The fundamental hypocrisy of States’ Rights as espoused by the authoritarian right is nothing new, hardly in need of in-depth discussion. A corrupt and compliant Supreme Court has given them the rights – the right to control women’s bodies and restrict non-white voter access – they’ve been working to obtain since Ronald Reagan declared his presidential candidacy at the scene of the Civil Rights activist murders of Mississippi Burning.

Now, as the once defeated confederate states move with brutal speed to cement into place the patriarchal white christian nationalist apartheid state they’ve worked toward for decades, it’s time to give some thought to a few other states’ rights that might’ve been fairly incomprehensible to U.S. founders… but might be fairly crucial in any sort of fight to regain power from the current lawless U.S. federal regime.

I’m referring to the concept of digital sovereignty, as currently articulated by national governments worldwide no longer willing to trust the current regime or the bloated tech companies that have lined up to support it. It is difficult to say whether it is the regime or the tech companies that are the true imperialists in this case. It is not difficult to see their conjoined interests – or how much at odds those interests are to the peace, stability, and security of much of the rest of the world.

What makes this a question of State’s Rights is the apparent inability of the U.S. federal government to impose any sort of effective regulatory constraints on how these companies manage both the content and the infrastructure of the modern internet, or enforce the privacy rights of those using the applications that run on that infrastructure. If the federal government cannot (or will not) regulate these companies, it should rightly become the business of the states to do so.

Obviously, not all states will have an equal interest in this. It is probably safe to assume that member states of what is effectively a reborn confederacy are entirely happy with the unholy alliance of the likes of Elon Musk and the various members of the regime propping up Donald Trump’s demented and diseased effigy. The state of Georgia, for example, seems to have no particular problem with massive unregulated data centers draining their water supplies dry.

In other cases… there might actually be an interest in fighting back.

States outside the reborn confederacy are looking at the upcoming midterm elections with a mix of horror and anticipation. Horror inspired by the dead certainty that the regime will attempt to tamper with (or flatly deny) election results not in their favor; anticipation that democracy might prevail in spite of such efforts, beginning the slow and torturous path toward something that might look like accountability.

If horror wins the day in the aftermath of the midterm elections, it will be time for states not aligned with white christian nationalist triumphalism to face the same ugly reality former U.S. ally states have been dealing with since Trump’s dubious reassumption of power – the reality that the federal government of the United States of America is no longer a friend or an ally… and can no longer be trusted.

The actions taken by European states to ensure their privacy from U.S. based big tech should be considered an example by U.S. states also dealing with their own federal government as an adversary and aggressor. If this sounds like the opening steps in a Soviet-style breakup of the United States… it’s only because that’s exactly what it is.

This is not to paint fair, free, and uncontested midterm elections as any sort of magic bullet. The national Democratic Party has shown little appetite for functioning as an effective resistance to the regime’s domestic abuses – worse, many of its leaders have varying degrees of complicity in the atrocities carried out internationally by the regime and its ally rogue states. Effective midterm elections are the bare minimum requirement for any ongoing faith in the U.S. as a functional democratic republic.

If that requirement cannot be met, it is time for states outside the bounds of the old confederacy to start asking what – exactly – they are part of, what – exactly – they can hope to gain from continuing to play the role of an abused spouse in a failed marriage.

And it will be time to make serious plans to leave that failed relationship. A good start would be following the regulatory models currently being established in Canada and Europe for controlling the abuses of Big Tech. While federal level antitrust action is preferable, it is still possible for states to introduce their own measures for reining in the oligarchs. And while digital sovereignty measures like kicking Microsoft out of their state bureaucracies does not completely negate the surveillance state aims of Palantir, any resistance at all is better than outright acquiescence.

Bottom line: if oppressing women and minorities is a legitimate exercise of states’ rights, so is principled resistance to technology-fueled fascism. And I have a pretty fair idea which exercise will better stand under the ongoing scrutiny of history…