On the Fourth of July: America, whatever
Sure, we had our differences — I’ve always been a little out there — but America wouldn’t be America without California, and California was proudly part of America, which tolerated our excesses for our mutual glory.
[...] today, I look at you and feel like I’m an entirely different place, with different values, even different realities.
Who is responsible for our current differences?
Everyone is entitled to a midlife crisis, even 18th century republics.
[...] you are having an especially nasty meltdown.
[...] the government you installed in Washington — a government my voters opposed by historic margins — is trying to take away people’s health care, make it harder to vote, roll back environmental regulations, restart the failed drug war and pick fights with my trading partners — perfectly friendly countries like Mexico, Canada, Germany, Sweden and South Korea.
In your narrative, I’m too coastal, too elite, too rich, too educated, too Hollywood, too tech, too globalist, too uninterested in the pain of the rest of the country and thus too out of touch with you.
[...] you’ve had to go stone-cold crazy to get my attention, to wake me up.
[...] the fact that you keep projecting your outrageous behavior onto me tells me that you’ve taken leave of your senses.
The initiative, called “California’s Future: A Path to Independence,” does have a separatist bent — it takes “inseparable” out of the California Constitution’s line about California being part of the United States.
The initiative sets up a commission empowered to expand California’s autonomy while “buffering Californians” and their values (respect for diversity, science and democracy) “against chaos, dysfunction, and uncertainty at the federal level.”
[...] my people should seek changes to budgeting policy so that I’m not paying more in taxes than I’m getting back in services.
[...] my people are just as American as yours, and on July 4, I’ll still host enough barbecues, parades and fireworks show for tens of millions of your citizens.