Right, for the whole state of California to secede with the far right folks you’d first have to have a protracted internal conflict where the conservatives who occupy the majority of the land mass fight for control with the majority of people who live in the densely populated areas (including places where key military installations are located).
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I agree this would be a likely scenario. But I think alternatively, if the circumstances in the rest of the nation were dire enough, those same fiscal conservatives and laissez faire folks might find it more likely to protect their investments by getting out. Additionally, the threat of said bumpkins might end up being and additional pressure to secede (if California were to survive as an independent entity, it would need the Central Valley on its side.)
To put it another way, I think it would be plausible for California to try to avoid whatever is going on in the rest of the country being a starting point, rather than to be against the rest of the country. (Admittedly, the trailer seems to depict the latter case, which I find way harder to imagine happening.)
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That’s something I can see: the 5th-largest economy on the planet looking at chaos in the rest of the country and saying “f*ck this, we’re out”. Still unlikely for a number of reasons, but a lot more plausible than the state seceding and aligning as a bloc with Florida and Texas. And they’d still have to deal with the far-right terrorism.
In the event of a Syrian-style civil war, the federal government and California need each-other enough for the state to stay in the union. California has enough clout that it could be granted a certain degree of autonomy and/or exemptions that would allow it to continue business as usual while continuing to have federal military protection and to use the banking structure and the USD (at least until it stopped being a reserve currency).
I’m pretty sure that the conservative “family farmers” (spoiler: billionaire landowners) of the Central Valley would quickly change their tune once the far-right yahoos threatened their huge national and international export market (not to mention water from the Colorado River).
The economy matters in all of this, but the writer of this movie might be envisioning a conflict between wealthy states (California, Texas, Florida) and a populist federal government that’s specifically trying to hurt them because they’re wealthy elitists, which somehow translates to “liberal”. That makes about as much sense as the plot of “The Day After Tomorrow”.
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Hmm… I’m sincerely curious where you’re thinking of. Most of the places I can come up with (with the exception of the Navy’s presence in San Diego) are pretty much in the sticks or near conservative areas.
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See, I don’t think it would have to start as a far right led effort. I think you could see pragmatic folks of all political stripes seeing secession as a valid way to protect the general welfare of the state from outside turmoil. But 
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Robert Evans (Behind the Bastards) wrote a pretty good book about a post-US civil war setting.
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I’ve only seen him in I’m Thinking of Ending Things (Charlie Kaufman, so, not for everyone) and Judas and the Black Messiah (highly recommended) and he is not at all psycho in those. “Just a nice guy” doesn’t fit either though.
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That’s a fair point, once you move away from the south west, it is a lot more conservative in lot of CA. It could be part of CA that breaks away.
But again, this is all fantasy. Unless there was some other disaster that broke down all forms of government, any civil war would be an insurgency.
YMMV.
Hey, remember that Black Mirror episode where the US is in two factions, one a right wing Orwellian nightmare, and the other in some sort of liberal-green alliance? And there is an exchange student that basically gets gaslit (maybe not the right term?) into being terrorist? Fun stuff.
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I’m a big fan of Behind the Bastards. It looks like this one is similarly uplifting. I’ll check it out.
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It should be released straight to the cut-out bin.
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Note that the podcast changed formats after the first season, largely because it was too time-consuming and creatively draining for Evans to write new installments imagining how the collapse of the United States would play out. Now “It Could Happen Here” is mostly about calling attention to current events and suggesting calls to action.
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Landry Clarke in the Friday Night Lights series of course.
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Have any of them pretended that those on the left would be left alive, let alone have any rights? It seems that groups like the Oath Keepers, et al, would be perfectly fine with that.
I think the issue of trying to make such an alliance plausible may well be futile. Why should fiction have to make a lick of sense when reality said bye-bye to that so long ago.
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Maybe México took back the two states and waged war on US. Soon France, Spain and Rússia jump into the bandwagon.
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Season 2 of Fargo and Other People
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Don’t worry, Texas has plenty of Californians who came here for moar freedomz® and their housing needs in Austin anyway are a major part of why real estate prices and rents quickly spiraled out of reach for most of us workin’ stiffs. In some ways, Texas is more California–the conservative parts like California’s Central Valley–by the day.
…
FACT:
Texas is the top state Californians are moving to
Based on U.S. Census American Community Survey migration data from 2009 to 2019, Texas has been the #1 destination for departing Californians within the last decade. During that time period, an average of about 68,700 Californians moved to Texas each year.
A steady flow of Californians leaving for Texas outpaced the reverse flow of Texans moving to California by 2-to-1 during a notable spike in 2018 and 2019. …
ETA: fixed formatting issues, grammar
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I mean, its alex garland; arthouse sci-fi films with a better budget and a very “feels-real”-vibe, regardless how unplausible the whole premise actually is. so, expecting “plausibility” seems to me not the right aproach for this one.
e/ I actually cant quite believe this to be “bad” in any way, its also written by garland. and about the “plausibility”-factor;
Garland described the film as a companion piece to Men, and stated it is “set at an indeterminate point in the future – just far enough ahead for me to add a conceit – and serves as a sci-fi allegory for our currently polarised predicament”
a “companion piece” to men of all of his films…okay… this could be going for some interesting and weird stuff then.
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