Lone Star State Of Mind: Could Texas Go It Alone?

Interesting story I heard on the radio the other day on my drive home, and while not related to ShadowRun, it provides an interesting perspective on how feasible a breakup of the states would be, and what this "Lone Star Country" might look like.

The whole notion of splintering nation-states was done poorly in Shadowrun - some relatively stable nations, such as the United States, were split up, while other, less stable and far more balkanized nations were kept intact.

Texas would not fare well as an independent nation; currently, it takes in a lot more from the federal government than it contributes. Even in the goofy Shadowrun alterniverse where the AmerIndians took over half of the country, an independent Texas did not last long.

Very true. Seattle being off by itself being the one oddity I can point at that I don't think anyone can argue about.

I'm not as well versed about the other weirdy bits.



Even if the ultra-conservatives "small government is good government" build the new country the way they'd like, they'd still end up with more federal government than what currently exists as state government:
Foreign embassies and the like, plus all the stuff that the feds do that the state doesn't do (highway repair, and all that).

Yup, the biggest problem would be the roads. We get a ton of federal money for that. Other than that, theoretically if we stopped shipping off our state-produced food/beef/cotton/etc, we would be much more self-sufficient, and then sell oil/gas/etc for the rest.

BUUUUT, we tried being on our own before and it didn't work out all that great. Despite what all Texans (myself included) would like to believe.

Different Times, Bigity...

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RuleOfCool

Heck, Texas was still considered a rebellious territory by Mexico when it applied for statehood. Even the war for Texan independence has a lot of folks from the rest of the United States, like the New Orleans Greys, pitching in. It's no surprise that a lot of people consider the whole situation nothing but a land grab by the U.S.

I think all depends on the political climate. If Texas wanted to reorganize itself into an independent nation and the US didn't deem it worthy of a civil war, I doubt our current international community would stand idly by and allow Mexico to invade.

In fact, today's international political climate, I think youd have some nations (Russia and China for example) rushing to recognize Texas as a sovereign nation.

'Secedes'. I read the title and I'm like, "A thought experiment where Texas doesn't fail?"

I still think Texas should be broken into four states.

Damn it! You almost trapped me in tvtropes!


Yeah, it had me going for a minute, too.

Seems like many countries have their secessionist corners. The long-term thinkers in them tend to hold back the hot-heads.

I'm actually more interested in the thought experiments where the United States becomes a dictatorship in the same way that both greece and rome did. Fairly confident that history WILL repeat itself.

I don't see the U.S. ever becoming a traditional dictatorship. If you're going for dystopia, emphasize the worst fears of both conservatives and liberals - a sprawling military-industrial and prison complex, and a powerful oligarchy of plutocrats and industrialists who buy and sell candidates and write their own laws. Combine that with economic policies that create economic inequality similar to that of the Great Society, along with gun control and other limits to civil liberties that people will be conditioned to accept under the guise of national security. A dystopic version of the United States would still be a democracy in name, just not in fact.

Add in a more conspicuously enshrined stratification of citizenship ala SINner vs SINless and the ability to strip citizenship for select crimes & tada, an underclass with no voting rights is available.

Wait, wait, wait, this isn't already true?

I assumed he was being darkly sarcastic.

Bite your tongue...

The Constitution specifically forbids this. An independant nation would have all the paper pushing of forign relations meaning it's government out expand as it had to appoint ambassadors to other nation, welcome them in, close the border with Mexico better AND handle the fact it's borders with the US would suddeenly have to be manned. not fortified persay but just regular customs and then passports issued. Texas oil might also not be so plentiful as they think. Right now they can pretty much have a free reign in the gulf but as independant they'd lose a lot of that in the pinch with the EEZ of the USA starting at the Lousiana border while to the north there could be an issue of Oklahoma drawing on the same fields there.

Lastly, with absolutley NO apologies to the guys driving around screaming 'the south will rise again' states leaving the union was tried back in 1861-65.

The south has risen! Though it took a while, and well let's just say some issues never are going to get resolved to everyones satisfaction.

Just a thought, has anyone tried a civil war era shadow run?

That'd actually be kind of neat.

As a followup to the story I posted, they do "letters to the program" and a lot of people were like "really? we had to spend 8 minutes on this?"
But one guy mentioned a book that had been written (like 50 years ago) and made the comment "Texas wants to succeed, so I started an 'Americans for Texas Succession' group which squashed the whole idea: Texas wants to succeed, but they don't want anybody else to want them to."

EDIT: Bah, didn't see the "RL" tag. Thought that was an SR4. Don't mind this post...

Heck, we did, and we brought quite a few states with us into the C.A.S. Seein' as how aggressive the Azzie's are, it's good we did. It's pretty much a war for the border in Texas right now in SR...it's nice to have them Georgyans an' them 'Bama boys on our side.


As far as real life, sure, we could, but I don't think it would be a net benefit for Texas.

Texas has a lot of US military, Fort Hood alone has 10 percent of the Army stationed there and most of the units are back now. There's about 50-60 thousand troops here, add Fort Bliss and Lackland Airbase where the Airforce does basic and AIT and you have a very sticky military situation.

Armored brigade at Fort Knox in Kentucky, the Marine base in camp lejune. The Atlantic Fleet in Norfolk VA. no nered to go on. just the needed beurocracy for an independant texas would drive taxes way up

Texans certainly make up a sizable portion of the military--of the populous states, they have the highest percentage of soldiers enlisted--but the days of everyone just training or being stationed in their state of origin (or close by) are long gone, so it's tough to say how it'd shake out given that a lot of military personnel stationed in Texas may not be willing to back Texas in the event of secession.

Plus you have to factor in how many join to get the frag out of Texas.

Surely servicemen pledge to defend the USA, not Texas. Dishonor!

Yeah, I don't see the U.S. turning over any of its military hardware or transferring any of its soldiers over to a newly sovereign nation of Texas. The same would go for a lot of other federal assets. The national guard might be another story.

Why don't you just say "Shadowrun with gun control"

Lest you forget, Shadowrun is full of places with gun control laws (and some places with not so much gun control). Problem is, the average game involves shadow runners..not necessarily the most law abiding types.

OK, "UCAS as with gun control" would have been more precise, since their law still seems to be quite permissive. Of course many places on UCAS territory do restrict carrying or ownership, but IMO that's "my place, my rules" rather than "gun control"

Shadowrun is a different kind of dystopia, corporate feudalism. Which, to be honest, I see as a bit far-fetched. The big megacorporations generally would rather manipulate the government than take its place. It is barely plausible in the Shadowrun universe, due to multiple catastrophes severely weakening the conventional governments of the world.

The american Civil war started because the US would not just turn over it's assets. A place in Charlston Harbor mean anything?

I never got the gun control part. The point beeing is, that it seems to be better to have a lot of guns on the streets if you want to establish a dictatorship.
Why? Such better press shooting armed people than unarmed people.

The second part is, that you can use militias, which are not directly linked to you, to kill any politcal opposition. You just have to prevent prosecution and prosecute any crime from the other side.

And the bloodshed in the streets allows you to pass stricter and stricter laws...

@Snow_Fox

It has been a bit different situation, mostly economically.

The south would have gotten all the stuff he wanted from europe, now tax free.
And he would have had a product all Europe(mostly england) wanted to buy.
The north would have lost the south as a market for his goods and would not export a lot of stuff.
So at the time it made perfect sense for the south trying to get independant and for the north wanting to prevent that.

Now I guess it is more that Texas or other southern or mid western staates can't really afford to break off.

If something like this would happen, I do not know if it would cause a war.
The US is quite federalistic. And I guess it will depend on how the current situation would be.
If the government would be seen as ineffective before, the hope for development could be greater than the fear of loss...
It is always quite hard to make such calls. A lot of stuff which happend in the last 25 years would have been deemed impossible just 5 years before it happened...

Also, the US is not divided geographically any more--it is more divded on idealogical grounds. People have families all across the US, some on the west coast, some on the east coast, some somewhere in between. Now taking the present day US, dropping the great ghost dance and the NAN break-ups could be another interesting setting. You could still have the mega corps, but I'd go with different ones that are more focused.

@Warlordtheft
The question is always how it fits with the setting. I guess for the writers the US was a bit too big.
If you do not want a game focused on empires, big nations are not a good thing to have...
You also have to get rid of the european union. It is just a major feature to be able to jump from one country into another. (Espacially for Shadowrunners...)

succeeds with what exactly?

I'd just like to point out that technically the Balkans SHADOWRUNIZED, rather than Shadowrun BALKANIZING, because Shadowrun's splitups pre-dated the Balkan crisis!

The word Balkanization actually refers to the fragmentation of the southeastern Europe with the fall of the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires after World War 1.

Or Shadowrun first edition is much older than I remembered.

seceding

At times i wonder if Hardwired have been a much bigger influence on SR than Neuromancer.

Hell, Hardwired basically start out following a t-bird/high speed hovercraft jockey doing a smuggling run in a divided USA.

And this while the big corporations run it all from orbit, and you're better off paying in drugs or corporate shares than national currencies.

Hardwired gave us the archetypical T-bird rigger, along with a lot of other Shadowrun staples like wired reflexes (although Williams combined wired reflexes, skillwires, and control rigs in his version). Pity the cybersnake never made it into Shadowrun.

Well, the Oral Slasher in Augmentation seems fairly close.

hell. If some character got to use it during a solid french kiss or such, it may well be allowed to do damage with no dodge or armor for the target.