An Independent Red America Would Be Incredibly Cringe

Hope you like even more Indian immigration

The people of Enid, Oklahoma, voted out an alleged “white nationalist” from its city council this week. The councilor in question is Judd Blevins. Blevins’s resume is perfect for a MAGA candidate. He’s a veteran, a well-respected local, helps run a roofing business, isn’t shy about discussing his faith, and is fully committed to Trumpian conservatism. He is not some strange outsider talking about oddball stuff. He addressed the issues that matter to red state Americans. 

But he was pushed out simply for attending Charlottesville and being involved in Identity Evropa years ago. Enid is not a liberal hive. The county it's located in went for Donald Trump by nearly 76 percent in 2020. It is very much Trump country—yet this conservative community still caved when one of its own was accused of racism.

Blevins fell victim to a leftist campaign within his own community. A group formed with the specific purpose of removing him from office. The effort was tacitly supported by the mayor and other power players. The person who will take his seat is Cheryl Patterson, a self-proclaimed conservative who was recruited by local business leaders. Her pitch centered entirely around how Blevins allegedly hurts the town’s reputation and the local economy. “I fear that his recent past puts our Air Force base at risk and jeopardizes our ability to recruit businesses to Enid,” Patterson told reporters. She also acted like white nationalists were the greatest evil in this country.

The pitch worked.

This disgraceful event serves as a stark reminder that Red America isn’t as BASED as we would wish it to be. If a national divorce ever occurred, conservatives would still live in a very cringe country.

A large number of right-wingers—both of mainstream and radical persuasion—believe secession will solve most of our problems. This would apparently rid us of the libtard menace and allow us to be as REDPILLED as we want. Online radicals even imagine secession could give them the nation of their dreams, whether a white ethnostate or a restored Romanov monarchy. Most conservatives don’t go nearly that far. They just want a country without wokeness and obtrusive liberals. This sounds nice, no matter your disposition.

But the likely leadership of an independent Red America indicates it wouldn’t achieve those aims. We would still have the same Republicans in charge. They are not going to be replaced by random internet anons. The Confederacy didn’t pick randos to lead—it relied on the already-established political elite to govern. It would be the same in post-divorce Red America.

Nobody typifies this leadership caste better than Texas Gov. Greg Abbott. His priorities demonstrate what a Red America would do free of Blue America’s tyranny. Much of it would be the same or worse than what we already have. 

Let’s take immigration. Abbott gained a name for himself by deploying National Guard and razor wire at the border. He refused to remove the razor wire after the Supreme Court ruled the feds could clear it out. Nearly every Republican governor backed Abbott in this dispute. This generated a lot of press and wild speculation that this may set off the National Divorce. The response was overblown. Abbott didn’t defy the Supreme Court’s order since Texas was not commanded to remove the razor. All he did was make the feds’ job harder.

Abbott’s moves against illegal immigration are good. His state plans to arrest illegals who cross into the state, usurping the job the feds are supposed to do but choose not to do. Abbott, like most Republican governors, is pretty good on illegal immigration. 

But he, like most Republican governors, is not so good on legal immigration. When the Supreme Court issued its ruling on the razor wire, the governor was in India begging for more immigration and “business investment” from the sub-continent. He’s not alone among Republican governors who make these groveling trips to South Asia. It’s become a top destination for GOP lawmakers to plead for more Indian influence in the U.S. 

This is the opposite of what any right-winger wants, but it’s what they will still get in their own country. As seen in Blevins’s opponent, business interests are the most important matter to GOP lawmakers. They will sometimes enact solid measures, such as banning DEI at public institutions. But the main priority of elected Republicans is to make their state desirable for corporate investment. This interest can undercut anti-woke initiatives in the future. 

This is understandable as Republicans want to increase jobs and prosperity in their states. More employment and growth means happier people and lawmakers keep their jobs. But the price for these policies can mean the sacrifice of any principles that run counter to economic maximalism. 

The base may grumble about this, but they don’t show as much outrage as the Right may desire. Just look at Enid. The people there voted nearly 2-to-1 to remove Blevins just because of the dated white nationalist association. Few members of the base complained about Abbott visiting India to plead for more migrants and foreign business. These people don’t want an ethnostate, to say the least.

There is one subject that Republicans are fervently committed to that has nothing to do with economic policy—and that’s suppressing anti-Semitism and criticism of Israel. Several red states are pushing for hate speech laws that would criminalize these opinions. South Dakota, one of the reddest states in the country, passed such a law in March. Most right-wingers want their own country in order to have more free speech, not less. 

An independent Red America would largely be the same as the America we already have. Republicans would do little to combat the Great Replacement and emphasize white identity. It would be a militantly colorblind state that would require citizens to believe that Israel is our greatest ally and that Martin Luther King Jr. was a Republican. It would happily welcome “natural conservative” Indians and Hispanics as long as they came to Red America LEGALLY. School textbooks would be the same, except they would blame Democrats for the country’s racism and highlight how every BASED person in American history was a Republican. Despite the intense business focus of its leaders, independent Red America would be a poorer and less powerful country than extant America. 

The good things it would accomplish—curtailing illegal immigration, DEI, and affirmative action—can be done through the government we already have. A second-term Trump is poised to take on these issues and more. Additionally, Trump would not undermine the First Amendment to please the Israel Lobby—unlike an independent Red America. 

So why even bother with secession in the first place? It’s a radical solution in search of a problem to solve rather than a realistic solution.

Enid, Oklahoma reveals how much work right-wingers have before us. The GOP base is not as radical or identitarian as we may wish. A lot of Republican leaders are frankly terrible, but they do reflect the opinions of many of their voters. Right-wing commentators love to imagine the base as a “silent majority” that secretly agrees with all of their radical opinions. The only reason this radicalism doesn’t come to the fore is because RINOs actively work against the interests of their own voters. Enid throws cold water on this theory. 

Much of our base simply wants to be left alone. Many of them are content with the status quo. That’s why if the media tells them a guy with “white nationalist” connections may upset the status quo, they vote against him. They are not a revolutionary constituency. This could change in the future when the status quo gets much worse for them. But we do not live in that time period yet. 

It would be one thing to call for secession when people like Judd Blevins dominated local governments throughout Red America. Instead, people like that get canceled by the “silent majority.” The proper response to this quandary is not to retreat to the land of fantasy where we imagine a hidden demographic is ready to split off from America and recreate the Holy Roman Empire in North America. It’s to realize where the American people are and gradually change their way of thinking. We need a revolution in people’s consciousness before anything else. That’s going to take time. 

If we had a national divorce this decade, we would be stuck in CPAC as an entire country. That would arguably be worse than the status quo.