The Border Maze

Stove Top 34: Crisis at the border, state rights, and a collision of incentives

Author

Stephen Flanders
January 26, 2024

Oh baby shit is really starting to hit the fan now.

Texas governor Greg Abbott has had enough. He feels like Texas has been invaded by illegal immigrants, and that Joe Biden’s White House has left him and his state out to dry. And now, Biden and the Supreme Court won’t even let him put up strung razor wires to keep out the migrants. To him, this is nonsense. How can you not let Texas defend itself from a literal invasion? Well, fuck that. Like any good Texan and spoiled brat politician, if the adults Feds won’t give me what I want, I’ll just take it.

So that’s what he’s doing. In a statement that pretty much amounts to a fuck you to the Feds, Abbott said he’s not going to listen to the Supreme Court because Texas is BEING LITERALLY INVADED. And when a state is being literally invaded, their right to self-defense supersedes any federal law.

For the Republican governors, this is like throwing steak to a pride of hungry lions. 25 pledged solidarity to comrade Abbott, even though most of them lead states that aren’t anywhere near the border and quite possibly have never seen a Mexican in their entire lives. But that doesn’t matter. This is more than a fight against the invaders who weigh 120 pounds and don’t have shoes; this is a fight for states’ rights. 

This is really what it’s about (other than the extreme anti-immigration virus that has taken over the brains of Republicans). In the top comment on the video of the “TAKE OUR BORDER BACK” trucker convoy heading down to Texas to…run Mexicans over with trucks?, the top comments are:

So, you have at least a decent segment of America screaming states’ rights. You have half the governors in the country openly supporting rebellion. And you have the former President and current Republican nominee urging states to send their national guard down to Texas.

Are we not as close to civil war as we’ve been since…the Civil War? Is this situation not eerily similar to the Nullification crisis? For those of you who were sleeping through history class, the Nullification crisis was in 1832 and 1833 when South Carolina said “actually, nah, we’re not going to enforce those new tariffs, because we’re an independent state and we can do what we want in our own borders”. Andrew Jackson said no, sorry, that’s not how our federal system works. So Congress passed the Force Bill, which authorized Jackson to turn South Carolina into the burned plot of land formerly known as South Carolina, and then a compromise was reached to put an end to the crisis. However, obviously, the crisis of states’ rights wasn’t truly put to bed until the end of the Civil War.

I’m a Libertarian who advocates for crypto, personal privacy, legalized drugs, and technology that can’t be rigged to follow the law. Needless to say, I’m not usually a proponent of federal power. In this case, however, Biden has to take a page out of Jackson’s book and put an end to this nonsense. He can not let Abbott defy the Supreme Court because of “states’ rights”. If he doesn’t curb-stomp this mini rebellion, he at best goes down in the history books as an incomprehensibly large pussy. At worst, he signals to agitators on both sides that the Feds can be successfully defied. And at worst worst, he puts us on the road to a much more dangerous internal conflict.

The problem for Biden is that he’s in a politically tough spot. A decently sized portion of his big tent is pro-immigration for the reasons leftists traditionally are. And a decently sized and growing portion of his big tent are people fed up with the migrant crisis. It’s like Israel and Palestine. No matter what he does, he’s going to piss somebody off. Maybe that’s just part of the job, and he is duty-bound to send Abbott’s rebellion to Valhalla, but I can only imagine the panic in the Oval Office right now.

Republicans, likewise, are in a tough spot. At least the halfway sensible ones are. They want to lock down the border, but doing so would rob them of their best issue in an election year. It’d be like benching your best player in a championship game. McConnell and Trump have already said this out loud. At this point, the political reward for “fixing” the border doesn’t outweigh the political reward for not “fixing” the border. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why contemporary American politics are, as Jodie Foster’s character in True Detective says, a shitbowl.

Overall, nobody is blameless in a situation like this. Regardless of how you feel about the border, you can probably agree that the Democrats’ border policy of “let the southern states deal with it” was insufficient. But I still blame the Republicans more than Biden’s handlers. We can debate the merits of states’ rights vs federal power and whether the Supreme Court needs to be reformed. I’d love to have that debate! What we can’t do is unilaterally decide the rules magically no longer apply because Texas does what Texas wants.

Motherfuckers, the rules are the rules. As conservatives, you should know and respect that better than anyone.

And it’s really a shame that the Republicans have chosen this route because it really is counterproductive. It’s not like the motherfuckers have any chance to win a Civil War. All it’s doing is pushing away people who would usually be sympathetic to the states’ rights cause, like myself. Stephen Flanders, a Libertarian, is writing a thousand words about why Biden needs to seize control of the Texas National Guard and, if necessary, rain hellfire down on those dumbass Cowboy fans.

Crises are ultimately opportunities for people to claim more power. Usually, they aren’t people you want to claim more power. Think Napoleon, Hitler, Stalin, Lenin, Castro, and Mao. If you’re Greg Abbott and the Republicans, it’s time to ask yourself if taking an illegal stand against the Supreme Court and a President who is polling below 40% is really worth it if it means opening up the door for a more powerful Fed.

Extras

Until next time, ✌️

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