/And if anybody pulls this off, let me know in three years.
Local Lunatic Given Control of Personal Army, Made Absolute Leader of Toledo, Ohio, as “Emergency Measure”
Democratic Party Leaders Vow to Impeach Trump, Fight Trump Administration Over Unexplained Decision to Yield American City to Obscure Blogger
[Photo illustration: Obscure blogger “Mitigated Chaos” rides into city of Toledo at head of tank column, wearing “reimagined Union Army uniform”]
Blogger to head new “Metropolitan Planning Authority” as greater Toledo area declared tax-free “Special Development Administrative Zone” by Executive Order 15335
Your strengths:
* 45 minute drive to DTW, one of the best airports in the country. Yes, it’s a drive (so car ownership), but.
* There is an Amtrak station. And if you can ever convince Amtrak to run more than 1 train a day that shows up at 5AM (overnighters from DC to Chicago), you’re 2 hours from Cleveland, 4 from Chicago and Pittsburgh (evening trips), and 10-ish from DC (overnighter).
* You’re the corner of Lake Erie and every bit of economic activity out of Michigan and heading east is either rolling through you or through Canada.
Your weaknesses:
* White residents who remember why they all fled to Sylvania and their gorgeous suburban mansions in the first place, and spent 50 years getting their every bias confirmed and deepened by the evening news.
/Seriously, I get why you skipped over the racial/class aspects of this whole thing, but uh… that’s really critical. There’s two reasons why Ann Arbor works for this sort of thing, and Toledo does not.
It’s true - dealing with racial issues would require some pretty strong ideological support.
I think race/class issues could be mostly resolved, given the right conditions, but that the population largely do not believe in the necessary ideological supports required to accomplish this, or for that matter, to supply the necessary political energy for the necessary political policies.
The required measures would border on national separatist levels of energy.
On the other hand, Toledo was not chosen out of serious consideration, but for shtposting purposes due to required level of obscurity, position, etc.
On the third hand, the Great Lakes region has access to bulk long-range shipping.