Last night’s demonstrations across the country have brought some serious activist conversations about Brexit-style separation of the western states.
As with Brexit’s immigration motivations and nativist subtext, this discourse as always fails to consider how complicated such processes become when considering the mechanics of transforming the existing real politics, governance, and the trading relations of a new nation with the rest of the US and the world. The Czech Republic is still having naming problems.
Secession has been a historical discussion as has splitting of the state of California into smaller states motivated by a variety of political interests. The movement du jour is San Diego based Yes California.
For example the State of Jefferson movement trying to separate the Northeast corner of Caifornia represents RW land-sovereignty groups. One early narrative among many from progressive/green groups is Ernest Callenbach’s series of fictional books on the revolutionary secession of Ecotopia, whose bio-regional geography included the area from Northern California to British Columbia. This resembles a plan for Cascadian independence that includes Washington, Idaho, and Oregon.
Unfortunately, aside from the reaction to the election of the giant orange gasbag, this secession movement follows on the earlier failed attempt by some idiot tech-libertarians in Silicon Valley who tried to divide the state into six states (more faux-warlordism as well as an attempt to leverage the Electoral College).
Probably the only way the world’s eighth largest economy could become an autonomous nation is if Lawrence-Livermore decided to build nukes that would be launched from Vandenberg and aimed at DC. The gun laws would certainly change as a standing army and real militia might be necessary for the defense of the Ecotopian/California/Cascadia borders. The US might not want to give up the nation’s #1 agricultural producer without a fight as well as Knott’s Berry Farm. But living Californians have not had to fight for the territory except in films like Spielberg’s 1941.
And yes there would be a wall to keep Kardashians both in and out of the new nation and an extradition treaty necessary to get Trump to his trial in San Diego.
Some big names in Silicon Valley have a simple message after Donald Trump's victory: We want out.
Shervin Pishevar, an early Uber investor and cofounder of Hyperloop, posted a series of tweets Tuesday night announcing his plans to fund "a legitimate campaign for California to become its own nation."
And no, he's not joking.
"Yes it's serious," Pishevar told CNNMoney in an e-mail. "It's the most patriotic thing I can do. The country is [at] a serious crossroads."
Within hours, several other tech founders offered their support for the plan.
"I was literally just going to tweet this. I'm in and will partner with you on it," Dave Morin, an investor and founder of private social networking tool Path, tweeted in response to Pishevar.
"I support you in this effort let me know what I can do to help," Marc Hemeon, a former Google employee and founder of Design Inc., wrote on Twitter.
There are a lot of red state voters who wouldn’t mind cutting California loose.
People hate California because it’s big, it wields a massive share of electoral votes (55), and the loudest voices in the Golden State are pro-gay, pro-choice, and pro-Obama.
Californians, meanwhile, get tired of being vilified.
They point to the state’s enormous if sometimes embattled economy—one of the largest in the world, with a GSP (gross state product) in 2012 of two trillion dollars, or 12.9% of the U.S. GDP.
They point to its productivity: California doesn’t just make a lot of computers and do a lot of stem cell research and come up with a lot of cool ideas; it also produces nearly half of US-grown fruits, nuts, and vegetables, not to mention massive quantities of milk.
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