I Want, You Can’t

It’s happening all over the world. Separatism. In some cases, punitive or greedy colonial boundaries, drawn about a century ago, are exploding with decades of seething anger, often exacerbated by increased repression, climate change as it decimates once productive agricultural land and Malthusian population growth. Sunnis and Shiites still blast at each other Iraq, but it’s clear the Shiite majority are calling the shots. Sunni separatists, once supported by the only help they could find – ISIS, al Nusra, al Qaeda – are losing in every way possible, even those migrants finding themselves unwanted as they escape the violence to unwelcoming Europe. Yemen is facing survival at the most primitive level as its civil war continues.

Kurds in Iraq voted dramatically for independence from Iraq, momentum building towards a new Kurdistan built from all the regional communities. But landlocked Kurds found nothing but military threats from all the involved nations: Iraq, Iran and Turkey. Anglophones are dying, screaming for independence from the majority of Francophones in the West African nation of Cameroon. Nigeria is fractured as northern Islamist Boko Haram blasts civilians in their quest for a separate country. We watch as Russia moves to expand its annexation of Crimea with its rather consistent quest for eastern Ukraine. Britain is leaving the European Union, but at least that was a process contemplated in the EU foundation documents and is proceeding peacefully.

But no one really expected that degree of separatist hostility, on a grand scale, within one of the larger nations remaining in the European Union: Spain. Not the Basques this time. Not a poor “repressed” region of the country, in fact quite the reverse. Catalonia (pictured above) is far and away the richest region in all of Spain. While Catalonians can speak Spanish, they are fiercely proud of their own culture, language and prosperity. 7.5 million strong (out of 47 million for all of Spain), they have chafed at the central government’s policies, using Catalan wealth to provide support for the rest of the nation during Spain’s recent litany financial crises, replete with EU bailouts and the accompanying severe austerity measures.

Catalonians called for a referendum on the issue of independence; the Spanish government slammed the effort as contrary to the Spanish constitution, declared the effort illegal (an edict supported by the courts) and ordered police to stop the vote. With sporadic enforcement efforts, where many polling sites were shut down, “Catalonia’s defiant attempt to stage an independence referendum descended into chaos on Sunday [10/1], with hundreds injured in clashes with police in one of the gravest tests of Spain’s democracy since the end of the Franco dictatorship in the 1970s.

“National police officers in riot gear, sent by the central government in Madrid from other parts of Spain, used rubber bullets and truncheons in some places as they fanned out across Catalonia, the restive northeastern region, to shut down polling stations and seize ballot boxes.

“The clashes quickly spoiled what had been a festive, if expectant, atmosphere among voters, many of whom had camped inside polling stations and stayed on into late Sunday night, fearful that officers might seize ballot boxes.

“By the day’s end, both sides were claiming victory. Voting went ahead in many towns and cities, with men and women, young and old, singing and chanting as they lined up for hours to cast ballots. Just after midnight, the Catalan government said that the referendum had been approved by 90 percent of some 2.3 million voters. Those figures could not be independently confirmed.

“The Spanish government declared that the referendum had been disrupted… More than 750 people were injured in the crackdown, Catalan officials said, while dozens of Spanish police officers were hurt, according to Spain’s interior ministry.” New York Times, October 2^nd. While the “stay in Spain” polling before the referendum edged out the separatists, by the time the savagery that accompanied the attempt at self-determination was over, a lot of local Catalonians who did not want a separate state were angrily rethinking their position.

“[Spain’s] Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, at a news conference Sunday evening, characterized the police actions as a proper and measured response to the acts of secessionists. ‘We did what we had to do,’ he said…

“The Catalan vote has been watched with rising trepidation — and no sign of support — by a European Union wary of stoking forces of fragmentation already tugging at the bloc and many member states, where populist and nationalist parties have surged in recent elections.

“Nationalism in Spain, a country with a long and painful 20th century history that included civil war and fascism, has been all but dormant since the coming of democracy after the death of the dictator Gen. Francisco Franco in 1975. There are already signs that Catalonia’s threat to fracture the country is changing that.” NY Times. Both the EU and Spain have rejected Catalan pleas for mediation, and many challenge even the validity of the vote based on the (suppressed) turnout.

Even Spain’s King Felipe, who seldom makes public statements, chastised as “disloyal” this Catalan movement with these remarks on October 3^rd: "With their [Catalan leaders’] irresponsible conduct they could put at risk the economic and social stability of Catalonia and all of Spain…They have placed themselves totally outside the law and democracy… It is the responsibility of the legitimate state powers to ensure constitutional order." Anger is building on both sides of this controversy. But we are seeing this trend toward “separatism” everywhere. Why is this happening?

Hyperbolically-accelerating change, job-destroying automation and oversaturation from mass and social media – now impregnated with “alternative facts” and “opinions masquerading as fact” – and rising income inequality have joined with the ravages of climate change and explosive population growth to create anxiety about “our future.” People in most of the world – China and former Soviet bloc nations excepted – actually doubt that they can ever live as well as their parents and most certainly fear for their children’s future. Hope is in short supply, and the supply of that emotion is dwindling fast. Those who have “it” want to keep “it”... many wanting “more” and damned the consequences. Those who want or need more just to survive or are holding on what little they have, well, look around you.

That same nationalism, regional separatism – exacerbated by institutionalized voter inequality (from gerrymandering, voter suppression and simply the way voting districts and states are configured under our Constitution) and some of the highest levels of income inequality on earth – has infected the United States, a country with about the same number of guns as people. Mass shootings are all-too-frequent, but that is just the tip of the melting iceberg.

Ask yourself how your state would vote if asked whether it is comfortable in the America that is today… or whether those local state voters would opt for independence (or at least reconfiguration with states of comparable values) if a referendum were held tomorrow. Oh, by the way, there is no mechanism in the U.S. Constitution for a peaceful vote to allow states to leave the union. The last time someone tested that reality, it was called the Civil War...  somewhere between 750,000 and one million Americans died in that conflict. They weren’t nearly as well-armed as we are today.

I’m Peter Dekom, and for those who somehow believe that it cannot happen here… bad news… it is already happening.