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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   25968 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 8, 2024

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Texas Border Flareup... Again

https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/23/23A607/295564/20240112012220571_23a607%20DHS%20v%20TX%20supplement.pdf

Border Patrol’s normal access to the border through entry points in the federal border barrier is likewise blocked by the Texas National Guard installing its own gates and placing armed personnel in those locations to control entry. See id. at 4a. And the Texas National Guard has likewise blocked Border Patrol from using an access road through the pre- existing state border barrier by stationing a military Humvee there.

Texas has seized a public park in Eagle Pass to take control of a 2.5 mile stretch of the border(https://www.cbsnews.com/news/texas-blocks-federal-border-agents-processing-migrants-eagle-pass-shelby-park/). This is a bigger deal than it seems; the only boat launch and main surveillance point for miles is located there, effectively preventing border patrol from operating over a relatively wider frontage.

Context

The State of Texas has long been adding concertina wire to the border to prevent crossings, and has been accusing the federal government of cutting it to allow migrants to cross. Recently Texas won an injunction in court blocking the federal government from doing this, and the federal government has of course appealed, but the injunction includes an exception for if cutting the wire is necessary to assist migrants experiencing a medical emergency.

So Texas seized the main surveillance point and boat launch(in this sector) for the border patrol to prevent them seeing migrants experiencing a medical emergency. For the record, I don't trust the federal government with this "medical emergency" exception either, but this is flatly illegal in, well, pretty much every way you approach it.

https://news4sanantonio.com/news/trouble-shooters/texas-blocks-border-patrol-from-entering-key-area-for-illegal-crossings

Of course the border patrol union is siding with Abbott, which would make it awkward for fedgov if they cared. Although Abbott's justification has nothing to do with the border patrol union's:

Texas has the legal authority to control ingress and egress into any geographic location in the state of Texas, and that authority is being asserted with regard to that park in Eagle Pass

And anecdotally his fundraising emails are talking a lot more about state sovereignty than normal. It led to a twitter breakdown by Gina Hinojosa(head of the Texas democrats) accusing him of being a secessionist, and the admittedly low chance of Gina Hinojosa of all people meming Texas independence into the political mainstream through the power of negative partisanship is kind of hilarious.

But back to the topic at hand; it's unclear what Abbott's actual game is; he's an accomplished constitutional lawyer(literally; that's how he became governor) and knows he's going to lose at court. He's also never been the reckless type and so it's unlikely he did this without thinking it through. Angling for a Trump cabinet seat, maybe? It also surprises me that he did this now; primaries are coming up in March, and Abbott endorsed a relatively wide array of candidates to try to shift the house in a more partisan republican direction; taking a political risk like this one is unlike him.

On a very tangential note, I saw the Twitterati point and laugh at that upcoming movie about an American Civil War that somehow has California and Texas on the same side. Ignore the fact that that happened in my novel, but it was more that they both happened to oppose the Federal Government (well, you'd resent them a bit if they nuked every data center around to contain an AGI getting uppity, and Texas is surprisingly popular for those, not to mention glassing SF).

As such, if these secessionary sentiments ever become something more than posturing, at least I can get points for prescience.

Only people who have never seriously considered the idea could mock the possibility of an alliance between the two states with the strongest national identities against USG in a CW scenario.

They do so because it doesn't neatly follow from their political intuitions. And ignore that in an open conflict ideological loyalty is even more tenuous than normal.

Any look at Syria shows alliances of circumstance are routine. And any look at the middle east more broadly should complete this understanding with the practical reality that ideology is one of the last predictors of political loyalties if you stand to lose something more significant than your pride.

Texas and California can be friends like the IRA and the PLO.

Agreed, I recently tried to understand the current Tigray War in Ethiopia and it is such a clusterfuck that some factions are allied to each other but at the same time they are also allied to enemies of their allies which makes them enemies in ways that can easily make your eyes water. All in the midst of ethnic, religious, tribal, and of course personal allegiances shifting constantly. Not to even talk about regional and international spillover.

Both the IRA and PLO were left-wing militias.

Or consider Lebanon, where every ethnic/religious militia has at one time or another aligned both with and against every other militia.

Well, they're perfectionists in Lebanon. The leader of the HRC doesn't walk around with an internal monolog that asks "boy, I've never fought a battle with the NRA, let's check that off the list." Maybe he should. I hear the ACLU used to think that way, and possibly still does.

Makes sense for a genuine civil liberties organization, because every political faction wants to violate someone's civil rights some of the time and so the civil rights will do well to practice its independence by calling everyone out on their misbehaviour. So I would expect FIRE to do it in the modern age more than the ACLU.

When it comes to identity, I think it is Texas big gap then runner up. Not sure if that runner up is California or Florida.

Alaska for the runner-up, surely.

Also Hawaii, there is a pretty substantial Hawaiian Nationalist movement.

Ethnic Hawaiians? Or who?

Yeah. I get the impression it's sort of a "dog chasing car" movement--most of their support would evaporate were it a real possibility.

I think Alaska might have as strong an identity as Texas. The real weirdness in that civil war movie map is that Oklahoma isn't part of Texas.

East coast guy who knew — tangentially — one person from Alaska so defer to your knowledge

Indeed, that was the logic I was using. After the fictional Civil War, they remained two independent states (well, they don't have a contiguous land border), so I consider "allies of convenience" an apt label.

Adversity makes for strange bed fellows, especially when there's someone more powerful who you both hate.

Since the movie hasn't actually come out, God knows what the geopolitics there are, though I'm inclined to think that they picked those two particular states because of how absurd they think an alliance would be, explicitly presenting them as a unified entity, so as to avoid accusations of inflaming tensions (not that it did).

I'll admit I haven't seriously considered the idea, but I can't come up with something the USG can do that will alienate both CA and TX and 17 more states, but not the rest of the states.

It looks from that map like the federal government tried to take unilateral control of water allocation and decided to prioritize big cities in deserts(Pheonix, Santa Fe, Las Vegas), driving a wedge between Texas/California on the one hand and the states in between on the other and alienating the south(which is extremely rainy) with some kind of infrastructure project to transport water northwards. The bigger question is how the northwest stuck together when it jumped; it doesn't make any sense how the red and blue states there weren't at each others' throats instantly.

Oh, my goodness, you have got to read Cadillac Desert, a book about water that is one of my all-time classics. I wish I were more motivated to do good, solid, effort posts, because a review of that book could really work...

Large unilateral extension of federal domain? Later states have a lot more of it than early ones.

Texas has very little federal land. California has a lot, but so do the neighboring loyalists.

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