“The MAGA movement resembles the proto-Confederates in that it bears a powerful sense of loss – that in Trump it had its big chance to Make America Great Again but was robbed of victory by tyrants who will now flood the land with the votes of swarthy immigrants and destroy American enterprise with a socialist administrative state. The Confederates, having been denied control of their country via the organization of a party united by opposition to national recognition of property rights in human slaves, sought a new country rooted in what they viewed as the better parts of the old. And not for a moment did they admit to themselves that they were the aggressors.”

“Yes, I might derive great joy from the overthrow of the U.S. Senate and its filibuster and the conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court. I would feel much safer in a progressive nation that didn’t arm its citizens to the teeth, didn’t view other nations as ‘shitholes’ full of subhuman orcs to be subdued, and didn’t accept calamitous climate change as just the price of doing business. But how could I happily accept the accelerated subjugation of women and people of color in a new, adjacent Red America, any more than abolitionists could accept the continuation and expansion of the slavery they hated? Would it really be safe to live near a carbon-mad country in which the denial of climate change was an article of faith? And could I ever trust that a ‘neighbor’ whose leadership and citizens believed their policies reflected the unchanging ancient will of the Almighty would leave our fences intact? This Union is still worth fighting for, no matter how frustrated we all are with congressional chaos, with elections that feel like nuclear exchanges, and with ‘debates’ taking place between people who can barely communicate with each other. So I say to the would-be secessionists: Please don’t go. And if it’s somehow in my power, I won’t let you go. I have no illusions of compromises yet untried or ‘third ways’ left unexplored. So let’s have it out right here in America as peacefully as we can manage” – Ed Kilgore, New York Magazine.