“there are a lot of similarities the author brought up here.”
No there aren’t. And that’s the problem with VDH’s tortured attempt to create an analogy. The planter class wasn’t alien to the rest of the South, they were part of it. They were as much a part of the fiber of the South as Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Mason, Henry and the rest of the planter class of a generation before that played an even bigger role in an earlier secession.
VDH illustrates his ignorance of ante-bellum southern history in this quasi-Marxist rendering of the South as two tiered consisting of aristocrats and serfs. But he’s desperate to make his analogy, so he equates planters with California’s uber wealthy. California’s rich do not share the culture of normal Californians, they have simply been able to impose their will on the rest of us through raw political power. They not only wouldn’t be leaders if civil war broke out, they would be targets.
In CA, the big corp (plantation) owners just import their low wage illegal planter class. Their part of it too, in fact claim they own it and also support seceding from the rest of the country. This is like the old south but in warped 2017 leftist style.