5 ms·

This is a deeply stupid and un-American idea, which will harm the US and help its enemies while distracting Americans themselves from the work they have to do t

by vonnik 10y ago

This is a deeply stupid and un-American idea, which will harm the US and help its enemies while distracting Americans themselves from the work they have to do to take back their country. As campaigns like this occupy our headlines, we are already losing on other fronts: Russia Deploys New Missiles to the Baltic Sea Region http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2016/11/21/world/europe/ap-eu-russia-military.html http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2016/11/21/world/europe/ap-e... We'll see a lot more erosion of our influence over the next few years while Trump's clown car rolls over US civil liberties. We have to focus. Secession is not the answer. Finally, I'd simply point out to the "Yes California" people that large parts of California a) don't want to break away from the US (including but not limited to much of northern and eastern CA) and therefore b) would be perfectly within their rights to secede from the new nation state in an infinity of recursively splintering secessions that will finally be reduced to one dumb guy who cuts off his nose to grant it independence (and to spite his face).

stanleydrew 10y ago
When is there ever unanimity behind any separationist movement? Reductio ad absurdum doesn't work too well here. By your logic, the colonies shouldn't have declared independence from Britain since it wasn't unanimous.
- vonnik 10y ago
  Actually, reductio ad absurdum is precisely why self-determination is problematic, because it raises the question of where you draw the line between a nation that initiates its own sovereignty and a bunch of wackos who don't like taxes (all too common in this country). Secessionist movements typically underestimate the costs of separation. Like the UK post-Brexit, no one knows how an independent CA would relate to the rump US. Would it enjoy the free movement of goods, services and people? I doubt it. There is almost no basis to consider Californians as a separate people, which is usually what drives self-determination. I live in CA. We do not share a common language or religion or history distinct from our neighbors.
- stefantalpalaru 10y ago
  > By your logic, the colonies shouldn't have declared independence from Britain since it wasn't unanimous. And what's wrong with that scenario? It worked perfectly fine for Canada and Australia, without all that violence that became the trade-mark of the new republic.
clock_tower 10y ago
I'd expect two secessions: California from the US, red-state California from blue-state California. Perhaps an independent Outer California, and an Inner California remaining in the US -- I hope they go with those names! I think something similar happened in Kosovo: secession of Kosovo from Serbia, secession of the four majority-Serbian counties of Kosovo from the rest of the province. (Or at least, I hope that second secession has gone through by now; I certainly remember there was a push towards it.)
- vonnik 10y ago
  Yeah, and we all know what a model of functional statehood the Balkans offer the rest of the world.
  - clock_tower 10y ago
    So you'd say the four majority-Serbian counties shouldn't be allowed to secede from Kosovo?
    - vonnik 10y ago
      I'm saying that in some ideal counter-historical world, Yugoslavia shouldn't have broken apart. The separations that occurred relied on a lot of ethnic cleansing to draw clear geographic lines between peoples. Without that ethnic cleansing, which is wanton and cruel, you could advocate for self-determination on a house-by-house and apartment-by-apartment basis, which is idiotic and unworkable. Most nation-states are made of several peoples, and the idea of nationhood upon which self-determinationists and secessionists make their argument always leads to a bloodletting.
      - clock_tower 10y ago
        A nation-state, by definition, is a state comprised of a single nation. But a nation-state isn't the only kind of Westphalian state -- and frankly the nation-state idea has mostly been a destructive one, although holding a nation (or other community) in a country by force of arms is no better. It sounds like you'd say that permitting secession is wrong because it leads to ethnic cleansing. How much ethnic cleansing do you anticipate in the event of California seceding from the United States?
unclenoriega 10y ago
I'm not saying it's a good idea, but since when is seceding from a government that you don't think represents your interests un-American?
- orthecreedence 10y ago
  Since the Civil War, probably. The people who fly the traitor's flag would argue otherwise, but then, if they want to leave America, they are un-American, no?
  - unclenoriega 10y ago
    I would tend to be more cynical and put it at right after the formation of the United States. Self-determinism seems to very much be a "Do as I say, not as I do," sort of thing. Certainly that is another way to look at it. I can imagine that modern-day secessionists, like the CSA founders before them, would argue that it's the other guy who has changed.
- vonnik 10y ago
  There are a lot of responses to a government that doesn't represent your interests. Secession is only one, and it's one of the most violent and the most risky. There are many ways to exercise democratic pressure in America, even when one's presidential candidate doesn't win. Anyone who cares should be putting pressure on their local and national representatives to investigate Trump's past and present business practices, block the campaigns of his bigoted cronies, and calling for an audit of the vote, which was clearly swayed by both Russia and the FBI. Secessionists just show that they don't know how democracy works. Sometimes you lose, and sometimes you lose big. I find this poem by Anna Akhmatova quite powerful and topical: I am not one of those who left the land to the mercy of its enemies. Their flattery leaves me cold, My songs are not for them to praise. But I pity the exile's lot. Like a felon, like a man half-dead, dark is your path, wanderer; wormwood infects your foreign bread. But here, in the murk of conflagration, where scarcely a friend is left to know, we, the survivors, do not flinch from anything, not from a single blow. Surely the reckoning will be made after the passing of this cloud. We are the people without tears, straighter than you...more proud... (1922) http://leopard.booklikes.com/post/874564/poems-of-anna-akhmatova http://leopard.booklikes.com/post/874564/poems-of-anna-akhma...
flukus 10y ago
> This is a deeply stupid and un-American idea, which will harm the US and help its enemies. How is it un-American when it's quite literally how America came about and why "American" is distinct from English. I'ts about the most American thing I can think of.
- vonnik 10y ago
  It is un-American in the sense that it hurts America, flukus. And by hurting America, I mean it would make the lives of everyone who lives in the US more precarious vis-a-vis this nation's rivals, who would love to see the US be weakened through such a dissolution. Harkening back to the War of Independence is facile and hawkish. Do you really want a war? I don't. Again, aside from the conversations taking place in Trump Tower, secession is probably the stupidest idea with any currency today. Nobody who advocates it can imagine what a dark place that would lead us to.

by vonnik 10y ago

stanleydrew 10y ago

When is there ever unanimity behind any separationist movement? Reductio ad absurdum doesn't work too well here. By your logic, the colonies shouldn't have declared independence from Britain since it wasn't unanimous.

vonnik 10y ago
Actually, reductio ad absurdum is precisely why self-determination is problematic, because it raises the question of where you draw the line between a nation that initiates its own sovereignty and a bunch of wackos who don't like taxes (all too common in this country). Secessionist movements typically underestimate the costs of separation. Like the UK post-Brexit, no one knows how an independent CA would relate to the rump US. Would it enjoy the free movement of goods, services and people? I doubt it. There is almost no basis to consider Californians as a separate people, which is usually what drives self-determination. I live in CA. We do not share a common language or religion or history distinct from our neighbors.
stefantalpalaru 10y ago
> By your logic, the colonies shouldn't have declared independence from Britain since it wasn't unanimous. And what's wrong with that scenario? It worked perfectly fine for Canada and Australia, without all that violence that became the trade-mark of the new republic.

clock_tower 10y ago

I'd expect two secessions: California from the US, red-state California from blue-state California. Perhaps an independent Outer California, and an Inner California remaining in the US -- I hope they go with those names! I think something similar happened in Kosovo: secession of Kosovo from Serbia, secession of the four majority-Serbian counties of Kosovo from the rest of the province. (Or at least, I hope that second secession has gone through by now; I certainly remember there was a push towards it.)

vonnik 10y ago
Yeah, and we all know what a model of functional statehood the Balkans offer the rest of the world.
- clock_tower 10y ago
  So you'd say the four majority-Serbian counties shouldn't be allowed to secede from Kosovo?
  - vonnik 10y ago
    I'm saying that in some ideal counter-historical world, Yugoslavia shouldn't have broken apart. The separations that occurred relied on a lot of ethnic cleansing to draw clear geographic lines between peoples. Without that ethnic cleansing, which is wanton and cruel, you could advocate for self-determination on a house-by-house and apartment-by-apartment basis, which is idiotic and unworkable. Most nation-states are made of several peoples, and the idea of nationhood upon which self-determinationists and secessionists make their argument always leads to a bloodletting.
    - clock_tower 10y ago
      A nation-state, by definition, is a state comprised of a single nation. But a nation-state isn't the only kind of Westphalian state -- and frankly the nation-state idea has mostly been a destructive one, although holding a nation (or other community) in a country by force of arms is no better. It sounds like you'd say that permitting secession is wrong because it leads to ethnic cleansing. How much ethnic cleansing do you anticipate in the event of California seceding from the United States?

unclenoriega 10y ago

I'm not saying it's a good idea, but since when is seceding from a government that you don't think represents your interests un-American?

orthecreedence 10y ago
Since the Civil War, probably. The people who fly the traitor's flag would argue otherwise, but then, if they want to leave America, they are un-American, no?
- unclenoriega 10y ago
  I would tend to be more cynical and put it at right after the formation of the United States. Self-determinism seems to very much be a "Do as I say, not as I do," sort of thing. Certainly that is another way to look at it. I can imagine that modern-day secessionists, like the CSA founders before them, would argue that it's the other guy who has changed.
vonnik 10y ago
There are a lot of responses to a government that doesn't represent your interests. Secession is only one, and it's one of the most violent and the most risky. There are many ways to exercise democratic pressure in America, even when one's presidential candidate doesn't win. Anyone who cares should be putting pressure on their local and national representatives to investigate Trump's past and present business practices, block the campaigns of his bigoted cronies, and calling for an audit of the vote, which was clearly swayed by both Russia and the FBI. Secessionists just show that they don't know how democracy works. Sometimes you lose, and sometimes you lose big. I find this poem by Anna Akhmatova quite powerful and topical: I am not one of those who left the land to the mercy of its enemies. Their flattery leaves me cold, My songs are not for them to praise. But I pity the exile's lot. Like a felon, like a man half-dead, dark is your path, wanderer; wormwood infects your foreign bread. But here, in the murk of conflagration, where scarcely a friend is left to know, we, the survivors, do not flinch from anything, not from a single blow. Surely the reckoning will be made after the passing of this cloud. We are the people without tears, straighter than you...more proud... (1922) http://leopard.booklikes.com/post/874564/poems-of-anna-akhmatova http://leopard.booklikes.com/post/874564/poems-of-anna-akhma...

flukus 10y ago

> This is a deeply stupid and un-American idea, which will harm the US and help its enemies. How is it un-American when it's quite literally how America came about and why "American" is distinct from English. I'ts about the most American thing I can think of.

vonnik 10y ago
It is un-American in the sense that it hurts America, flukus. And by hurting America, I mean it would make the lives of everyone who lives in the US more precarious vis-a-vis this nation's rivals, who would love to see the US be weakened through such a dissolution. Harkening back to the War of Independence is facile and hawkish. Do you really want a war? I don't. Again, aside from the conversations taking place in Trump Tower, secession is probably the stupidest idea with any currency today. Nobody who advocates it can imagine what a dark place that would lead us to.