I was going to write a Substack about this before I read my friend Sabrina Haake’s Substack this morning. Then I read her Substack and realized how what I was thinking fit in with what she was saying in her Haake Take titled “Blue states: Stop funding Trump's Confederacy.” It is subtitled “Previously held assumptions about federalism, including taxation, are falling.” I noticed that the illustration she used was Archibald Willard’s “Yankee Doodle” which is also known as “The Spirit of ‘76.”
I wondered why she used this painting rather than an illustration of a Civl War battle like one of these:
Still, even though she wrote about a peaceful civil war the picture is of a battlefield and you can clearly see, in addtion to the drummers and fife player a wounded soldier and a Union soldier raising his hat in victory.
This is her concluding paragraph:
A new kind of civil war is here, but Democrats did not invite it. When our backs are against the wall, facing the firing squad of a rogue president, complicit party, and corrupt high court determined to destroy us, we must act in our own self-interest. Freedom and our nation’s survival depend on it.
I agree completely with what Sabrina is saying about blue states hitting the Trump Confederacy in the wallet.
My focus is on the development we hope never comes to pass. This would be an actual armed confrontation between the New Union and the New Confederacy.
The Oregon Army National Guard consists of 41 armories in 33 communities. (Read about it in Wikipedia.)
Because we drove by one of their amories yesterday and Ann managed to take some decent photos last night I thought I’d use them as part of my Wednesday Substack.
Click above to enlarge.
There are a few scenarios which could develop where blue states would end up mobilizing their National Guards to protect themselves. Much would depend on the legal cover given if the Supreme Court came to its senses and ruled that Trump had violated the Posse Comitatus Act in sending troops to LA and DC. This could come to a head if he does this in Chicago as he has threatend to do.
If Trump defied such a ruling (Sabrina may want to weigh in on this since she’s a lawyer) and tried to take over normal law enforcement functions could the state governors order the National Guard to stop them from doing this? I seems to this non-lawyer that it is possible.
If Trump wanted his own soldiers to enforce his will, it could pit members of the Oregon National Guard against members of the Idaho National Guard (Wiki) or against members of active duty military.
I find it beyond the pale to imagine another actual replay of the Civil War with Americans shooting Americans. I could, however, see some extremely tense face-offs which resulted in a trigger happy soldier shooting someone.
Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.