A while back, in the days following the attempted seizure of the United States Capitol, we here at the editorial board and our joint chiefs of staff were speculating on just what to do with these people, exactly.
A few “hotheads” suggested we just herd them all into Florida and wall them in. Because some of the rest of us esteem parts of Florida, that idea was deemed a “non-starter” by the majority of the conferees. Others suggested that we remove them into the Dakotas, Montana, Wyoming, etc., but as several Western adventurers among our number pointed out, some of those states are heart-stoppingly beautiful and thereby desirable.
Ours a Texas-centric committee of warrior-poets and statesmen, so more than one person thought we should wall them in the Deep South, Georgia excluded. A venerable woman of our number banged her fist on the table and deemed this attitude the height of hypocrisy. A great many urban Texans love to look down their noses at the likes of Tennessee and Alabama, she pointed out, blithely ignoring that our statewide officials include the likes of Ted Cruz, Ken Paxton, Sid Miller, Dan Patrick, and Louie Gohmert. (And that’s just the “A-team.”) Because of our sheer size, we have as many reprehensible and unfortunate chieftains as any two or three old Dixie states combined.
And so the scheme for corralling the Trumpalos in the Old South was tabled with extreme prejudice.
At last we arrived at an idea, one we believe without dissent to be both firmly based in the present reality and eminently “doable.”
Because Trumpians love to point out how the Red voting districts are so geographically vast, we simply propose to let them have them. We simply just divide America along those lines, county by county.
Like so:
Please note: We were unable to find a finalized electoral map for 2020; the one above is from 2016.
Plainly, Trump country is geographically very large, vast even. However, according to Brookings, counties that voted for Biden this year represent a full 70 percent of the American economy.
That, my friends, is a lot of economic clout.
So, one side controls the lion’s share of the land, the other, most of the cash and clout.
So we make a deal. A clean break. We start over as a new country; Trumpsters in the rural hinterlands of much of the interior, and the rest of us on the cities and northeast and west coasts.
And then we set the clock back to 1600, when the continent was new to European explorers and pillagers.
And then we just do it all over again.
Through a series of land purchases, treaties, and (when diplomacy should fail), removals, we spread out into the Trumpian Territories, reorganizing them as we see fit along the way.
To take greater Houston as an example, it seems that sparsely populated Chambers and Liberty counties to the east could be purchased from local chieftains on the cheap, thereby giving the city-state of Houston plenty of lebensraum in that direction.
However, given the wealth of Trumpian citadels such as The Woodlands and the forest stealth and savagery of the denizens in and around villages such as Cut-n-Shoot and Grangerland, Montgomery County would likely prove slightly more formidable, which is why a strategy of encirclement is deemed wise.
Preliminarily, Waller and Grimes counties, to Montgomery’s west, would likely be inexpensive purchases, and with Chambers already in the fold, Montgomery would then be hemmed in on three sides. With little more than several hundred kegs of beer, we could then foment an uprising among the students at Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, thereby bringing Walker County into the fold, thus encircling Montgomery County. We believe that in all likelihood such a situation would find its inhabitants more amenable for equitable land purchases and treaties, especially when offered the prospect of removal or destruction in their stead.
Of even more vital important would be the acquisition of Galveston County, for without it, international shipping in and out of the Port of Houston would be liable to tolling and/or worse from Trumpians at the mouth of Galveston Bay. Given that the county straddles the maritime Bolivar Roads, Houston would be in an unenviable Straits of Hormuz-like bind.
In this case we advise treating with their great Chief Fertitta. In exchange for whiskey licenses and/or gaming permits, and the promise of allowing him to continue owning his taverns, gambling parlors, eating houses and sporting concerns, we believe he could bring the majority of his people to heel without undue bloodshed.
And thereby Houston’s future would be assured: a New England-sized state with an international airport, a mighty petrochemical complex, and one of the largest ports in the Americas. And then we would await the link up with forces advancing southward from the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex, eastward from San Antonio and Austin, and northward from the Rio Grande Valley.
This is a mere “back of the napkin” strategy but indeed terrible wars have been won thusly; at the outset of the Civil War, did not General Winfield Scott lay out the Union Army’s grand strategy to defeat the Confederacy in mere minutes? Was it not utterly elegant in its simplicity?
General Scott’s Anaconda Plan — a naval blockade of Southern ports coupled with domination of the Mississippi River — is broadly similar to my proposal here, with one key difference: instead of one giant anaconda crushing the life out of Trumpistan, there would be many encirclements and blockades. Call it instead the Basket of Boa Constrictors Plan.
And remember, that is only to be enacted if and when the Trumpians should be less than docile. Such presidents as Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, and Ulysses Grant leave us ample lessons on diplomacy with restive natives.
All of this, of course, will not be accomplished overnight, but in due time, it is our belief that a revised map of the New United States would look something like this:
Of course it would not look exactly like that — those lands are already taken. But the Trumpians would be welcome to settle on government lands adjacent to those Reservations, where they would be granted full autonomy.* We believe that this is not only the best way to prevent the further unraveling of our great nation, but the only way.
*Subject to approval from the real government.