Introduction

Hi, my name is Jon and this is a blog about California independence. Advocating for the independence of a new nation isn’t exactly the most common political position to take, so before we get too deep into things here, I should probably give you a little background on myself.

I grew up in a middle-class household in a dying rust belt city whose national relevance hinges on chicken wings and a hapless football team. I was raised by a nurse and a physics professor. I wish I had some great anecdote about how they managed to instill the importance of being politically aware in me but the truth is, I don’t think they really cared much about politics. They grew up in a time where half the guys in your high school class were drafted into Vietnam and only half of those lived. As long as the government wasn’t drafting people to their deaths, things were functioning well enough as far as they were concerned.

I don’t know if I qualify as a millennial in my mid-30’s but I certainly share one common trait with them, my politics were formed on the internet.

I don’t remember how old I was when we got the internet at my house but the Christmas I got a 33.6k modem might be my most cherished childhood memory so that should give you an idea. It’s almost cliche to say but access to the internet completely changed the trajectory of my angsty teenage years. I spent most of my nights in IRC rooms trading punk rock MP3s over a dial up connection.  It was in that music sharing that I first discovered the Dead Kennedy’s and in 2000, lead singer Jello Biafra was running for the Green party presidential nomination. He didn’t win but it didn’t matter. The Green platform opened my eyes to a left beyond the territory of button up corporate democrats and I was never going back.

It’s been a hard 17 years for those of us who exist outside the two party system. I don’t need to tell you how bad that first Nader loss hurt any chance of ever breaking it up but watching the likes of Cynthia McKinney and Jill Stein drive the party further off the cliff was a slow death of a thousand cuts.

By the time election night 2016 rolled around, I’d grown numb to the whole process and I just wanted to get it over with, swear Hillary in and take a 6 month vacation from reading the news. As things unfolded that night and Trump won, it became clear the United States was broken so far beyond repair that even trying to fix it would be fruitless. Not only did the same broken electoral college system we had in 2000 give us a president the majority did not vote for, no one even tried to fix it in the 16 years in between.

That was the breaking point for me. The point where it became clear that the collapse of the United States is inevitable and has already started. The fact the system allowed for Trump’s rise is evidence of its fundamental failure. As foreign interference increases and voting rights get further stripped away, things are only going to continue to trend away from true democracy. There’s no going back after Trump, no way for adults to regain the conversation now that he’s shown idiots how to get in the door.

America has become too big and culturally divided to govern as one country and the deep, institutional rot in our system is nearly impossible to change quickly enough to prevent further disaster. Rural, middle America does not share values with the urban coasts. That’s not a judgment of which values are better, it’s a statement of fact. We’ve been in a civil cultural cold war for the better part of two decades now and Trump is only adding gasoline to that fire. This is all headed to a very, very bad place if cooler heads can’t step back and consider that maybe if this marriage isn’t working anymore then an amicable divorce is the mature decision.

This is what has lead me to the California independence movement. California has the culture and economy to become one of the world’s great nations if allowed the chance. We’re being held back by staying attached to an overgrown, crumbling empire and it’s time to spin off to survive. That doesn’t just go for California either. Texas, New England, the Midwest all have unique cultures that would allow them to be just as great if they were relieved of the burden of a bad political marriage. We’d all be a lot stronger if the states split to become powerful allies with mutual defense and trade protections than a squabbling empire on the brink of imploding on itself.

Is California independence an incredibly long and complex road? You fucking bet it is but it’s the only path left to take and helping to blaze that path is what I hope to do with this blog. I don’t have all the answers. All I can do is offer my view of things and hopefully contribute ideas to push the discussion forward.