromise won't be easy.
But working together is what has made the United States Of America the richest and most powerful country in the world.
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