Independence will save us
On November 8th, 2016, millions of Americans consciously, and with deliberate knowledge, voted for the personal embodiment of crony capitalism, anti-democratic values, and public corruption. Donald J. Trump, through a legal mechanism (the electoral college) and not through a majority vote, has gained the right to be President of the United States of America.
Like many Californians, I was revolted that so many would willfully reject the principles that have guided America through the tumultuous eras of the American Revolution, the Civil War, and the absolute horror of the Second World War. Electing such a person to the office that was once the home of Presidents like Lincoln, Roosevelt, and Kennedy is an insult to all of their memories. He will gain all the powers and strengths of that office once referred to as the “Imperial Presidency”, he will have control over all federal regulatory agencies, all federal law enforcement agencies, all intelligence services, and the United States Armed Forces, which is currently the strongest in the world. He will control a nuclear armament that can bring Armageddon with a single order. He will have under him all three branches of government, through the consent of a Republican Party that has abandoned all pretenses of justice, order, and reason.
But he will not be my President. I, and others in California, have rejected this farce of an election and will not accept his rise to office. This is not a matter of simple partisanship. The Democratic Party, with years of ignoring important economic problems in order to appease a very shallow set of lobbyists and bankers, helped gather the tinder that Donald Trump set alight to burn our beloved institutions to the ground. There is no evidence that they will change their course of willful obliviousness towards important economic issues. The Democratic Party is as responsible for this debacle as the Republicans who nominated Trump.
This is now a matter of personal survival. This is now a matter of public dignity. Accepting this election as business as usual will ignore the coming storm that is gathering in Washington D.C. There will be no sanctuary from it, unless we make one here in California.
Trump will enshrine torture as legitimate policy. He will continue to loot public coffers through needless tax cuts that benefit no one but his own cronies, he will end forever the free press through a new manipulation of old libel laws, he will use military force against our neighbors and begin a massive deportation program that can only result in broken homes, broken cities, and broken lives. He will ignore climate change and the evidence presented of its reality by thousands of scientists across the globe. He will alienate our long time allies, and has already presented a de facto alliance with Russia, a corrupt state currently controlled by organized crime and shadowy elements of the former KGB.
In other words the America we grew up under, who protected us, sheltered us, and brought freedom to millions around the world, is no more under Trump. And it will never rise again. Millions of other Americans have helped to bury it, having succumbed to fear, bigotry, ignorance, and arrogance. Our own countrymen are in the process of doing something that Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan could never ever do- they are slowly and surely ending the American experiment of self-government and liberty. And they have control over every branch of the federal government.
In order to safeguard ourselves, and to prevent our families and friends from falling under the soon to be heavy hand of an immoral police state run by the most unfit man to ever claim the Presidency, we must secede. We must build our own sanctuary for the ideals of the old United States. We must maintain the substance of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, if not the style and the form.
California voted overwhelmingly against Trump and his policies. California with its own existing institutions, its own political culture respecting both law and order and the rights of minorities, its own economic might (which is now the sixth largest in the world, surpassing France), and its abundant natural resources can weather any storm.
We wish nothing but to continue living the American dream as given to us by the founders and the previous generations who sacrificed so much. If the rest of the United States wishes to commit what we view to be moral suicide, so be it. I never wished to be anything but an American and could never foresee this day coming. But the America I knew is no more. A Californian I must be now, as California has shown itself to be the “last best hope of America”, to paraphrase one of our finest Presidents. The rest of America that voted for Donald Trump has shown itself to be otherwise. And so, we must go our own way, to maintain our way of life and dignity.
We wish to live, on our own, in peace, “with malice towards none, and with charity for all.” We wish to have our own Republic that stands for something more than just a flag and an anthem. We wish to have our own California Republic that continues the American dream for all, without regards to sex, creed, skin color, gender, or personal wealth. A Republic that is beholden not to Democrats or to Republicans, but one that is beholden to all of the people that believe in liberty and freedom.
That is all we ask, a California Republic where our voices matter and our values are represented.
