No. Imagining an independent future for any state (including California and Texas) is pure cope. The states are so interdependent that attempting to secede would be ruinous for the state in question.
The only exceptions I can think of are Alaska and Hawaii, which might be able to survive if they found another country to keep them supplied and economically connected.
Sure? Balkanization seems like a good way to speed up the process of the Empire collapsing.
plus there is the bonus of schadenfreunde, since they always want to balkanize countries that happen to stand in their path.
Balkan are the greatest thing ever.
Washingtonian here, I’ve been saying this should happen for like 8 years now lmao
The marriage isn’t working. Let it go.
We have had a name for it for awhile, my fellow Washingtonians call the Washington/Oregon/California union ‘Cascadia’. Wouldn’t be such a bad idea.
Fuck yeah! Cascadia! Let us stop funding this awful government and actually put our taxes towards improving people’s lives
Absolutely, and I’m about ready to start identifying as that over American 🫠.
I usually think of BC being part of it, too, cause we’re so similar culturally, and we hang out on each other’s side of the made up invisible line all the time.
One can dream!
It would have a hell of a lot of economic power, and natural resources.
Sounds like the kind of place the US would invade
If you don’t take AZ and NV with you, you will get your Colorado River water cut off and lose a lot of farming power. That might even require UT. Unless it’s only Northern California included, in which case you still lose that agriculture, and possible land based trade lines to Mexico. It’s not a clean and pretty separation.
That is a problem, but not an intractable one. The first easy win would be to just stop wasting so much water. CA could be a lot more careful with water than it is by just leaning on industry and ag to cut wasteful water use harder than it leans on the suburbs. Don’t get me wrong, green lawns in our Mediterranean climate are a stupid waste too, but it pencils out to less than a percent of all water use, where ag and industry are both in the double digits.
I support balkanizing the US
It worked wonderfully for the actual Balkans and the Caucasus region
Yes. In fact, I’ve decided to take a leap of faith and join the California National Party, which you can all check out here: CNP website. I am sick of the usual Republicans vs Democrats. Everytime one party is in power, we are constantly worrying about the loss of civil and human rights. Lets start with a clean slate. If you are a California resident, at least check out their party platform. Also, in 2026, there will be a gubernatorial candidate for CNP. His name is Sean Forbes.
If having human rights is dependent upon who’s in power at the moment, you don’t have human rights.
Right. Which is why I want to break free from the usual bullshit.
A single party like Mexico’s PRI party isn’t the answer either…
There are Nations with more than 2 parties
but mexico has got way more parties than pri, so much that most candidates winning elections do so with a broad alliance. in fact since 2000 pri only had a single term.
I’m not sure where you got that we only want one party in an independent California? Once CNP successfully fights for independence, then other parties can spring up. For example, in South Africa, the African National Congress were the big fighters against apartheid. No they are just another (corrupt) political party. Another example is the Indian National Congress. Members of that party fought for independence from the UK. Now, its just another political party, and they have not had any sort of power since 2014. CNP would have a place in an independent California. But the future after that, up in the air.
Californian. No.
It wouldn’t solve any problems that can’t be solved by other means, and it would create new problems that we haven’t had to worry about before. It’d be a net loss for everyone involved.
We’d have to spend a fortune on defense.
We’d suffer massive losses from being cut off from interstate trade agreements.
We’d have to deal with massive immigration issues.
We’d probably get our shit pushed in from all the federal military bases within the state.
I think it’s waaaay easier to just oust the current leadership and remove all the Congress members that aided and abetted.
Coloradan. Only if a neighboring State does, because if not, we are neighboring other borders and we would be landlocked without food or water imports. Its either all Pacific and Front Range States agree we have to split, or none of us can.
Our most populous cities, Denver and CO Springs, are below the mountains, and are screwed in a combat scenario.
I don’t see Utah, Wyoming, Nevada, or Kansas doing so willingly.
In American balkanization I imagine yall would be a battleground of the literal variety. Colorado and new Mexico would want to join Pacifica and Nevada, Arizona, Wyoming, and Montana likely won’t. But also you’re valuable enough to justify putting up a stink for
I think Colorado could force AZ to do what they want just by threatening to turn off the water.
Our water? It comes from dwindling snowpack due to climate change. I think you are overstating our pull here dude.
No your missiles and natural barriers.
New Mexico went Kamala. Border state.
As a US citizen and Oregon resident, absolutely.
But I don’t honestly foresee it being possible or happening.
My tinfoil hat says they’d try and probably succeed at triggering “The Big One”
Absolutely
- Sincerely, someone from the EU
If the Union completely dissolved and each state had to function as nation, it would be a massive boom for the oligarchs. They already have more money than most states.
I imagine they’d form blocs, one centred on California obviously, one on the other coast, and a few in between
I like the idea of it, but California is a cash cow and the US would never let that cash cow get away.
Wouldn’t work out. World’s too complicated for simple answers like that.
Leaving, even if it would produce a viable nation, would involve leaving a lot of people in the lurch. There’s people in conservative states who need the counter balance of blue states to slow down their government’s trend to self destruction and fascism.
Even though it’s increasingly frustrating with how feeble that resistance is, it does keep things like banning gay marriage in the “difficult to pass” territory and not the “a few compromises” one.
Counterpoint, that’s actually not the blues states jobs, our job is to take care of our state(s) just like others states job is to take care of themselves.
As a Washingtonian I would be thrilled if the west coast became independent but there’s no movement towards it and of course the road getting there is unknowable, but as an abstract concept it’s lovely.
Red states have done nothing but hold places like where I live back, they’re actively dragging us down with them and it’s wildly unfair to ask me and my people to subsidize states that relish in our destruction and aim to drown us along side themselves. Red states don’t deserve to be subsidized, let them live with the consequences of their actions without the comfort blue states afford them and see how long those red state governments last.
…so what about the minorities in those red states who are stuck there because of their financial or familial situations, and who lack the power to influence politics?
What you are proposing would start a North American war deadlier than any that has ever been seen. Everyone thought Texas was dumb for talking about secession, but now that other states don’t want to be part of the union, people act like it is a serious idea. It isn’t. Never has been.
In the words of Ben Franklin, “we must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.”
I’m not American, and I think you should all secede. Just like EU is a shit and quebec should be free.
You would have more than half the population of the country plunged into abject poverty. West Virginia would look like an apocalyptic hillbilly hellscape.
Everyone knew Texas talking about it was dumb because they’re not self sufficient
California actually is, and if we’re hated by the rest of the country anyway, we’ll just go ahead and leave. Let the rest states have fun paying for shit without us
Define self sufficient.
California is not self sufficient in my opinion. They may have a lot of money, but they rely heavily on interstate commerce and trade routes for their prosperity. Taxes and cost of living are already high, and those things would explode if cut off from trade. The federal government won’t hesitate to use their leverage to keep other countries from supporting the newly declared independence of California.
Texas is not self sufficient either, but I’m not advocating for their secession.
Put simply, we need fewer borders, not more of them. Any state that thinks they can take their money and run will find themselves brutalized by the federal government, taxed to oblivion by neighboring states, and experiencing an exodus of companies who are based there. It is the path to destruction, not liberation.
New England. Maybe with NY, you could have New New.
Do states even have a legal way to secede?
Didn’t have a way to legally secede from Britain
But this time there would be no ocean between the two sides.
Define “legal”.
Enshined in law, so that state can unilateraly decide to secede and federal govt must accept it.
Nope. The south already tried that.
If you want to gain independence, you have to fight the federal government’s monopoly on violence. At its core, that’s how all law is backed up. Two things you need to be a country. First, the ability to backup your independence with force. Second, the acknowledgement of the international community and their willingness to sign treaties with you. Sealand doesn’t have any issues defending their “independence”, but no one has signed a treaty with them for instance.
See: American civil war
No but there’s no law against expelling a state from the union. Kind of a reverse secession if you can piss trump off enough for him to actually do it (no law saying that only Congress can expel them, so it would go to the courts).
No. A full breakdown here https://youtu.be/1dhvry6E0jA
To take this in a different direction, legal or not (considering the “higher power” generally gets to define what is and isn’t legal and might do so for its own benefit rather than in the best interest of everyone, if there even is such a thing), how can it be determined if a subset of a power structure breaking away from that power structure is a good thing or bad thing? What arguments other than “we’ll use force” are there to support a region needing to remain under the thumb of a power they no longer wish to serve?
deleted by creator
That’s the Preamble to the Declaration of Independence. And for as much as it is a foundational document of the US, it’s also not a legal document.
deleted by creator
The preamble to the Constitution is NOT the same as the preamble to the declaration of Independence. They were completely separate documents written more than a decade apart.
in fact:
The Declaration was rarely mentioned during the debates about the United States Constitution, and its language was not incorporated into that document.[44]: 92 George Mason’s draft of the Virginia Declaration of Rights was more influential, and its language was echoed in state constitutions and state bills of rights more often than Jefferson’s words.[44]: 90 [21]: 165–167 “In none of these documents”, wrote Pauline Maier, “is there any evidence whatsoever that the Declaration of Independence lived in men’s minds as a classic statement of American political principles.”[21]: 167
You have both corrected me well, I admit I was wrong. Sorry.
The Constitution of the US of frickin A
That’s the Deceleration of Independence.
