[MememyselfandIJK]

I imagine that Cali would have a confusing and difficult first few years as it figures the whole being a country thing. After a while it would settle down, implement its ideals and transition into a modern eastern-western nation (it will probably end up a little more western than Japan) with significant Latin influences. A nation that is really at the crossroads of the Three modern "families of cultures." In terms of global power, it would gain a pretty big share of US wealth, especially if Oregon and Washington join in (17% of the US economy).

In the former US, the Succession will have set a dangerous precedent -- states threaten to succeed after each election or dispute. Shortly after Calexit comes Texit (Texas) which would probably stabilize into a Latin/Western nation that while would not be wealthy as Cali would probably still have the purchasing power of a small European nation (9.5% of the US economy).

Next to go would probably be the Northeast (New England, New York and perhaps Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, and Maryland) angered by the republican victories which, while tempered by the succession of Texas, are still dependably landslides. They would probably stabilize into a western nation, not unlike France, but with slightly more Eastern influence and 24% of the US economy.

From there the US, or what is left of it, is Basically all the Red states (Texas is growing more Hispanic demographically and would have possibly become a swing state by the 2020s) and a couple of mid-west industrial blue states. If the remaining blue states succeeded they would have 10% of the US economy, and be a mainly western, and less cosmopolitan than the Northeast.

The new nations that I mentioned (with the possible exception of Texas in the short term) will probably form a strong alliance or a loose EU-like confederation and go on to implement free healthcare, etc.. Meanwhile, with about 35% of the former US economy, the Red states get to elect a republican president each election. Its a win-win situation!

Of course, this is speculative, but honestly? There's only one way to find out! CALEXIT!

Post Calexit North America by 2035 http://www.270towin.com/maps/vV9A0
-Blue=Californian Pacific/Republic of Texas
-Red=Central States of America (Formerly United States of America)
-Yellow=Midwestern Confederation
-Grey=East Republic

[SpecialOlympian]

[Zag Edit: Rule 2]

Unlike stupid academics I get my ideas from echo chambers on Reddit. Going with what the most upvoted comment on r/thedonald says is just, and therefore right even I have no arguments or data to support this (because knowledge is bad for reasons I can not adequately explain due to my lack of knowledge).

But wait, hear me out, if you accept my strawman of academia who I describe in terms of an ideologically driven enemy who bares no resemblance to me you will see how right I am. As proof here is the title of an article I didn't read.

[quetzalcoatl]

Academians tend to have an emotional attachment to the validity and relevance of their data that chronically clouds their judgment. The sources of this could be many but fundamentally, a person whose only connection to something is embodied within their data will realize that if their data is wrong or irrelevant, they have been wasting their time and that is a pretty heavy thing for a person to try and face up to. So if people start telling Academians that the situation on the ground doesn't match up with their data, triggered.

This is odd. Quite odd. I'm willing to criticize the academy for many things, but attachment to data ain't one of them. Such an attachment is far less common than you seem to think, both in and out of the academic environment.

I hesitate to ask, but just what should they be basing judgments on, if not data?

[Drlee]

This is odd. Quite odd. I'm willing to criticize the academy for many things, but attachment to data ain't one of them. Such an attachment is far less common than you seem to think, both in and out of the academic environment.

People with no experience in academia often make this mistake. They are unaware that one of the most common pathways to success for a researcher is to prove someone else wrong.

Unlike the opinions of politicians, when an academic makes a claim he can take to the bank that a whole cadre of PhD's will gleefully try to prove him wrong.

[SolarCross]

It is funny but it seems there are two americas these days and neither likes the other very much at all, in fact each side may hate each other more that they hate anyone else, perhaps a divorce or secession would be in everyone's interests? Although the last time there was two americas that could not get along well enough such that one side wanted a divorce the result is now known as the American Civil War..

Alas the US military will never allow seccession and they are far better armed now than any comparable institution from the civil war days. There is really no way secessionists could make a fight of it, and just asking will get you nowhere.

The best solution possible to make all sides happy would be for a looser federation where federal government was basically solely the policy and finance wing of the military institutions while the states became more responsible for the other stuff like education, welfare, etc. This will allow blue states to go full retard with the bathroom laws and subsidies for trans-racial/gender/species/reality cultural re-education without annoying the conservatives and vice versa, providing all keep shoveling their due tithe into the military.

Of course the federal government would do well to seal the deal by rising over the petty partisanship and deny suffrage to civilians at the federal level, let the states carry on as they will with democracy but the federal government should be a professional military institution. Its most senior general could make himself emperor...

[Drlee]

The best solution possible to make all sides happy would be for a looser federation where federal government was basically solely the policy and finance wing of the military institutions while the states became more responsible for the other stuff like education, welfare, etc. This will allow blue states to go full retard with the bathroom laws and subsidies for trans-racial/gender/species/reality cultural re-education without annoying the conservatives and vice versa, providing all keep shoveling their due tithe into the military.

Not really. All that is necessary to fix our issues is to get the money out of politics.

Bar corporations from contributing money to political campaigns.

Ban lobbying on government property. Require politicians to publish all of their meetings and what was discussed.

Limit by constitutional amendment if necessary all of the above and limits on personal spending on campaigns.

Ban PACs.

Do that and the problem is solved.

[SolarCross]

Not really. All that is necessary to fix our issues is to get the money out of politics.

Bar corporations from contributing money to political campaigns.

Ban lobbying on government property. Require politicians to publish all of their meetings and what was discussed.

Limit by constitutional amendment if necessary all of the above and limits on personal spending on campaigns.

Ban PACs.

Do that and the problem is solved.

Well that may be a solution to a problem but I don't see how this problem-solution package you present is even tangentially related to conservatives and liberals falling out with each other to the point where secession is talked about seriously.

[Drlee]

I don't think there is any real move toward secession. It is a fun topic though.


The problem, as I see it, is that political power is so reliant on the acquisition of campaign money that each party tries to carve out a "market". Then consider this...

Many top contributors do so to both parties. Why could this be justified? Only one reason...They are buying influence. And it works masterfully.

So you may say that both parties do it and it is the partisan ones that matter. That is the problem though. The amount of money a partisan person or group can contribute can make the influence of individual voters insignificant. Lets face it. The NRA dictates terms to the Republicans just as the Trial Lawyers do to the democrats.

People should have one vote. One vote. Not one vote in the election and thousands of votes because the have given money used to influence the election through advertising.

[Zagadka]

I don't think there is any real move toward secession. It is a fun topic though.

That is mostly right, but I don't enjoy the wild speculating. I'd rather talk about substantive things. While you can talk about some things like how much California produces and costs, it isn't really helping anything.

[SolarCross]

How would this do for a flag?

[SpecialOlympian]

The best solution possible to make all sides happy would be for a looser federation where federal government was basically solely the policy and finance wing of the military institutions while the states became more responsible for the other stuff like education, welfare, etc. This will allow blue states to go full retard with the bathroom laws and subsidies for trans-racial/gender/species/reality cultural re-education without annoying the conservatives and vice versa, providing all keep shoveling their due tithe into the military.

We did this for a while and the South went full retard with slavery.

But yeah, bathrooms. That's what citizenship as a resident of your state and your federal government boils down to.

[Oxymoron]

Pointless fantasizing/speculation.

The funny part would be what the rest of America would do without the west coast. And why would we need a sizable standing army? Who the fuck are we going to war against?

One small thing no one has mentioned; have fun with your imported products from Asia without a single Pacific port.

Perhaps the superpower that you just told to go fuck itself? Perhaps Mexico who might want its territory back, make a Ukraine play. Have fun importing anything if you do not allow friendly terms for US cargo using your ports... remember the part about having no fucking Navy?

[The Immortal Goon]

Indeed, Oxy.

This arrogance must be paid—and the West Coast banished from the Union. For everyone's own good.

We now have a president strong enough to do what needs to be done. Like Andrew Jackson who died a decade before the beginning of the Civil War, Trump will be an intricate part of this new schism.

Trump's comparison of himself to Andrew Jackson shows what a gentle father he will be in dissolving union between America and the treacherous traitors of the West Coast:

“Stop the Runaway,” Andrew Jackson urged in an ad placed in the Tennessee Gazette in October 1804. The future president gave a detailed description: A “Mulatto Man Slave, about thirty years old, six feet and an inch high, stout made and active, talks sensible, stoops in his walk, and has a remarkable large foot, broad across the root of the toes — will pass for a free man …”

Jackson, who would become the country’s seventh commander in chief in 1829, promised anyone who captured this “Mulatto Man Slave” a reward of $50, plus “reasonable” expenses paid.
Jackson added a line that some historians find particularly cruel.
It offered “ten dollars extra, for every hundred lashes any person will give him, to the amount of three hundred.”

The ad was signed, “ANDREW JACKSON, Near Nashville, State of Tennessee.”

Jackson, whose face is on the $20 bill and who President Trump paid homage to in March, owned about 150 enslaved people at The Hermitage, his estate near Nashville, when he died in 1845, according to records. On Monday, President Trump created a furor when he suggested in an interview an interview with the Washington Examiner’s Salena Zito that Jackson could have prevented the Civil War.

Jackson’s slave ad is one of thousands being catalogued by the history department at Cornell University, which launched “The Freedom on the Move” project to digitize and preserve runaway slave ads and make them more accessible to the public.

“Our goal is to ultimately collect all the runaway ads that have survived,” said Edward E. Baptist, a Cornell history professor who is collaborating on the project with Joshua D. Rothman, at the University of Alabama, and Molly Mitchell, at the University of New Orleans.

Baptist said the ads provide rich insights into history.

“They are these little windows,” Baptist said. “I call them the tweets of the master class. The purpose is to alert the surveillance system that was the entire body of white people in the South to help this individual recover this human property.”

Trump, please punish the West Coast and send them out of the union! Like Oxy says, we can ironically wish them having fun defending themselves against Mexico. And aside from the largest naval bases on the continent, what will they do for naval bases?

Let the disaster play out. Channel your inner Jackson and force the West Coast to leave.

The economic miracles that are decades of Republican rule in Kentucky, Mississippi, and Kansas can sweep the entire nation when the failed economies of Washington, Oregon, and California are left to rot on their own!

[Oxymoron]

Trump, please punish the West Coast and send them out of the union! Like Oxy says, we can ironically wish them having fun defending themselves against Mexico. And aside from the largest naval bases on the continent, what will they do for naval bases?

!

You think the US will just allow California to take those strategic military installations... Just like Russia gave the whole Black fleet to Ukraine oh wait...

[The Immortal Goon]

Oh, they'll decommission them.

But it's not like everything magically disappears. But, anyway, I certainly agree with you.

We should let the entire West Coast leave and see the suffering that they will go through.

[Drlee]

Is it possible for Arizona to join in too? If not please don't build a wall. I don't jump as well as I once did.

[Beren]

I think Nevada would join too. I wonder whether how the new state would relate to NAFTA and TTP, and the rest of the U.S. of course. They would leave NATO I guess, how about ANZUS and relations to Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, etc.?

[Drlee]

The new Republic of California and its confederates Oregon, Washington and in all likelihood Hawaii and Nevada would embrace free trade. Since it would have all of the US access to the Pacific under its control I suspect it would ally itself with the other Asian lions. It would be an economic powerhouse even greater than now.

As for a military. (And in this game we are imagining a peaceful transition to independence.) California already has a pretty substantial Army and Air Force National guard under the command of the governor. No doubt it would keep them. California is wealthy. It is also where the US currently gets most of its high tech weapons. That market alone will pay for a pretty good military. The new confederacy would have the submarine facilities in the pacific northwest and of course would be a nuclear power if it wanted to be. And with a fascist country on its borders it probably would elect to possess nuclear weapons.

California, freed of it negative balance of payments to the US government would be able to afford a bunch of stuff. Universal health care certainly. That alone would make its industries far more competitive than the US. California would be very nearly energy independent. It has a bunch of oil you know and Canada/ Mexico will be happy to fill the tank if necessary.

I'm beginning to like the country of my birth. Maybe I will seek the office of Surgeon General.

[Stormsmith]

I urge you to include Hawaii. They have a unique bit of brainboxhoodry: single payer health care. They can give you a tried and true working model

[Drlee]

Absolutely Hawaii. One of my favorite places in the world.