A Second American Covant: As Goes California, So Goes The Nation


Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner


Everything is so dumb.

That I even have to say that all things considered it makes a lot more sense for California to stay and fight than try to leave the Union is so, so, very stupid. I say this because our historical amnesia hit the point where everyone has forgotten that about 700,000 Americans died the last time states tried to leave the Union?

Don’t answer that.

Anyway, let me at least make the case for California staying in the Union instead of attempting to leave when Trump inevitably rather abruptly and brazenly steals the 2020 election.

The key issue is what California is — a massive state with a massive economy and a largely homogeneous polity. In other words, the very things that Calexit people point to as a reason for it to “leave” the Union, I point to as a reason why it has to stay and fight.

I just don’t see the liberal fever dream of a Blue State Republic happening. More likely than not, California would have to take the lead on responding to some sort of tyrannical power grab by Trump and work together with other major Blue States to renew the Union’s covevant.

As I’ve said before, if you look at the realpolitik of the geography of the United States, the Blue State play book writes itself. You use California as your dreadnaught. You blitzkrieg across the Great Plains from California and meet up with your Blue State brethren in the Midwest.

Then you bribe African Americans in the South with the promise of reprations for slavery and, ta-da, you break the back of MAGA-Qanon and re-unite the country. You have go through a Radical Reconstruction phase that would address systemic racism and misogyny and you cruise into something of a second Gilded Age that bursts forth from the foundation of a Second American Covenant.

All of that is very dumb, in a sense, because I have no idea if that plan would work. But it is something to believe in rather than simply California leaving the Union and expected to get away with it without suffering a great deal.

And, really, wouldn’t California want to remake the United States in its image rather than go through extended “Troubles” that would likely involve IT going through something akin to a Reconstruction? There is strength in numbers, after all.

Author: Shelton Bumgarner

I am the Editor & Publisher of The Trumplandia Report

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