Northern California, less populated and politically rightwing, has long chafed under Democratic rule from Sacramento and dreamed of splitting off into a separate state (see, e.g., story here; for a more detailed history of California partition movements, go here.) That has negligible prospects of becoming a reality.
When I ran across a story in the Guardian (here) about secession talk in San Bernandino County, which is east of Los Angeles in deep-blue Southern California, I was a little surprised a separatist movement exists there, too.
What’s behind it? A county supervisor explains, “People pay high taxes and they do not believe their taxes are coming back to their neighborhoods to address the issues they care about … there is nothing crazy about being angry about those things.”
So they’re asking county residents to vote on a resolution directing the county government “to study all options to obtain its fair share of state and federal resources, up to and including secession.” That will have no legal force or effect if it passes; only Congress can create states, and the state legislature would have to agree to a partition. But it’s a convenient way to signal local discontent to higher state powers.
This kind of grievance-peddling isn’t new in California. The Guardian notes, “San Bernardino county joins a long tradition in California politics in which local grievances and discontent turn to talk of leaving the state entirely.”
In this case, the grievances revolve around how much money county taxpayers send to Sacramento, and how much comes back. As a fast-growing L.A. exurb, San Bernandino County pays a lot of state taxes, yet it ranks 36th of 56 counties in per-capita state expenditures. If they got an average return on their state tax dollars, they would rank 28th. Clearly, they’re subsidizing residents of other counties.
But while San Bernandino County’s grievances are about money, the northern California secession movements are much more about politics. The people there simply think and vote differently; they’re militantly red (see, e.g., article here), while southern California is deep blue. Both of California’s U.S. Senators are Democrats; so are the governor and legislative majorities. They feel ignored and pushed aside.
This got me thinking. A weakness of democracy and the “majority rule” principle is it can create a powerless minority who may turn to rebellion at some point. The Framers sought to counter this by building minority representation and a limited minority veto power into the Constitution. It didn’t work to prevent the Civil War, and it isn’t keeping our society from fracturing today, although this time along ideological rather than sectional lines (although there’s an intense urban-rural divide).
Republicans mostly know what they want, but they’re having trouble getting it, because they’re not supported by a majority of Americans. And having lost the popular vote in seven of the last eight presidential elections, they may feel they’re in danger of permanently being a powerless minority in American politics, much like the conservative voters of northern California are in state politics. (This has racial overtones, too, as changing demographics threaten white dominance.)
Historically, a political party that found itself on the losing end of elections tried to broaden its appeal by shifting its policy stances. But ideological rigidity has overtaken the Republican Party, depriving it of that option. Unwilling to adjust their policies to win over more voters, they’re now stockpiling guns, talking of civil war, and making death threats against public officials. This reflects the frustrations of a minority faction who can’t get their way by democratic means.
To a considerable extent, the position they find themselves in is self-inflicted. In the past, political minorities were pacified by giving them seats at the table, and offering them negotiated compromises and accommodations. But the GOP’s adoption, in recent years, of an all-or-nothing stance, and refusal to negotiate or compromise, rules that out, too.
It doesn’t help that Republicans also reject facts and reason; you can’t work out compromises or accommodations with people who only want to scream, and won’t listen. But the majority can’t let them have their way, either. Rock, meet hard place.
And why should they get their way? Take abortion. Nobody’s trying to make them get abortion against their beliefs. But why should they be allowed to impose their beliefs on the two-thirds of Americans who support abortion rights? It’s the same thing, on a smaller scale, with the fights over library books; in a small Texas town, a woman thinks her pastor, not the community or librarians, should decide what books are in the public library (see story here). What to do?
We’re not just dealing with the angry kid on the playground who throws a tantrum, picks up his marbles, and goes home because he didn’t win. We’re faced with people who want to dictate how the rest of us must live — and are willing, in some cases, to use threats and violence. This has gone beyond being curable by reason, principle, or asking them to have respect for others.
The people of San Bernandino County might, through reasoned argument, get more of what they want from Sacramento. On the larger American political stage, the majority has to defend democracy, the majority rule principle, and rule of law against the growing assaults by those who no longer believe in those things. If we don’t want to live under fascism, we’d better win that fight at ballot boxes, in courts, and with law enforcement and National Guard troops if necessary. We can talk to them later about reintegrating them into a society of democratic principles under rule of law, at such time as they’re ready to live peacefully in such a society and abide by its rules. What we should never do is surrender to threats, violence, or force.