Posted on 02/05/2025 5:36:31 AM PST by MtnClimber
California’s latest secession push is a delusional stunt driven by contradictions, but Trump’s growing support proves that voters may be waking up to reality.
Californians disgruntled with President Trump are promoting a ballot initiative to allow the state to secede from the United States. The initiative is being promoted by Marcus Ruiz Evans, a Fresno resident who describes himself as an activist, debate moderator, and author. After the initiative was cleared for circulation by the California Secretary of State, in a local television interview, Ruiz Evans claimed that 2016 polling found 32 percent of Californians supported full secession.
It’s worth wondering whether Evans, the politicians and journalists who will inevitably capitalize on his project, and the millions of Californians likely to support it have considered what life would be like in an independent California. Would it still be a one-party state? Would it double down on all the progressive policies that dominate policy today? And how would that look?
Imagine California’s politicians without a federal government to moderate the implementation of their cherished beliefs. Imagine a state where oil and natural gas production is halted completely and only all-electric vehicles are built. A state where construction of single-family homes is outlawed, water is rationed, and household appliances are all “connected” and monitored by the public utilities to efficiently “manage” energy consumption. Isn’t that where California is already headed? Imagine all that going into high gear.
California’s policymakers claim these steps are being taken to save the planet. Imagine a California where if you openly question the theories and “settled science” being used to essentially put the entire populace on lockdown, you are not merely ostracized but prosecuted. Why wouldn’t that happen if the fanatics that drive the progressive movement in California didn’t have to respect the U.S. Constitution?
The other cherished belief among the progressives who run California is, of course, the plight of the underrepresented and disadvantaged, a plight attributable to alleged institutional and systemic racism, sexism, etc-ism. The introductory remarks made by a television journalist in the January 28 report on Ruiz Evans’s initiative sum up the mentality among his potential supporters:
“With the current political climate, uncertainty among minorities is at an all-time high.”
To be fair, there are a lot of ways to take this comment, but if politically biased journalists are banking on the national “political climate,” ala Trump, to be universally repellant to the state’s millions of Latino, Black, and Asian residents, they are making a huge mistake. In 2024, Trump’s share of the vote improved nationwide among nonwhites, and California was no exception. According to an analysis published by the ultra-liberal “nonpartisan” website Cal Matters, “Most… of California’s 12 Latino-majority counties gave a larger share of their vote to Trump compared to 2020, and counties with a higher share of Latino population swung further toward Trump.” The reason? As Cal Matters acknowledged, “The bottom line is money.”
So how’s that going to work? When it comes to the solvency of the average household, what California’s resurgent “resistance” hasn’t come to terms with is that the woke, identitarian, racist, resentful ideology of the allegedly disadvantaged, underrepresented, and oppressed minorities is utterly incompatible with the ecological, Gaia-worshiping, climate crisis-obsessed, renewable energy, “smart growth” green movement. They are on a collision course. And yet these two fitfully aligned ideologies constitute the supposed moral foundation of progressive power in California.
In both cases, these ideologies are a disaster. California’s decision to turn the state into a petri dish for green bleeding-edge technologies has made the state unaffordable. Its decision to elevate identity over competence, training K-12 students to consider themselves either oppressors or victims depending on what group identities they can claim, is a psychopathic dead end that destroys the character of anyone who accepts its premises.
What Trump understands, along with most of the rest of the country, is that there is only one practical way to strive for “equity” without destroying equal opportunity, and that is to reward competence, integrity, and achievement, i.e., merit, and nothing else. And the only way to achieve broadly distributed prosperity, which is what California voters, regardless of their group identity, seem to care about the most, is to restore a balance between genuine environmental concerns and economic opportunities.
California today is proof that extreme environmentalist regulations make life impossible for working families. Before stepping into the great unknown of independent nationhood, Californians need to look in the mirror. Trump isn’t the one who threatens their freedom and prosperity. The delusions of progressives and the special interests that profit from those delusions are the forces that keep them down.
As it is, maybe a publicity-seeking major donor will come along and finance this latest iteration of CalExit. Proponents have until July to gather the nearly 600,000 signatures necessary to put the initiative on the state ballot. Even if it passes, however, it would only be an advisory measure. Its only concrete effect would be to create another state-funded commission to study the feasibility of secession.
California’s disgruntled Democrats and Never Trumpers may still be the majority in the state, but that majority is dwindling. In 2016, Trump received 31.6 percent of the vote in California. By 2020, that had improved to 34.3 percent, and in 2024 it was up to 38.3 percent. The “resistance” is shrinking.
Ultimately, California’s political future will not be improved through the anger of its fractious progressive coalition, whether they recognize their discontent as a consequence of their own contradictory and universally destructive policies or allow it to be manipulatively channeled into resentment of Trump. The real question is what positive solutions can be offered to California’s disgruntled voters.
If Trump, for example, successfully cuts through California’s monstrous thicket of state and local bureaucracy and environmentalist obstructionism to swiftly bring help and rebuilding to burned-out neighborhoods in Los Angeles, his supposed toxicity will dissipate into the wide Pacific, and California will realign with the rest of America.
The California leftist politicians make all of these crazy decisions and then want the rest of the country to bail them out. If they secede there won’t be anyone to bail them out. Have they thought about that?
“activist, debate moderator, and author”
I think the formal name for that profession is “grifter”.
I’m fully on board with this as long as they break off the great state of Jefferson
California is now 32% Mexican.
If CA did secede, it would only be a matter of time before it became part of Mexico (again).
Cali will go full bore Communist on day 1.
Let them. Liberate them and then reconstruct the heck out of them
The Alt Left enclaves on the coast can be liberal reservations when they can exist under their own laws and local goverment without voting rights.
Our democracy!
“Have they thought about that?”
No, leftists never think of how their decisions might impact the future. And they never learn from past mistakes. They are emotionally driven nut jobs that think only about what’s going on now.
And they are not true communists, as a true commie does plan for the future. The USSR lasted several decades, the CCCP is doing well, and so is Vietnam. This is because their leaders are not full blown bat$hit crazy.
Kalifornia lefties are true blue crazies that do more damage to themselves by accident than anyone on the outside could possibly do on purpose.
If they do implode, a true form of communism, such as from the ChiComs, could easily take over. So IMO secession is not an option.
Those who don’t study history are destined to repeat it. S.c. Dec 1860 tried this. And suffered badly. Democrats are stupid.
Will the conservative enclaves in Northern California be allowed to secede from the new nation?
As long as they leave Jefferson and anything inland of L.A.
“If they secede there won’t be anyone to bail them out. Have they thought about that?”
China will.
“The California leftist politicians make all of these crazy decisions and then want the rest of the country to bail them out. If they secede there won’t be anyone to bail them out. Have they thought about that?”
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Do you really believe that California Leftist politicians (but I repeat myself) actually think things through? If they did, they wouldn’t be Leftists, and southern Cali wouldn’t be a burned out $hithole begging everyone for money to fix the problems they created for themselves.
I’m thinking they get the south end of San Francisco to the north end of Los Angeles, and 30 miles inland. And they agree to pay relocation costs for normal people who want out of ObamaLand or whatever they are going to call it. We control the forests and the Pacific ports.
California couldn’t secede from the union if it wanted to Texas is the only state that didn’t sign the paper work to join it.
California still believes it’s worth anything after it make itself a shit hole and a mecca for stupidity.
Nothing could be better for the rest of us. 2 minutes after the split the good guys with guns outside of the metros would split away as there would be no US army to stop them. The good guys could rejoin or stay on their own but no matter what 20 million leftists would no longer have a say in how things are run outside of their cities.
During the Civil War Southern Democrats were secessionists while Northern Democrats aka 'Copperheads' were appeasers as reflected in the Democrats nominating for President George B. McClellan in 1864, a former Union general who ran on a platform that called for an immediate ceasefire and negotiations with Confederate leaders. This stance alienated many voters who supported Lincoln’s approach to continue fighting until victory was achieved.
Operative word in this painting of Civil War secession is 'Democrat' aka RAT!
Trade California for Canada and Greenland. Offer all Danes the right to emigrate to California as a sweetener.
We may have to throw in Oregon and Washington, but we should move the Northern border of Washington down as far as possible to get access to the ocean.
We may want to buy Baja California from Mexico as well to gain access to warm water.
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