Dear Sen. Cruz, confessions of a Blue Stater

Dear Ted Cruz,

Recently, you suggested that Texas might need to secede from the U.S., saying “I think we take NASA, we take the military, we take the oil.”

So, this raises an intriguing question: “What if ?” What if, Texas, Alabama, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina and all the Red States seceded?

Well, for starters, Red Staters suddenly couldn’t get a good cup of coffee (Starbucks is from Washington and Dunkin’ has Massachusetts on its side). Red States couldn’t get lobster or a good bagel (OMG trading in grits for lobsters!). Blue States wouldn’t get good Kentucky Bourbon. Conversely, Blue Staters wouldn’t get Bud Light (which I suspect us East Coast elites would be OK with, as we do have Vermont IPAS).

This geopolitical lesson means Blue States would just get by with Broadway, Disney and ESPN (headquartered in

Connecticut), leaving Branson, Missouri, to the Red Staters. Sorry, Red Staters: No movies, Netflix, “Jeopardy!” or music, except country. One interesting tradeoff, however: I thought Red Staters would get CNN (headquartered in Georgia) and us Blue Staters get Fox News (in NYC). But Georgia turned Blue. So, where are Red Staters getting their news? (OK, Newsmax is in Florida.)

Sorry, Blue Staters, no Mount Rushmore or the Arches in Utah. Red Staters wouldn’t have Niagara Falls or the grand Hudson River Valley. But Red Staters would have the nation’s largest river — much of the Mississippi. For Red State skiers, you still have Utah, while Blue Staters have Colorado, California and Vermont. Golfers? Well us Blue Staters will have Pebble Beach and I thought, sadly, no Augusta National. But I woke up Nov. 4, 2020, with both The Masters and the Grand Canyon in Blue States!

My wife is OK that Blue Staters would not have good college football.

Dinner would be challenging for Blue Staters. No French fries but perhaps some love in the form of Maine-grown potatoes and knishes from New York (so take that, Idaho!). Red States would also corner the market on Covid-filled meat-packing plants, so no frozen chicken tenders, for anyone.

Red State kids are out of luck, too, as no LEGO and Wiffle balls (both from Connecticut) and no Barbie (from California) and no Monopoly (from Rhode Island). And no Pez candy coming out of those collectible dispensers, as that is made in Connecticut, too.

Then there’s the financial divide. Kentucky would not be made whole by all those Yankee dollars from New York. And although Red States would have plenty of oil, no worries, Canada prefers Blue over Red! And yes, Blue Staters have two stalwarts of Red State culture — New York Stock Exchange and the Statue of Liberty

Red States wouldn’t have submarines (another Connecticut product) or jet planes. Boeing is in Washington and jet engines are from New England. So, us Blue Staters could still fly over “fly over” country with no worries. And yes, Blue Staters have the country’s largest arms manufacturers — Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Sikorsky helicopters and Colt firearms are all from Blue States.

Finally, Sen. Cruz, there’s the color of education. Blue States have Harvard (I guess, no Harvard Law for you), Yale, MIT, Princeton, Columbia and Stanford. OK, Washington University is great college but although in a Red State it’s in a Blue city (St. Louis). So let’s split that one. But the good news is this leaves a wide-open field in Red States for a famous university they can call their very own — Trump University.