I tend to agree that it wouldn’t be worth a shooting war(though most of history’s shooting wars have been for reasons that I wouldn’t deem worth a shooting war, so that may be unhelpful); but I suspect that hammering out commercial, forex, diplomatic, etc. arrangements between the NCR and the US would make Brexiting look like a cakewalk.
Even if you count less than a month of armed disorder in then-Mexico as a ‘government’, California hasn’t been a state in anything other than the federal sense since 1849. They would be making up most of the nation-state stuff on the spot; and adjusting to the sudden existence of actual borders which had previously been identifiable only by highway signage.(Also there’s the minor problem that much of the water that keeps California from drying up and blowing away is obtained by a ghastly patchwork of water rights claims across the western US, claims that they would have a difficult time getting on such favorable terms if they had to renegotiate them from scratch).
Even if nobody decided to resort to violence, it’d be epic mayhem.
Well, they are a federally funded reserve division of the standing US Army. I do recall them having been employed to quell riots and other civil unrest and thus, upholding local laws and federal power. I would really hope things don’t come to that with the whole California Rebel Republic thing! But your idea that we are a nation because we agree to be has been disproved by 150 years of post Civil War federal power.
Or hey maybe you’ll become Norton II. Crazy times!
I moved to Cali about 10 years ago, and one of the things that struck me was how much California resembled that aging bald-with-a-pony-tail guy who plays in a cover band at a local bar, making sure everyone knows that 40 years ago he had a minor hit that made the radio. The auto standard stuff was sooooo long ago. In the meanwhile, California has lagged on virtually every big issue, and only just now declined to get rid of the death penalty.
News flash: no one cares what California thinks anymore, the rest of the country writes it off as loony anyway.
I’m not sure if I’m reading a Trump campaign statement This is the whole “liberals control the media” trope, and it’s pretty clear they’re onto it and have passed out the inoculations.
You’re talking about the auto standard stuff as if it’s in the past tense. All cars sold in the US today are still built to whatever the latest standards set in Sacramento happen to be. This is true whether you care about what California thinks or not.
It’s true that California is not always on the right side of progressive issues like sentencing laws. That’s why it’s so damn important to put the pressure on the state’s legislative leaders.
If it was one of his campaign statements he’d be dogwhistling the term “Hollywood,” which is shorthand for Da Jooooz. The fact is that, for better or worse, California is the national trendsetter – watch what happens to pot legalisation now that it’s gone through there. That power comes in part from being the industry centre for traditional and new media.
Liberals don’t exclusively control the media, risk-averse corporate shareholders do. but go into any mainstream media newsroom (including Fox News) and you’re likely to find that the people behind the scenes hold socially liberal views. Which is to be expected given that they’re relatively affluent and educated creative class smartasses with pleasant jobs, and which is why alt-right authoritarians like the President-elect and Peter Thiel hate that they can mock and criticise them freely.
California can do a lot on its own, but it can do even more in partnership with other states. Let California lead an alliance of states within the union who work in tandem. Think about it - maybe with states working together, even if/when Trump guts the Paris Climate Treaty, we could still make sure that on average, as a nation, we hit those targets.
Yes exactly. The GOP has had tremendous success by working at the state level, and making incremental changes as part of a larger strategy. It’s about time liberals stopped thinking solely on the national level and started fighting back.
Not really analogous. If the south had played along and just acted - well, acted like the GOP under Obama, they would probably have been fairly successful in avoid the abolitionist revolution they so feared (and eventually caused).
“That achievement has made California the envy of other governments. At the climate change summit in Paris last December, Governor Jerry Brown floated about like an A-list celebrity. Reporters trailed after him, foreign delegations sought his advice, audiences applauded wherever he spoke. And Brown, reveling in the attention, readily offered up California as a blueprint for the world.”
Well played California!
So happy to be third generation of my family born here. And a father and grandfather to two more.
Should not be hard to get Oregon and Washington state to join in.
Hell, Canada and Mexico too!
This is the whole “liberals control the media” trope, and it’s pretty clear they’re onto it and have passed out the inoculations.