Oh, I knew I got the quote wrong as soon as I wrote it! 
In one fantasy, with the entire West Coast and Northeast united as Western America (or should we call it Patriotic America to avoid geographic confusion?), in possession of the U.N. building, the financial centers of lower Manhattan, U.S.'s four largest container ports, and receiving strong support from D.C.'s own self-government, the Trumpists will be less smug. The Westerners will take the “moral high ground”, declaring the November elections invalid, setting up a new Capital in Boston, and declaring the Flyover states to be in rebellion!
At that point Western America and Japan will be tied for world’s 3rd largest economy. Flyoverland will be #2 behind China, and falling fast. To get back in, and eliminate the tariffs charged by Western on Flyover goods passing through Western ports, Flyoverland will beg to be readmitted to the Union, offering to reform the Electoral College, making it less likely that the November 8 tragedy will be repeated.
Of course I’m being ironic. Secession will be disastrous for both the Trumpists of Flyoverland and for the Patriots of the West.
Ironic or not, we may be starting down the road already, with Trump and Californian Patriots each threatening to sequester billions of dollars. Is there a thread discussing how that may play out?
CA isn’t threatening that. One legislator is “looking into the possibility” that it could be done. With Jerry Brown seeking federal disaster aid for the flooding we’re experiencing, I doubt he’s going to be threatening sequestering any funds.
If 3/4 of the states agree to Calexit, the existing law will be California is allowed to exit.
If I discover gold in my backyard tomorrow, I’ll be rich.
More to the point, though, I’m not aware of anyone advocating the use of force if the exit is done legally. It’s just that most of us see the possibility of a legal exit as being so slim as to not being worth consideration.
That’s a complete cop-out of an answer. Either explain how the smug and moralistic arguments put forward for Calexit would somehow not apply to OrCoExit, or admit that it’s not actually a fallacious argument to point out that said arguments do apply. And remember, if Calexitfornia endorses the use force against OrCoExit or any other area secession group, they’re just as awful and violent and prison-gang-like as our Calexit pals say I am.
So how can you claim that Calexit is nonviolent when they will have “thugs”, “assholes”, and “yahoos” using violence to enforce their will? The whole smug ‘you guys are so mean for fantasizing about violence’ falls apart when Calexit is the ones who have the LAPD at the ready for busting heads.
That’s the line they feed, but the plan also includes refusing to pay US taxes (before an exit), charging the US government rent on land that it already owns, blocking US access to land that it already owns, and more aggressive and blatantly illegal actions. And while the ‘plan’ is to get 3/4 of the states to agree, Calexit supporters have yet to put forth anything resembling a plan for how that will happen, it’s along the lines of ‘we’ll cite the UN charter about decolonization and that means we’ll win!’ which doesn’t make sense, or ‘we’ll hold US military bases hostage until they agree to let us go’ which is a blatantly hostile and illegal action (either armed rebellion or an act of war).
It would be part of the process of negotiating some degree of independence. In other words, agree to our reasonable demands that SS is grandfathered in, or we will stop letting you use our ports to get your cheap stuff from China. We will deport any and all people who continue to insist they are US citizens. We will not let you fly over California, or our sister independent states, Oregon and Ranier, to get to Hawaii. Your sports teams will be taxed 50% of their income to continue to say they are in the American or National Leagues… In other words, during the process of negotiation, the US gets some things it wants, the Californians get some things they want, and they agree to revisit some nagging issues that don’t seem tractable at the moment.
Give it 30 or 40 years, and no one will be alive to collect SS.
Wow, California has changed a lot since I last lived there. I had no idea that ethnic cleansing was on the table, or that California might specifically reject the most important provision of the Convention on International Civil Aviation! Because I thought California was generally a multicultural sort of place that valued diplomacy and the integrity of international treaties!
Did Steve Bannon take over California when I wasn’t paying attention?
So the US can “pass any law it wants” and fuck over SS payers but if California passes “any law it wants” in response to the US “passing any law it wants” it’s now genocide or something.
No the movement is just led by someone that is Bannon-esque. A friendly towards Russia, anti-globalization (and wants to tear down the current system), Trump voter. I give you the President of Yes California - Louis Marinelli
…and we think Spicer has a tough job . Imagine the poor bastard that will have to try and explain Marinelli to the press if they make it onto the ballot.
The US can’t pass any law it wants. If the proposed laws are constitutional and are consistent with our treaty obligations, then the US has very broad discretion on what laws it may want to pass. Eligibility for an entitlement program has no constitutional or treaty protections that I’m aware of.
Same with California. The California Constitution says that California shall not discriminate on the basis of national origin. Sure sounds like laws targeting people who consider themselves American would run afoul of that, right? Sort of like how a certain orange president was smacked down by courts for doing something similar? But you must think that Trump is on the right track, because you’re okay with California taking similar policies, eh?
And as far as trying to institute a no-fly zone over the Western states, that’s an awfully aggressive negotiating position. It’s really mostly countries like North Korea that seek to prohibit peaceful commercial overflights, as authorized by the treaty I mentioned, so I’m just surprised that California would threaten policies that are essentially sanctions on the United States. That’s not really a “California can’t pass such a law,” it’s just an awfully provocative, almost war-like position on that issue. My reaction is more like, “Are you sure you want to pick this kind of fight?”
And he initially came to a certain degree of prominence by spearheading the fight against gay marriage. He later changed his mind. He’s kind of a weird bird and I don’t feel comfortable with him leading the Calexit charge. It would have to have a ton of credible, intellectually respectable support to seriously get behind it.
Trump’s notmuslim ban is hardly the same thing as people having to eventually choose their citizenship after succession. The citizens of Czechoslovakia had to work that out. British loyalists had to become US citizens, did they not? Wow, our entire nation was just-like-Trump!
The problem with this hardball negotiation stance that Calexiters like to fantasize about in this thread is that the US holds all the cards in the negotiation. California has to convince 3/4 of US states to vote for the secession idea, or it simply dies in the water. Threatening to cut off US use of ports doesn’t work, because a US state is not allowed to unilaterally embargo international commerce, and Calexitfornia is still a US state until it gets done negotiating an exit with all of the other states.
This highlights what I said about the non-violence claim being nonsense, BTW. How are you going to deport people from their homes without threatening them with force? How are you going to enforce a no-fly zone without an air force? Aside from the fact that the fantasy now includes other states, how are you going to get them to go along with your no-fly enforcement when you don’t have anything to offer them and don’t have a military of your own?
It’s also a little bit contradictory that, on one hand the most vocal Calexiter claims that Calexitfornians would be dual US citizens, while on the other Calexitfornia will be engaging in large scale (and somehow nonviolent) ethnic cleansing against US citizens.
The post I was responding to was proposing ways to punish the US if the US did not agree to provide entitlement spending to people who refuse to pay taxes to support that entitlement.
That has nothing to do with how you are now phrasing the issue. I’m not aware of new countries carrying out mass deportations of people who do not conform to a particular national identity. Even in the case of Israel, to the best of my understanding, Arabs left on their own volition due to their political views, not because Israel sought to deport them.
Do you have actual cites of new countries deporting people of particular national origins? For example, how many British people were deported after the Revolutionary War?
Do you envision these negotiations taking place after 3/4 of US states have agreed to secession, or before?
You seem to think that we born and bred Californians wont take up our arms and start shooting traitors who attempt to steal our birthright.
Some of the ports here actually belong to the USA.
California has no modern armaments to implement any of that.
Without the US market and with the US naval blockade of California’s remaining ports, California’s economy will crash and CalExit proponents will be hanging from bridges and lampposts ala French collaborators.
How would you characterize this tidbit?
I know it came after your post but…
I would be very interested to know how many of these large California corporations are actually incorporated in California. That might prove to be a wee bit of a problem, given that they are going to be incorporated, and owned by a huge margin, by U.S. investors.
First part: Do you really think that there aren’t millions of Californians from most of the land area of the state that won’t resist this violently? You think that millions won’t fight back because some loons in the Bay Area and LA decide they want to be independent?
Part 2 was simply in response to what the above poster said that Cali would do to strong arm the US government.