There's been a lot of talk about secession this week. In fact, since President Barack Obama's reelection, people from all 50 states have petitioned to secede from the union. (By the way, how would that work?)
At the time I wrote this blog, 2,561 Washingtonians had signed a petition to secede. If the petition gets 22,415 signatures, the Obama administration will have to respond to it.
I don't know if you guys remember, but last time a few states decided to skip out on the union, things got kind of ugly.
So why this time? Maybe it's because of hurt feelings that President Barack Obama was reelected. After all, plenty of angry liberals were going to move to Canada if George W. Bush got elected. Maybe the election just triggered an undercurrent that has been building. Maybe it's just a wee bit of racism. Who can say?
Despite the media hype, the numbers aren't that impressive. At the time I posted this, California's petition to secede had been signed by fewer than 700 people. That's out of a state of 37 million. About the same number of people had signed a petition Thursday to "Urge the Burmese government to end the human rights violations against Burmese Muslims."
Texas, a state with a veritable secession fetish, by late Thursday morning has gathered the most signatures: about 108,000. Still, from a state of 25 million people, that's roughly .4 percent of the population. That said, the Obama administration is going to have to respond to this one.
And then there are petitions from cities like El Paso, Texas and Atlanta, Ga., where residents want to secede from their seceding states and remain with the union. There's also a petition calling for secessionists to be deported. It has 21,000 signatures.
Before you grab your musket and get all aggro on someone, here's map to keep things in perspective. Courtesy of i09 and also pictured at top, it's a good reminder that we're not really 'red' or 'blue.' We're mostly just a bunch of people that live in a few concentrated areas, and despite the fact we think we hate each other, we'd be killing a lot of siblings and neighbors if we went to war.
