Among the nuttier reasons to get your state to
secede from the U.S. has got to be the hope that you'll have less to fear from terrorists if you are less associated with the guilt of America.
"When I talk to people about California independence, they always say: ‘Well, what would you do if China invades?’” says Yes California president Louis Marinelli from his home in . . . Yekaterinburg, formerly Sverdlovsk (city motto: Don’t call us Siberia), an industrial center on the edge of the Ural Mountains in Russia. “Seriously,” he asks, “when’s the last time China invaded another country?” I mention the obvious ones: Tibet, India, and the Soviet Union. There’s Vietnam and Korea. Marinelli is a young man; perhaps much of this seems like ancient history to him. It does not to the Indians, or the Russians, or the Vietnamese, or many others. “No, I mean: When’s the last time China crossed an ocean to invade another country?” he clarifies. “Only the United States does that.”
Only?
The American war machine must surely be of some intense concern to California’s would-be Jefferson Davis, inasmuch as there is no legal or constitutional process for a state’s separating from the Union, a question that was settled definitively if not in court then just outside the courthouse at Appomattox.
We have been watching a ScyFy TV series called "
The Expanse," set in 2020, about (among other things) the pains of nation-building and colonial resentments on Mars and in the Asteroid Belt. Perhaps because I was trying to do crafts while watching the first season, I found I enjoyed a lot of the characters, dialogue, sets, and atmosphere without in any being able to figure out what in the world was supposed to be happening with the many interlocking story lines. The second season is a little tighter and more compelling. Anyway, the characters all have a pretty good grasp of how important it is to get your hands on the occasional warship.
9 comments:
Among the nuttier reasons to get your state to secede from the U.S. has got to be the hope that you'll have less to fear from terrorists if you are less associated with the guilt of America.
My recollection of the reaction to 9/11 is that a lot of Californians took the position that 9/11 was something that happened 3,000 miles away, which made 9/11 not relevant to people in California.
I recall Michael Moore's cri de coeur:
If someone did this to get back at Bush, then they did so by killing thousands of people who DID NOT VOTE for him. Boston, New York, D.C., and the planes' destination of California — these were the places that voted AGAINST Bush.
which I took as sincere and heartfelt disclosure of a sense of faction so strong that he literally could not comprehend that an enemy of America might not care which American candidate some American had voted for. The only possibility he could conceive of was that the attackers might be enemies of... Republicans. And he wanted to call their attention to a targeting mistake.
I expect it's the same phenomenon here.
I believe the Supreme Court actually has ruled on the question of what would constitute a legitimate secession. This came in the wake of the Civil War, when trying to sort out how binding acts of the secessionist government should be taken to have been. The ruling was that secession required the consent of the United States, which I think could be done by Constitutional amendment (certainly), but possibly also by a simple legislative act signed by a President.
So, you know, let's not rule this out. I'm still OK with letting California go. :)
Jaed, I remember that piece of Moore's as an important 9-11 followup as well, and have always contrasted it in my mind to Darryl Worley's lyric in "Have You Forgotten?" We had neighbors still inside going through a living hell.
I don't want California to secede, but I'd like the movement to go forward a bit so that some reality might set in when they actually thought about it.
" I'm still OK with letting California go. :)"
Oh yes! Because then, WE can invade it, conquer it, destroy it's leadership,and have the glorious beaches back again. Ain't no way we should let the Chinese have it- charlie don't surf anyway.
That Tom Paxton song:
"Now every time I try to sleep, I'm haunted by the sound
Of firemen pounding up the stairs, while we were running down."
" I'm still OK with letting California go. :)"
Oh yes! Because then, WE can invade it, conquer it....
Nah. Let the Chinese have the handicap. Onliest downside would be having them so close to us. We wouldn't have to trade with the Democratic People's Republic of California, though.
Eric Hines
I believe California has most to fear Spanish conquistadors. "RE"-Conquistadors, actually. Who have no need to cross an ocean, or use any vehicles at all, but can conquer by walking north, as did Cortez and DeSoto and Pizzarro...
Spanish-speaking conquistadors, anyhow, whether or not from Spain.
Thanks for recommending "The Expanse," T99. I've been looking for a new series to follow, and this looks good.
And thanks for mentioning Tom Paxton. I'd never heard of him.
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