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Would Calexit be a good thing?

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Re: Would Calexit be a good thing?

#31

Post by CuriouslyC »

JBReefer wrote: post #9
M_Grey wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On what planet do you expect that the US at large is going to accept 1/7th of their economy seceding without a fight?

I saw it here in NYC after the election - "We'll secede, and we'll fight the other states if it comes to it." OK, good luck winning when no one owns guns, trucks, generators etc. It's a pipe dream. You can't win a war with a bicycle and a baseball bat. Montana could probably win a war of secession, but this ain't Montana.

In this hyper-connected social media age, the horror of a war waged on people that you closely identify with would have the near instant effect of turning the population against the government waging it.

It is much more likely that the federal government would try to put strings in place so that it could act as a puppet-master for the newly "independent" nation.

Re: Would Calexit be a good thing?

#33

Post by CuriouslyC »

makerbraker wrote: post #22
M_Grey wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On what planet do you expect that the US at large is going to accept 1/7th of their economy seceding without a fight?

Not just the economy. You'd also need high level US military leaders to go insubordinate, voluntarily ignore their chain of command, and "donate" the assets of the US armed services to the Republic of California. Texas is the only state that could probably put up a fight, but it'd be very ugly and very bloody. Secession almost always equals war. I think the folks advocating for secession trivialize the fact that the…

I have no doubt that many military leaders would defy commands to kill non-aggressors that they have a sense of kinship with. Unlike the civil war, we don't have the moral high ground provided by slaver to drive men to kill their brothers.

I suspect that the federal government would try to negotiate a secession that gave them some power over the newly formed nation, in order to "give the people what they want" while maintaining the status quo as much as possible.

Re: Would Calexit be a good thing?

#34

Post by lebanon_tn »

darnton wrote: post #20

The United States is a maritime superpower, able to project power across the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Losing the Pacific coast would end that. I can't imagine it being let go easily.

The bulk of U.S. naval forces in California are in the San Diego region. It's possible the U.S. could negotiate a border that leaves the naval bases as well as the Marine Corps base at Camp Pendleton as part of the United States. (The entire swath of Southern California below Los Angeles.)

Re: Would Calexit be a good thing?

#35

Post by JBReefer »

grzm wrote: post #28
JBReefer wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And no shared border. Also, NY State is much more conservative than people assume, the State legislature is usually controlled by Republicans.

And no shared border. Massachusetts borders New York to the east. Or were you thinking California?

Yes. It's a different thing to have partners in the legislature vs 2 of the most powerful states willing to join your new country.

I don't know if the USA could be remotely the same if NY, MA, TX, and FL seceeded. I do know that they wouldn't at the same time, just by the nature of geography.

Re: Would Calexit be a good thing?

#37

Post by JBReefer »

eksemplar wrote: post #24
M_Grey wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On what planet do you expect that the US at large is going to accept 1/7th of their economy seceding without a fight?

This planet perhaps. The divide between rural populations and urban populations have grown so far that people in city hubs feel more kinship toward other major cities around the world than they do toward their rural co-citizens. Division is a dangerous thing. The us at large might not have a choice.

I agree 100%

My friends from Long Island don't know a single person in the military. Not 1. That does not bode well for them in a theoretical war of secession.

Re: Would Calexit be a good thing?

#38

Post by vonnik »

This is one of the stupidest things ever published on WaitButWhy.

The Civil War killed more Americans (~750k) than WWI and WWII combined. Think of it as SouthExit. There are powerful forces binding this union together, and they will not allow a gentle transition to an independent California. So any one who wants Calexit, wants war, and war is really, really stupid. I'm baffled by the irresponsibility of this discussion. This isn't like moving out of your parents' basement because they told you to stop smoking weed.

Let's just remember, when we compare Calexit to Brexit, that Britain was and is a sovereign nation, and at no point in its history did it cease to be so. Stupid as Brexit was, the UK's right to leave the EU was enshrined in the articles of the EU. California is not Great Britain. The analogy does not hold.

Calexit is sponsored by Russia. "Yes California" is run by a guy based in Yekaterinburg.[0] What should this tell us? The enemies of the US want California to secede. Separatists are playing into their hands. Russia sabotaged the US presidential election, and now it is trying to break up the continental 48. That would lead to a weakened and divided country, much more so than it is today.

Secession would also lead to a more fragmented North America, indecisive as Europe.

There is no such thing as a clean slate. Calexit does nto present us with that opportunity. History is a nightmare from which we cannot escape, as Joyce said.

The WBW author is basically saying he wants California to exit to speed the advance of technology so he can become immortal. Why should we care about his immortality? And why should we believe that Calexit would accelerate technological development? He gave zero substantive argument that Calexit would have an affect on tech.

Just remember, every state in the US benefits from its close relationship with all the other states. There are huge positive externalities to union and the free movement of goods, people and capital. All of that ends with Calexit. Anyone who see a carefree paradise in separatism is living in a fantasy world.

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/21/us/yes-california-calexit...

Re: Would Calexit be a good thing?

#39

Post by pluma »

leggomylibro wrote: post #17
M_Grey wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On what planet do you expect that the US at large is going to accept 1/7th of their economy seceding without a fight?

What are they going to do? Occupy the entire coast with federal armed forces? Sure, they could do that, but it's hard to take any sort of moral high ground or project strength on the world stage when you are forced to militarily occupy your own country against its will. That said, I doubt any states are realistically going to secede, but at least Texas won't be the only ones constantly going on about it now.

I don't know. Americans were fine claiming the "high ground" the last time a bunch of states and territories tried to secede and forced back into the union with military force.

The thing people forget when talking about secession is that unless the constitution was explicitly written to make affordances for future secessions, every attempt at secession is illegal and can be considered an act of civil war.

Aside from "voting irregularities" one of the major talking points when the Crimean peninsula voted to secede from Ukraine and be annexed into Russia was that there was no legal basis for them to do this, even if the elections had been undisputed.

Re: Would Calexit be a good thing?

#40

Post by increment_i »

It's hard for me to see a scenario where a Calexit doesn't mark the end of American hegemony and quite likely the United States itself. A successful Calexit would without doubt lead to a New York exit. Now there's no way Texas is sticking around. And the Carolinas and Florida want to make a go of it too, etc. Once the pillars have fallen, the house collapses. Isn't that basically how all great empires slowly crumble?

So the stakes do seem quite a bit higher than outlined in this article and others I've read like it.

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