Goldengate Bridge Credit: canadastock / Shutterstock
The stunning defeat of Hillary Clinton this month provides a painful reminder of the size and scale, diversity and divisions, of the United States. Democratic candidate Clinton won the popular vote by close to 2 million votes, but she lost the Electoral College by a significant margin because of losing three, large, typically blue states by razor-thin margins. The entire West Coast of the U.S.—Washington, Oregon and California—voted for Clinton by a margin of more than 60 percent, but because regional blocs are meaningless by themselves in the American political system, the Left Coast gains no direct path toward influencing the new administration.
The American method of choosing presidents seems especially painful this month with the imminent inauguration of Donald Trump, a right-wing populist who appealed openly to base fears and prejudices. Trump’s opponents are strongest in the most dynamic, educated and cosmopolitan parts of the U.S. Yet these bastions of progressive values face four years of powerlessness, at least in the executive branch of government. One […]
Excellent article…thanks for digging this out of the noise of mainstream drivel. Go west coast! It speaks volumes that progressives flip flop on the secession topic when they don’t get their way. Really a lack of principle much as they sat by & watched their party nominate a thoroughly corrupt serial liar & warmonger named Hillary. That said, secession is long overdue based on demographics alone as well as the fact that the political system is broken beyond repair. Revolutions come from the human heart not the ballot box!
Mark R., I am with you. It reminds me of that tongue-in-cheek advice to teenagers: “Quick, move out and become wealthy while you still know more than your parents do!” Except, leave northern California here, since they’ve wanted to secede from southern California for decades.
When empires die they tend to break up into more manageable units or back down into the original tribal areas. We would all suffer if the government in Washington collapsed of its own dead weight.
On the other hand, Washington in recent years has become a parasite that collects taxes from us and either wastes it on wars or distributes it among themselves in the form of lucrative contracts. If you look at the list of the richest counties in the US now vs 10 years ago you will see a shift to the DC area at the expense of California.
Obviously the West Coast could function as a nation but the East Coast would struggle because they don’t produce much anymore. You can’t eat derivatives. The middle part would be fine because they have farms and factories and vast potential for biomass and wind energy.
If you have watched “The Crown” on Netflix you might think that we will soon be in the position of Britain at the end of WW2, when the King could feel the empire slipping away.
Given that we seem to interact with other countries most of the time by applying military force or sponsoring coups, we should expect to be fighting “the war of the flea” all along the edges of the Empire.
I think that in our future we will let go of the delusion of world leadership and become one large power among several. This will occur naturally as the old Cold Warriors now known as Neocons die off. We will have the military we need to prevent being invaded and we will trade equitably with the world for the raw materials we need. We will have to become a highly innovative manufacturing nation in order to prosper.