Bad Ideas

Two bad, bad, bad ideas that I've heard from time to time:

• Letting states, generally the southern states, secede from United States. NO. It's not okay to abandon our fellow citizens to the worst state governments. There are millions of poor people and Black Americans and Asian Americans and Indigenous people in the south. The southern states are desperately poor and very much dependent on federal support, financed by taxes paid by the northern and blue states. There are more Democrats in Texas than in New York State. I can't even imagine the unintended consequences of splitting up the country. I mean, right now, I wouldn't put it past a big fraction the right wing to favor the return of chattel slavery. I am completely opposed to anything that risks the harm that splitting country would do.
• Forced sterilization of men. COME ON. Hundreds of thousands of poor, Black, and Indigenous women have been forcibly sterilized over the last 150 years, up into my lifetime, up until today. Bodily autonomy is for everyone, full stop.