The idiot governor is really not wrong in declaring California a Nation State.
From wiki.....
A nation state is a state in which a great majority shares the same culture and is conscious of it. The nation state is an ideal in which cultural boundaries match up with political ones.[1] According to one definition, “a nation state is a sovereign state of which most of its subjects are united also by factors which defined a nation such as language or common descent.”[2] It is a more precise concept than “country”, since a country does not need to have a predominant ethnic group.
A nation, in the sense of a common ethnicity, may include a diaspora or refugees who live outside the nation-state; some nations of this sense do not have a state where that ethnicity predominates. In a more general sense, a nation-state is simply a large, politically sovereign country or administrative territory. A nation-state may be contrasted with:
A multinational state, where no one ethnic group dominates (may also be considered a multicultural state depending on the degree of cultural assimilation of various groups).
A city-state which is both smaller than a “nation” in the sense of “large sovereign country” and which may or may not be dominated by all or part of a single “nation” in the sense of a common ethnicity.[3][4][5]
An empire, which is composed of many countries (possibly non-sovereign states) and nations under a single monarch or ruling state government.
A confederation, a league of sovereign states, which might or might not include nation-states.
A federated state which may or may not be a nation-state, and which is only partially self-governing within a larger federation (for example, the state boundaries of Bosnia and Herzegovina are drawn along ethnic lines, but those of the United States are not).
This article mainly discusses the more specific definition of a nation-state, as a typically sovereign country dominated by a particular ethnicity.
more....
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nation_state
Agreed, using the term may not be improper as a rhetorical device.
The important part: he’s shifting the Overton Window by referring to CA not as a State as part of the United States, but as a separate entity (if only as a largely coastal population adhered to the southwestern corner of North America).
The shift makes it easier to think about outright “otherness” & independence.
Akin to Rwanda, I expect we’ll wake up one morning to find CA radio stations declaring “It’s time!” and the population knowing exactly what that means, violently & rapidly severing all ties with the USA proper. “California is a nation-state” prepares for that time.
(Observation: there’s only about 30ish roads in/out of CA, if I recall.)