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It's kind of insane to me how Scotland and Wales both have large nationalist movements with solid polling for independence from the union, yet Hawai'i doesn't. Like, Hawai'i was a fully autonomous kingdom until 150 years ago, it has a way stronger claim to sovereignty than any Celtic nation, and yet a vast, vast majority of Hawaiians support remaining in the US, why is that?
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The UK is currently tearing apart at the seams with pro-independence parties, so why isn't that also true of the US?

RE: https://seafoam.space/objects/28d6def1-c0ff-4840-8bb0-a08a9d3f2417
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shroomie/joan (of the agaric system)

Edited 17 days ago

@AppleAmps my best guess is that it’s because they’re in the middle of the ocean and so cutting off from the us would be tearing their biggest mainland alliance to shreds

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@AppleAmps mainly bcs a large chunk of Hawaii's population are mainland americans who moved there and now live their permanently and the entire Hawaiian economy is built on american tourism basically

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@MossGrowsOnNormanRuins
Mh, fair enough, that tracks with why and how they got annexed in the first place. To be fair though there *are* a lot of places on Earth that rely on American tourism that aren't exactly begging to be invaded.
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@MossGrowsOnNormanRuins
Also for a more direct comparison, couldn't you say something similar about French Polynesia? One of their main industries is tourism and god knows they've got a sovereigntist spirit.
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@shroomie
Ok but like, so are New Zealand and Non-American Samoa, right? And they're doing pretty well for themselves.
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shroomie/joan (of the agaric system)

@AppleAmps i guess that’s true, yea

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@AppleAmps one of the contributing things might be that polynesia is apparantly 78% ethnicly Polynesian whereas Hawaii is only 9% ethnic Hawaiian

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@MossGrowsOnNormanRuins
That's fair. I guess it just goes to show how effective the American style of settler colonialism is, then.
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@MossGrowsOnNormanRuins
I'd make a comment about the Malvinas islands here but in the interest of not causing an international incident I'll abstain.
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@AppleAmps The US has not fallen yet and has no clear pathway to secession of its peoples and lands. The Civil War is still a strong memory. The Confederates would like to relitigate it some day but they are satisfied with the dark arts for now. They're mostly waiting for the right moment to leave or being provoked beyond their patience. The U.S. is also afraid of loss and has had many rebellion attempts that are unsuccessful. Until a military and economy bigger than the U.S. can protect secessionist entities from the U.S. the U.S. will not fall. The U.K. however has pissed off multiple actors with the power to support secessionists such as the EU, Russia, China, and the U.S.

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@celestestormysea
Do you seriously think an independent Scotland would get support from *China* and *Russia*? Also, like, historically is that really how secessionism works? Most examples I can think of where a country breaks off from another there wasn't a need for that kind of mediation. Panama and Taiwan, maybe but aside from those two.
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@celestestormysea
I know, yeah! But that happened 250 years ago, in modern times, where more often than not secession from empire is handled by way of protest and referendum I don't think those rules apply.
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@celestestormysea
Which is why I made the comparison to Scotland here and French Polynesia elsewhere, two countries who's sovereigntist movements are political parties and not militias. I don't think they'd need the EU or Russia to "protect" them if, say, the 2014 referendum had gone through.
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