For Californians it is time to initiate a process to leave the "Union" to become a separate republic

It is not a surprise that the San Francisco Chronicle this week published a piece California has two choices in these dark times: lead or secede. 

Because the U.S. Supreme Court's embracing theonomy is the immediate cause of this discussion (see California must protect itself from the rise of "A Handmaid's Tale" theonomist judiciary as more is at risk than abortion and gay marriage), this writer does not see two choices.

Rather, it is time to review and move forward on the California Republic idea long supported in these posts.

The idea is not complicated. California should be as independent as Switzerland or Chile, its people free to create a 21st Cemtiry government of policies not hindered by lingering commitments to racial, economic, or religious bigotry nor by fear of not being the alpha country in a world of sovereign countries.

The proposal is to have the California Legislature petition the Congress of the United States to permit California's independence through a negotiated agreement. This is not a proposal to unilaterally secede potentially causing a second Civil War. Nor is it a "Nationalist" movement based upon some ethnic or extended tribal differences.

Instead, the idea is based upon the assumption that if Californians through their Legislature petition Congress for permission to withdraw from the Union and Congress approves, (perhaps after a referendum on the matter) California simply returns to being the California Republic. No civil war, no terrorist movement, no riots - just an agreement between rational, democratic people.

Why, you might ask, would anyone seriously propose this? (It is a fact that a growing chorus of Texans joined the long-existing large choir in California to advocate for nationhood for their state, but that's a different discussion.)

It is not a new idea that California should return to republic status. A serious proposal gained some headway in the late 1930's but was sidelined because of WWII. At the beginning of the 21st Century, in 2002, the Sacramento Bee Columnist Peter Schrag had the following to say about the idea of California becoming a separate nation:

California secedes -- A midwinter night's dream            By Peter Schrag -- Bee Columnist - (Published December 23, 2002)     It began as no more than a gesture of protest, when a group of California Democrats, led by U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, put on the November 2004 ballot the California Dignity Initiative, a measure calling on the state's congressional delegation to renegotiate California's relationship to the Union.     The precipitating event was the Interior Department decision to authorize exploratory oil drilling in Yosemite National Park: The intent of the initiative was just to draw Washington's attention to its mistreatment of the Golden State.     But by fall 2006, California, the world's sixth-largest economy, was an independent nation, Pelosi was running for president and Boxer was slated to become California's ambassador to the United Nations.     In the Bay Area, the Boxer-Pelosi measure had won by a margin of 80 percentage points to 20 percentage points. But a lot of conservatives, drawn by the campaign slogan "No More IRS," also voted for it, and so it passed overwhelmingly. By then, congressional Republicans, led by House Majority Leader Tom DeLay of Texas, had told California to go fly a kite, and the gesture began to gather irresistible momentum. "They burn the damn gas out there," DeLay said. "Why the hell shouldn't they help produce it?"     What became known as the "Rape of Yosemite," of course, was only the latest of the insults. By the time of the vote, the Public Policy Institute of California had issued a half-dozen studies showing that California was sending between $17 billion and $40 billion a year more to Washington in taxes than it was getting back in federal contracts, grants and services.     The feds weren't even willing to pay for the anti-terrorism costs of California's law enforcement agencies.     The difference in what Californians pay and what they get would be more than enough to close the state's yawning budget deficit, provide for California's national defense -- mostly through tighter protection of key California facilities and landmarks -- and still promise an overall tax cut for most Californians.     Meanwhile, the most conservative anti-tax states in the Union -- Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, South Carolina, Georgia, Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah and Texas -- were getting far more than their share from Washington. It was also their votes that carried the Productive Americans Act, abolishing all federal taxes on those making more than $10 million a year.     As expected, the California Dignity Initiative campaign was written off by national pundits as another crazy California stunt and by GOP spokesmen as a re-election ploy by a couple of beyond-the-fringe San Francisco Democrats.     But Pelosi had no opposition in her 2004 congressional campaign and, in what amounted to the same thing, Boxer's opponent was Shawn Steel, the former chairman of the state GOP, who had threatened recall campaigns against any Republican who voted for a tax increase to close the state's budget deficit.     Continuing a long California GOP tradition, the conservative Steel had easily beaten moderate Tom Campbell, whom he dubbed "California's Harold Stassen," in the March primary, before being obliterated himself.     The fall campaign, however, did focus Californians' attention on their grievances: the government's campaign to override the state's auto emission laws; the Justice Department's crackdown on medicinal pot smokers and their suppliers, who of course were operating legally under Proposition 215; the renewed federal oil leases off the Santa Barbara coast; and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission's contemptuous disregard of the state's pleas for refunds from price-gouging gas and electricity suppliers.     The surprise was how willing Congress and the administration were to let California go.      In his successful re-election campaign in 2004, President Bush, quoting Lincoln, had promised to preserve the Union. But once he won, White House political affairs director Karl Rove and other Republican strategists realized that without California's votes and the money from Hollywood liberals, the GOP could dominate national affairs indefinitely. By then, of course, it was clear that the most likely candidate in 2008 would be the president's brother, Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida.     California's departure would almost certainly lead to a Supreme Court that would overturn Roe vs. Wade and the decisions restricting school prayer, and to a new reading of the Second Amendment barring any state law restricting the right to carry guns.     Congressional liberals such as Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Sen. Ted Kennedy objected vehemently. They understood that California's secession would leave them even more powerless than they had been in 2002-2004.      But representatives from the Southern and Mountain states, who didn't know or didn't care how much they lived off the Golden State's wealth, were happy to be rid of tree-hugging California, where they banned automatic weapons, the schools taught homosexuality and the courts erased God from the Pledge of Allegiance.     Of course, it took a lot of negotiating -- about water rights, about what the feds claimed was California's share of the national debt, about continental security and jurisdiction over the state's remaining military bases. But once Washington realized there was no way California could be kept out of Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation group or NAFTA, the Bear Flag nation was born.

Notice that the article mentions potential issues such as Roe v Wade, separation of church and state, gun restrictions, etc., in the context of policy changes because California would no longer be in the Union. Uh...

California is still in the Union. During this time, a Californian has been the Speaker of the House and California has a very large share of House members. A former California U.S. Senator is the Vice-President.

"Lead or secede" is not a real choice in a Union again divided as badly as it was in 1860. 

And it is a simple fact that "protests" in California against Supreme Court actions are futile for two reasons. 

• The Supreme Court with members holding lifetime terms and a majority holding theonomist views is the one Constitutional body that is not responsible to the people. 
• Supreme Court appointees can be confirmed by a vote of 51 Senators who represent the least populous of the 26 states containing only 17.6% of the U.S. population and who were put into office by less than 8% of eligible American voters; California has 12% of the U.S. population and cast 11% of the vote in the 2020 Presidential election
  
• California public policy on issues such as abortion are consistent with 21st Century views of the vast majority of Californians. 

That is why at this point in time we must take up the separation of the California Republic issue.

Why a "failed Union" - instead of a country, nation or state

On June 17, 2018, in an extensive post here Why factually these United States is a more perfect Union, not a country, nation, or state.  The following quote from that post summarizes the facts:

For purposes of clarity and simplicity, as used here from this point on the following words have specific meanings based upon pre-17th Century concepts:

• "Country" means "any considerable territory demarcated by topographical conditions."
• "Nation" means "any distinctive population with a common language, culture, and considerable history."
• "State" means "a central civil government or authority that exercises the legitimate use of force within defined geographical boundaries."
• "Union" means "a number of states or nations joined together for defined purposes to be accomplished by a separately created autonomous authority."

Using those definitions, the Cherokee Nation is a nation. Italy is a country and a state. Japan is a country, a state, and a nation. The United States of America is none of these. It is a union of states.

...We need to understand "these United States" is a union created solely for purposes of a common military defense and assuring economic success of the numerous and separate states, not regulate mundane issues such as who can have sex with whom. That's one reason why in 1792 Americans insisted on leaving establishing government churches to the real states.

You can follow the link to read the entire post. A year later in 2019 preeminent historian Jill Lapore wrote A New Americanism: Why a Nation Needs a National Story discussing the same issues and offering this observation:

    But in the 1970s, studying the nation fell out of favor in the American historical profession. Most historians started looking at either smaller or bigger things, investigating the experiences and cultures of social groups or taking the broad vantage promised by global history. This turn produced excellent scholarship. But meanwhile, who was doing the work of providing a legible past and a plausible future—a nation—to the people who lived in the United States? Charlatans, stooges, and tyrants. The endurance of nationalism proves that there’s never any shortage of blackguards willing to prop up people’s sense of themselves and their destiny with a tissue of myths and prophecies, prejudices and hatreds, or to empty out old rubbish bags full of festering resentments and calls to violence. When historians abandon the study of the nation, when scholars stop trying to write a common history for a people, nationalism doesn’t die. Instead, it eats liberalism.

Lapore's article explores the issues in depth but at the end offers this warning:

    At the close of the Cold War, some commentators concluded that the American experiment had ended in triumph, that the United States had become all the world. But the American experiment had not in fact ended. A nation founded on revolution and universal rights will forever struggle against chaos and the forces of particularism. A nation born in contradiction will forever fight over the meaning of its history. But that doesn’t mean history is meaningless, or that anyone can afford to sit out the fight.
    “The history of the United States at the present time does not seek to answer any significant questions,” [the Pulitzer Prize–winning, bowtie-wearing Stanford historian Carl] Degler told his audience some three decades ago. If American historians don’t start asking and answering those sorts of questions, other people will, he warned. They’ll echo Calhoun and Douglas and Father Coughlin. They’ll lament “American carnage.” They’ll call immigrants “animals” and other states “shithole countries.” They’ll adopt the slogan “America first.” They’ll say they can “make America great again.” They’ll call themselves “nationalists.” Their history will be a fiction. They will say that they alone love this country. They will be wrong.

We are now two full decades into the 21st Century there can be no doubt that we must acknowledge Degler's warning. But Lapore's hope that some historian will save the day is foolish. We literally no longer teach history. In fact, those Amazon Echo's mostly named Alexa offer a question "How many stars are there on the American flag?" In generations past everyone had that kind of information drilled into them by second grade. But at some point in the past three decades, in grades K-12 we replaced history with sociology, and the U.S. has always been and could never otherwise be a sociological mess.

To unify Swedish, Hungarian, and Italian immigrants Americans don't need to know more about their cultural differences. If we can't learn to simply ignore culture, ethnic, and racial differences then the United States must cease as the Union that once attempted to serve as a model for unifying the world.

After only 70 years the United States descended into what was, at that point in time, the worst war in history. As Lapore notes: "The American Civil War was a struggle over two competing ideas of the nation-state. This struggle has never ended; it has just moved around."

As explained in a History.com article: "The struggle between pro- and anti-slave forces in Kansas was a major factor in the eruption of the Civil War."

Sure there was (and is) the Deep South. But Border-State Kansas-like struggles now exists in the southwestern states, states which were once part of Mexico until, a decade before the Civil War the Union started and won a war with Mexico.

The fact is that California and Texas were part of Mexico but then both became republics before joining the United States. Perhaps that stimulates the significant popular movements advocating for the withdrawal of the two states from the Union.

How to move forward towards a new California Republic

Many argue that the Civil War settled the issue about a state having the right to secede from the Union.  Secession is  unilateral act and it does seem that the Civil War did establish clearly that no state can unilaterally withdraw itself from the United States. However....

Article IV,  Section 3,  Clause 1 of the Constitution provides as follows:  "New States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union; but no new State shall be formed or erected within the Jurisdiction of any other State; nor any State be formed by the Junction of two or more States, or Parts of States, without the Consent of the Legislatures of the States concerned as well as of the Congress."

"Implied powers" is an accepted legal concept.  One could reasonably argue that if Congress has the power to admit states to the Union and, further, has the power to create a state from an existing state or states with the permission of the state or states involved, then it is implied that Congress has the power to remove a state from the Union with the permission of the state involved.

Additionally, the 10th Amendment provides as follows: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."  This would seem to imply that where clarity in the Constitution is lacking, when a state is involved in something such as removal from the Union, if it has approved the idea of being out of the Union that ought to be sufficient.

In other words, if the Legislature of California were to request that the state be permitted to withdraw from the United States and Congress approves, then the separation of California from the Union would be pursuant to a bilateral agreement between the parties and legally sufficient.

Obviously, such an agreement would come about through the negotiation of an "Agreement Document" which presumably would cover the complex issues involved and would ultimately have the legal status of a treaty.  And, just to assure the democratic nature of the action, it should only be effective if approved by California voters in a referendum.  This would lay to rest the question of the existence of the implied power since the State and its people would have approved the action.

Secession is a hostile act involving insurrection and rebellion.  Separation could be accomplished in a process of mutual respect, understanding, and agreement.

So, the steps would seem fairly straightforward:

1. The Legislature would initially adopt a resolution requesting that Congress consider removing California from the Union.
2. A resolution then would be adopted by Congress providing for a process for developing an Agreement for the Separation of California from the Union.
3. Upon completion of the proposed agreement, Congress would approve the Agreement and forward it to the Legislature.
4. The Legislature would submit to the voters an amendment to the State Constitution approving the Agreement and calling for a constitutional convention to develop a new California Constitution.
5. If the voters approve the amendment, then California would become a separate nation pursuant to the agreement and would establish its own national constitution.

It seem as though such a legal process is fairly straightforward, albeit difficult to get accomplished. But it would be a process preferable to a four-year civil war.

The Declaration of Independence allows for revolt against "a long train of abuses and usurpations"

The single most disturbing thing about living in the United States is knowing how little Americans know about their government and founding documents.

For instance, there is no mention of people being "created equal" in the Constitution. The closest one can come is Section 1 of the 14th Amendment which states:

    All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

On the other hand the Declaration of Independence has legal standing. Consider this:

    The Declaration has been recognized as the founding act of law establishing the United States as a sovereign and independent nation, and Congress has placed it at the beginning of the U.S. Code, under the heading "The Organic Laws of the United States of America." The Supreme Court, however, has generally not considered it a part of the organic law of the country. For example, although the Declaration mentions a right to rebellion, this right, particularly with regard to violent rebellion, has not been recognized by the Supreme Court and other branches of the federal government. The most notable failure to uphold this right occurred when the Union put down the rebellion by the Southern Confederacy in the Civil War.

We are fortunate that Donald Trump's attorneys did not offer the text of the Declaration in their defense beginning with the discussing "The Organic Laws of the United States of America" as contained in the U.S. Code.

"Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed." But what if a third of the current American population believes "it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off" the current U.S. government?

Back "when the Union put down the rebellion by the Southern Confederacy in the Civil War" just 50 years after the War of 1812 finally gave the former British Colonies some stable independence, people were different. Right? No?

Exactly when does "a long train of abuses and usurpations" become long enough to say "no more?"

Perhaps the reality is that when, as was the case at the beginning of the Civil War, the military leadership was divided and, to a significant degree, the rank and file was state-oriented, a revolt against the national government was possible. But today the military is significantly national and we now have police who support stability over instability.

Of course that could change. There is the Declaration of Independence, an official part of the U.S. Code, an organic law that is part of the foundation of U.S. government,that authorizes a revolution:

It's all about what we (and Trump's attorneys?) don't know.

Trump's nominees for the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals are members of a Neoliberal, Koch Bros funded, organization - the Federalist Society Californian's face a judiciary which has been approved bypeople who think a Californian is worth 3/20ths of a person.

We Americans live in a country in which not a majority of the nation's voters but a late-18th-Century-Constitutional system selected...

• President Donald Trump, 
• the Republican Congressional majority, and 
• the right-wing Supreme Court majority.

Because of this selection system Americans have a government locked into Victorian 19th Century

1. cultural values regarding regulating the personal behavior of the American people and 
2. laissez-faire attitudes regarding regulating American individual business and corporate efforts to concentrate wealth.

The 18th Century, when our "elected" officials selection system was established, was a time when there was no electricity, no steam or combustion engines, no natural nor propane gas, no nuclear fission nor fusion; and therefore no telegraphs, telephones, radio, television, computers, electronic devices, internet, railroads, buses, cars, steamships, airplanes, space-travel rockets, nor nuclear weapons; and no tall buildings nor buildings of any height with heating, electric lights, treated water, or sewage disposal systems.

At that time up through the mid-19th Century the perilous transatlantic crossing from England to the former Colonies took at least six weeks and could take as long as two or three months. In the first half of the 19th Century it took six months to sail from New York to San Francisco and about the same length of time for a wagon train to go from Independence, Missouri, to Oregon or California. While using either method of transportation, there were no telegraphs, telephones, radios, or internet to communicate to people at your starting point or destination to, you know, tell them you ran out of food and couldn't find a McDonald's.

Aware of the reality of a changing world, at the end of the Constitutional Convention George Washington said, "I do not expect the Constitution to last for more than 20 years." Twenty-five years later in an 1816 letter Thomas Jefferson stated that a constitution should be revised every 19 to 20 years. Since a majority of adults at any point in time would likely be dead in approximately 19 years, he reasoned, a new generation should have the right to adapt its government to changing circumstances instead of being ruled by the past. On the other hand, in a letter written shortly before his death in 1824 Jefferson stated that the U.S. Constitution could last perpetually if it were regularly amended to reflect new developments in science and society.

Of course, Washington and Jefferson notwithstanding,our 1789 Constitution has not been revised every 20 years nor has it been regularly amended to reflect new developments in science and society. Apparently neither Washington nor Jefferson read it. As regarding amendments it provides:

It hasn't been revised because 12 states, which today could include as little as 4% of the population, can block any proposed amendment, something the largest 10 states with 54% of the population cannot do. Simply new developments in science and society, which generally are reflected in the culture of larger urban areas in the United States, can be suppressed by 18th ideas embraced by land in 12 states containing prairie voles and soybean plants.

Which leads us to 9th Circuit Court of Appeals:

As indicated in a Sacramento Bee article:

    After months of negotiations and delays, the White House is moving to fill California’s three vacancies on the influential 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals — over the strenuous objections of the state’s two Democratic senators.
    White House officials had been negotiating with Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Kamala Harris, both of whom sit on the Senate Judiciary Committee, earlier in the year about filling these and other federal court vacancies in the state. But that dialogue collapsed this past summer, Senate aides said.
    On Wednesday night, the Trump administration announced it was nominating three attorneys to the 9th Circuit, the largest and busiest federal appeals court in the country. Among the thorny issues the court has tackled or could decide on are the legality of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program for undocumented young people brought to the country as children, the president’s travel ban on people from several Muslim-majority countries, and a lawsuit challenging the White House’s attempts to withhold federal funds from sanctuary cities.
    President Trump’s nominees for the appeals court — litigators Daniel Collins and Kenneth Lee and Assistant United States Attorney Patrick Bumatay — are all based in Southern California, are prominent members of the conservative Federalist Society, and have worked for Republican administrations. None of the three were approved by Feinstein or Harris via a process known as a “blue slip,” the senators’ offices confirmed Thursday.

In other words, Trump found three attorneys in Southern California who are members of the Federalist Society. For those who have enjoyed the protection of the 9th Circuit, you may want to read Inside How the Federalist Society & Koch Brothers Are Pushing for Trump to Reshape Federal Judiciary. Or not.

The reality of the federal court system is that the Supreme Court typically only hears 100 to 150 each year. Per its annual report, new appeals filed with the Ninth Circuit numbered 11,096 in FY 2017. Of those 5,358 were Immigration Offenses.

The Koch Brothers Neoliberal network has had limited success in the Pacific states. Needless to say, Trump's impact on California and the other Pacific states will last the longest in the judicial system. It is the Neoliberal wedge to disrupt Progressive policy dominance.

Also needless to say California cannot thrive locked into a late-18th-Century-Constitutional system attempting to impose a Victorian 19th Century social system and a Gilded Age economic system.

Which raises the Calexit issue. When the problem was just Neoliberals in Congress, one could delude oneself into thinking hard work and time could bring about a change in the attitude of the electorate across the nation. The election of Trump made that a bit harder to maintain that delusion. But now its the federal courts. It could take many decades to restore the Progressive Ninth Circuit as well as the Supreme Court, assuming it is even possible.

Our problem is, of course, the Democracy Delusion.

Pictured at the beginning of this post is a fully descriptive 18th Century statement regarding the then newly created United States government - the Preamble to the Constitution. The meaning was a clear statement to the elite members of our 18th Century "Founding Fathers" who understood the terms of the Constitution that followed that Preamble. For those of us in the 21st Century, as well as the general population of 18th Century America, it might seem misleading without the following clarifications

• We the People of the United States, referring to the citizens of the states who could vote who generally were white male property owners (about 10 to 16 percent of the nation's citizens);
• in Order to form a more perfect Union, because the the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union of the United States of America,which came into force on March 1, 1781, after being ratified by all 13 states, wasn't working out;
• establish Justice, which referred to United States law and to the related court system in the Constitution;
• insure domestic Tranquility, which meant to assure through force if necessary the absence of riots, rebellions, and similar symptoms of social disorder;
• provide for the common defense, which meant as specified further therein provide for a military to defend all the states from external enemies;
• promote the general Welfare, meaning as specified further therein creating a positive economic environment for interstate and international commerce; and
• secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, which meant assuring free citizens - mostly white people - the continuation of individual liberty, free of national government interference;
• do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America as soon as the legislatures of 10 states, not the voters, ratified the new constitution.

Day-to-day governing by government, if it impacted on you at all, was done by the states, which in the 18th Century - and in the 21st Century - were/are run by a relatively few elected officials, and the political subdivisions of the states such as cities and counties which in the 18th Century - and in the 21st Century - were/are also run by a relatively few elected officials (except for some "town meeting" towns in New England states).

And the thing is true Conservatives prefer we stick as close as we can to that model of government run, of course, by Conservatives. Progressives thought they wanted a strong national government run, of course, by Progressives.

But none of this is true direct democracy, except maybe in some New England towns. And even then, as explained in a March article in The Atlantic the town meeting form of government doesn't always work out too well.

Power in the United States lies in the legislatures of the states which create the legal framework for most of the laws that affect us on a daily basis and which, in most cases, draw the boundaries of Congressional Districts every 10 years, as they will in the year following the 2020 census. Suffice it to say, the most important elections this year and in 2020 will  be the elections of state legislators.

Generally speaking, the national press barely, if ever, covers those elections. But the very conservative Koch Brothers funded Neoliberal organizations focus mostly on those elections.

Now if you think our Founding Fathers had the right view as explained in that Atlantic article...

    To some degree, of course, the unresponsiveness of America’s political system is by design. The United States was founded as a republic, not a democracy. As Alexander Hamilton and James Madison made clear in the Federalist Papers, the essence of this republic would consist—their emphasis—“IN THE TOTAL EXCLUSION OF THE PEOPLE, IN THEIR COLLECTIVE CAPACITY, from any share” in the government. Instead, popular views would be translated into public policy through the election of representatives “whose wisdom may,” in Madison’s words, “best discern the true interest of their country.” That this radically curtailed the degree to which the people could directly influence the government was no accident.

...then you're really not uncomfortable with the reality of American government at all levels.

Which then should make informed people puzzle at the cover of this month's Atlantic. No, "democracy" is not dying. Nothing "dies" that never existed. That is simply the biggest of the American lies - that we have a democracy that could be in trouble.

We really need to reconsider our core American fantasy about government. Now I don't want to repeat what I wrote here in the May 1, 2016, post What uninformed person told you the United States is a democracy? It has never been one. It is a union while each of the states is a republic or in the June 17, 2018, post Why factually these United States is a more perfect Union, not a country, nation, or state but it is worth exploring how in our daily language we have reduced our expectations.

Let's begin by considering an attempt to provide the modern definition of the term:

By this definition the idea begins to fall apart in the first line with "by the whole population or all eligible members of a state." At the time of the adoption of the Constitution, the "eligible members" were mostly white male property owners. Now, even back then there were already grumbles about the eligibility requirements. But suffice it to say that democracy in America has always meant participation by only those folks the currently eligible participants are willing to accept. And that is also fundamentally true around the world.

In other words, "democracy" doesn't mean "government of the people by the people" but rather "government rule over the people by the eligible people."

Then we run into "typically through elected representatives." In the United States, we have the United States Senate, half of the legislative branch, made up of 100 Senators each of whom casts one vote on any legislative matters and casts one vote on confirming both:

1. high level executive branch officials and 
2. all judges in the U.S. Judiciary nominated by the President.

A U.S. Senator from Wyoming represents a state with a population of 580,000± and the last Senator elected, Mike Enzi, received 121,554 votes out of 164,242 votes cast.

A U.S. Senator from California represents a state with a population of 39,780,000± and the last Senator elected, Kamala Harris, received 7,542,753 votes out of 12,244,170 votes cast.

This is "a system of government...by all the eligible members of a state...through elected representatives" and therefore meets the commonly accepted definition of "democracy." But it does not mean equality for even the eligible members.

In the United States elected representative system of government, an eligible member (voter) in California has 1.3% of the ability to affect legislation or appointments through the U.S. Senate as an eligible member (voter) in Wyoming.

Or to put it another way, for representation in American democratic government it is acceptable that a person in California is equal to ³/₂₀ths of a person in Wyoming which ironically is less than a slave in 1789 which in the Constitution was assigned a representation value of ³/₅ths or ¹²/₂₀ths of a free person.

Keep in mind that if you object to comparing Wyoming to California, Vermont is next smallest state to Wyoming and a person in Vermont is worth half a Wyoming person in terms of representation.

Now one has to acknowledge that in 1789 a person in Virginia was worth only ²/₂₀ths of a person in Delaware in terms of representation in the U.S. Senate, so perhaps we Californians shouldn't find it objectionable.

But in this writer's confused mind as a child, "democracy" began in the United States with "equality" - either in a direct democracy or a representative democracy. And the United States doesn't even resemble that. Perhaps we need to stop teaching our kids that biggest of lies.

And California is going to have to do something about facing a judiciary which has been approved by people who think it is right that a Californian is worth ³/₂₀ths of a person.

The lack of comprehensive political economy goals will create concurrent pecuniary and environmental disasters for the U.S. Gen X and later generations Part 3. About China's most recent 4000 years

The "illusion of knowledge" regarding the three quotes above is that

1. The Art of War (孫子兵法) is traditionally attributed to Sun Tzu from the late 6th century BC even though its earliest parts probably date to at least 100 years later;
2. The closest expression to the "knowledge is power" quote in Bacon's works is "knowledge is His power" as the context of the latin sentence refers to the qualities of God and is embedded in a discussion of heresies that deny the power of God; and
3. the third quote is routinely misattributed to Stephen Hawking and Daniel J. Boorstin.

However, one can learn from the fact that the Chinese philosopher general Sun Tzu was born about

• 1600 years after the establishment of the Xia dynasty, China's first reported dynasty;
• 2000 years before the English philosopher Francis Bacon (at the time of the Celtic immigration to the British Isles);  and
• 2400 years before the American physicist Stephen Hawking (at the time the Pre-Columbian Native American Adena culture thrived in an area including parts of present-day Ohio, Indiana, Wisconsin, West Virginia, Kentucky, New York, Pennsylvania and Maryland). 

Those timespans should offer a comparative sense of perspective about the maturity of the continuous Chinese, British, and U.S. 21st Century cultures during the time of Brexit and of Trump.

The three quotes offer considerable wisdom, particularly when our nation's leader says his aggressive political economics policies are not a war...

...but says trade wars are good and easy to win...

As noted in the introductory post in this series, to be able to assure that our grandchildren will survive and thrive we Americans must

1. have some knowledge of the history, culture, government, and political economy of China;
2. have a realistic awareness of the differences between 21st Century China versus 21st Century U.S. in terms of the mixed socialist-capitalist political economies and autocratic governments of both countries; and
3. be aware of the Chinese commitment to their grandchildren to use an adaptive, evolving national strategy to achieve their goals for 2020, 2035, and 2049, including the evolving Chinese strategic plans for climate change adaptation to assure that future generations of Chinese will survive and thrive.

It must be noted that this post cannot repeat everything written in the two-dozen-plus posts in this blog related to the subject of China but this post necessarily will be long.


China's History, Language, Culture and Government are not European

It would be fair to say that the Chinese have never viewed the world with a European bias which makes gaining an understanding harder for non-Asians.

To begin with, the native language spoken by Chinese President Xi Jinping and most of China's 1.4 billion people is not an Indo-European language. No influence from Abrahamic religions permeates Chinese history and culture, unlike American history and culture.

Think about that.

Words in the basic spoken Chinese are not derived from Latin or Germanic sources. For someone whose native language is English, to master communications and thought patterns in Chinese requires absorbing a new pronunciation system, a new writing system and a totally different approach to grammar. And more recently brain scientists have discovered that learning Chinese involves a different brain development as explained (emphasis added):

    One group of researchers identified three areas in the left hemisphere (or side) of the brain that are used when reading in all orthographies studied. These researchers combined the results of 43 different fMRI and PET studies of reading in several different languages, including English, French, Italian, German, Danish, Chinese, Japanese Kana, and Japanese Kanji. The three brain regions used in all orthographies were a region at the top of the left temporal lobe toward the back of the brain called the temporal–parietal area, which may be involved in phonological decoding, a region along the bottom of the left frontal lobe called the inferior frontal gyrus....
    The same group of researchers also identified several areas of the brain that are used only when a specific orthography was being read. For example, the fusiform gyrus in the right hemisphere (side) of the brain was active when reading Chinese, but not the other languages. This pattern of brain activity means that, when reading Chinese, the fusiform gyrus in both the left and right hemispheres is used, but when reading any of the alphabetic orthographies, only the left hemisphere fusiform area, the VWFA, is used.

Further, our culture is permeated with thinking based upon the 31,102± verses of the bible. When you "escape by the skin of your teeth" you are quoting Job 19:20. To make matters more confusing, our days of the week are named for old European gods. Which brings us to something seemingly as simple as having a common history for the calendar - you  know, birthdays, holidays, etc. Well, maybe not holidays because many holidays are religious, or associated with important people, or some other such nonsense. In any event, you likely don't look forward to the Shangyuan Festival (上元节, 上元節) (Lantern Festival) each year.

The traditional Chinese calendar still governs traditional activities in China and in overseas Chinese communities though China's political economy now officially uses the Gregorian calendar. You know all about the Gregorian Calendar that you depend on for, you  know, birthdays, holidays, etc., plus paying your bills on time, right? Sure.

As you must know as an American who knows your culture, the Gregorian Calendar was adopted to replace the Julian Calendar, the previous predominant calendar in the Roman world, most of Europe, and in European settlements in the Americas and elsewhere, a calendar proposed by Julius Caesar in 46 BC.

Pope Gregory XIII (you know all about him being familiar with Catholic history) introduced the Gregorian Calendar in October 1582 which was adopted initially by the Catholic countries of Europe and their overseas possessions. Over the next three centuries, the Protestant and Eastern Orthodox countries also moved to what they called the Improved calendar though the Julian calendar is still used in parts of the Eastern Orthodox Church, in parts of Oriental Orthodoxy, and by the Berbers.

The traditional Chinese calendar is a lunisolar calendar similar to the Hindu and Hebrew calendars which reckons years, months and days according to detailed astronomical phenomena.  But to simplify, sort of:

• Days begin and end at midnight although, colloquially, people refer to days beginning at dawn. We won't even get into how over thousands of years how they changed breaking the day into parts like hours or minutes.
• Weeks consist of nine- or ten-day weeks, called xún (旬). Months were divided into 3 xún. The first 10 days was the early xún (上旬), the middle 10 days was the mid xún (中旬), and the last 9 or 10 days is the late xún (下旬). During the Han dynasty (206 BC–220 AD), officials of the empire were legally required to rest every fifth day (沐; mù, from 休沐; xiūmù; "wash rest"), a day of rest, sort of a weekend though one of the days is a "weekmid."
• Months are defined by the time between new moons, which averages to 29 ​17⁄32 days. Instead of using half-days to balance the months with the lunar cycle, every other month of the year has 29 days (short month, 小月) and the rest have 30 (long month, 大月).  Dateq, when a day occurs within the month, are numbered in sequence from 1 – 29 or 1 – 30. Years start on a long month and alternate short-long-short-long until the year ends.
• Years come in two types. The lunisolar year starts from the first spring month, called Zhēngyuè (正月; "capital month") and ends at the last winter month, called Làyuè (臘月; 腊月; "sacrificial month"). All other months are named for their number in the month order. The solar year (歲; 岁; Suì) is the time between winter solstices. In general, there are 11 or 12 complete months—plus 2 incomplete months which border the winter solstice—in a solar year. The complete months are numbered from 0 to 10, and the incomplete months together are considered to be the 11th month. The first month without a mid-climate is the leap month or intercalary month which is too confusing to explain here except to say that leap months are somewhat like our leap years. In 2017, the intercalary month after month 6 was called Rùn Liùyuè, or "intercalary sixth month" (閏六月). When writing or using shorthand, it was referred to as 6i or 6+. The next intercalary month occurs in 2020 after month 4, so it will be called Rùn Sìyuè (閏四月) and 4i or 4+ will be used as shorthand.

We won't take up subjects such as 7 Luminaries, Great Bea, 3 Enclosures, 28 Mansions, nor heavenly stems and earthly branches which match together and form 60 stem-branches. Let's just say that unless you spent your first 30 years in China, it is unlikely you're going to even be familiar with what traditions, information and lore about just the calendar a Chinese person learned growing up.

Think about it.

For the first 18,000 years or so, beginning with the Neolithic age, no significant European interaction with Chinese culture is evidenced, until 166 AD when the-mostly-indirect Sino-Roman relations began to be recorded. It really wasn't until the 13th century Silk Road trade reached its height that one could say true cross-cultural influences affected China.

In China's 4000± year history of empires a different civil perspective exists than in the United States, a country that has existed less than 250 years. Evidence indicates that in China a form of writing began around 7000 BCE, the first empire dynasty emerged around 2100 BCE, and the Shang Dynasty from the 17th to the 11th century BCE created oracle bone script which is a direct ancestor of modern Chinese characters.

Timeline of the Recorded History of China

To make a long story short, around 220 BCE the state of Qin established the first unified Chinese state. Its King Zheng enacted legalist reforms throughout China, notably the forced standardization of Chinese characters, measurements, road widths (i.e., cart axles' length), and currency. His dynasty also conquered the Yue tribes in Guangxi, Guangdong, and Vietnam.

The Han dynasty emerged to rule China between 206 BCE and CE 220, creating a cultural identity among its populace still remembered in the ethnonym of the Han Chinese. The Han expanded the empire's territory considerably, with military campaigns reaching Central Asia, Mongolia, South Korea, and Yunnan, and the recovery of Guangdong and northern Vietnam from Nanyue. Han involvement in Central Asia and Sogdia helped establish the land route of the Silk Road, replacing the earlier path over the Himalayas to India. Han China gradually became the largest economy of the ancient world.

In 1644, at about the time of the first European settlements on the American Continent, peasant rebels led by Li Zicheng conquered the Ming dynasty capital, Beijing, leading to the establishment of the Qing dynasty (/tʃɪŋ/). Subsequently, China continued to be an oligarchy led by a Qing emperor until 1912 after nearly a century of interference by the British Empire and other western countries plus invasion by Japan left the country in turmoil until 1949 when peasant rebels established a Communist Party oligarchy led by a paramount leader selected by the Party (instead of a dynastic emperor).

In other words, the traditional Chinese form of national government has been an oligarchy with a touch (sometimes a heavy hand) of autocracy led by an emperor or a paramount leader.

With regard to government, it would be fair to say that China not only does not view the world with a European bias, but also views the idea of government through the lens of 4000+ years of experience with variations on a form of power structure in which power rests with a relatively small number (actually thousands) of people not ostensibly democratically elected, led by a paramount leader who is currently Xi Jinping.

And it is this subject which leads to the misunderstanding that represents the greatest danger to Trump's "easy-to-win" approach to a trade war with China.


China's Government is Imperfect Like Ours

One of the problems with amateurs in American politics is they come with a what might be called a prejudiced view based on false ideological concepts.

Consider the simplest of definitions governmental structures at the right.

While there might be a few towns in New England that have town meeting forms of government that meet the definition of democracy, the United States - the More-Perfect-Union government - is not a democracy. It's an oligarchy that offers some democratic elements in its structure. And since 2016 it seems to have an autocratic element.

Also, despite what many Americans want to believe, China's government is not an autocracy, but rather also an oligarchy with an autocratic element and a touch of a democratic element or two.

Americans want to argue that China is not free - that freedom of speech, assembly, and religion in particular are absent. Of particular current concern are the tight government controls on the internet within China and the "re-education camps" for Muslims in Xinjiang. These two are interesting.

The internet is a curious example. Many Americans, including members of Congress, are concerned about the evident harm lack of any control of the internet has permitted, harm which has not come to China.

And Xinjang Uyĝur Aptonom Rayoni 新疆维吾尔自治区 is

1. a provincial-level autonomous region of China in the northwest of the country bordering the countries of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Mongolia, and Russia;
2. the largest Chinese administrative division and the eighth largest country subdivision in the world and home to about 24 million people , including 14 million Muslims; and
3. larger in land area than the largest U.S. state Alaska, more populous than any U.S. state except California and Texas, and home to a Muslim population that is larger in total than any U.S. state total population except California, Texas, Florida, and New York - more people than 14 least populous U.S. states combined.

Exactly how would the U.S., a "Christian" country that refuses to take Muslim refugee children, handle a Muslim population that size which includes terrorists? If it were a state in the United States, Xinjang would be the third largest state with a 60% Muslim population which, if only ½ of 1 percent were terrorists, would include 70,000 active terrorists living among a generally sympathetic state population.

How well has the United States dealt with the post-Civil War population differences? How well have we dealt with our indigenous population?

The world frequently points out to the United States that it has the highest rate of incarceration, making it the nation with the least free population. What exactly do Trump's Deplorables and urban liberals think are the benefits of freedom of speech, assembly, and religion to an imprisoned population???

As with economics, government and politics are not simple despite what some in both countries want people to believe. But Americans really don't know their society well enough to understand the truth of their own governments.

Some American's get hung up on the issue of freedom. The goal of these posts is to discuss cultures and economies, but if myths like "truth, justice, and the American way of freedom" are going to get in the way....

Pretend for a moment that you are among the Han Chinese population which is about 92% of China's population and about 18% of the global population (compared to 16% of the global population that is white), a citizen of China who has received a decent education, perhaps even having spent some time in the United States. And you are fluent in reading English. You know that Xi Jinping is the President of China, the General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, and Chairman of the Central Military Commission.

Perhaps you think that at a minimum Americans should know that President Xi is the first General Secretary to have been born after the Second World War, was exiled to rural Yanchuan County as a teenager following his father's purge during the Mao's Cultural Revolution, and lived in a cave in the village of Liangjiahe, where he organized communal laborers. At best, you know Xi's respect for Mao has more to do with such events as The Long March and less with Mao's governing skills.

Recently the term limit on the Chinese President was removed. Instantly, much of the popular U.S. news media erroneously declared that President Xi had appointed himself President for life grossly misleading the American public.

The real political power in China is the Communist Party’s General Secretary and Chairman of the party’s Central Military Commission, neither of which have term limits.  President Xi holds both those positions and derives his political power from them. But even that is not a clear indication of China's power structure.

The man who led China after the death of Mao, from 1978-89, was Deng Xiaoping. He never held office as the head of state, head of government or General Secretary. His official state positions were Chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (essentially analogous to an advisory legislative upper house such as the British House of Lords) from 1978–1983 and Chairman of the Central Military Commission of the People's Republic of China from 1983–1990, while his official party positions were Vice Chairman of the Communist Party of China from 1977–1982 and Chairman of the Central Military Commission of the Communist Party of China from 1981–1989. Despite being the head of state, head of government or General Secretary, Deng nonetheless led his country through far-reaching market-economy (Capitalist!) reforms including opening China to the global economy.

China's political structure is deliberately complicated or, to use a stereotypical trope, seemingly inscrutable to Americans:

• The President of the People's Republic of China, held by Xi Jinping is the head of state of the People's Republic of China; under the country's constitution, the presidency is a largely ceremonial office with limited powers.
• The Premier of the State Council of the People's Republic of China, a position currently held by Li Keqiang, is the highest administrative position in the Government of the People's Republic of China. 

Perhaps 1-in-15 Americans would recognize the name Xi Jinping. The name Li Keqiang would be unrecognizable to 98% of Americans; if you do a Google News search you will find many articles on him except in U.S. news sources, of course.

If you are that Chinese person, from your perspective any ongoing American news coverage of China caters to a knee-jerk reaction in too many Westerners, as we shall see. Perhaps Americans start writing about the horrors of Marxist ideology because "proper" American thinking about freedom begins and ends with getting rich, with a side thought of being able to criticize others without retribution.

The American idea of a "big picture view" is a 72-inch TV screen. They freely express concerns about authoritarian rule in China while being ignorant of their own country which was built on the pain of native Americans - the largest population in world history to be subjected to government-sponsored genocide.

And it is as if Americans don't understand that Capitalism, which has an "-ism" at the end of the word. It is an economic ideology every bit as much as is Socialism and the evils of both ideologies when rigidly applied are real.

In much American writing, a government implementation of Socialism is an attack on freedom while the impacts of the U..S. government's implementation of Capitalism is not even acknowledged.

Most certainly most white Americans do not acknowledge what "authoritarian" means or how it has been carefully implemented by governments at the federal and state levels in the U.S. to support Capitalism.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary authoritarian means "favoring or enforcing strict obedience to authority, especially that of the government, at the expense of personal freedom."

As noted the United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world. The reason for this policy Americans understand clearly. The United States has a set of government implemented laws that are based on a very subjective morality that has deliberately selective racial and religious bigotry components that would have been unacceptable in all other countries of the West during the Clinton Administration.

The "Black Lives Matter" movement didn't arise because the United States offers the least authoritarian government possible to its people.

If you're a black American, you live in a fearful world created by a police state not unlike Nazi Germany. If you read that as an overstatement, you are an "in-denial, probably-white American" or participant in the police state culture.

If the enforcement of strict obedience to authority at the expense of personal freedom is what defines "authoritarian", then the United States is the most authoritarian country in the world. The People's Republic of China (PRC) doesn't even come close with an incarceration rate somewhere between Canada and Luxembourg.

Of course, in China the expression of opinion regarding political, economic, and social issues is subject to government restriction. And that includes a lack of freedom of the press. Whether within the United States today that is considered good or bad depends on

1. whether people think that the press is an obstacle to their objectives and
2. whether people believe the myth that entertainment can be defined as the press.

But one has to wonder about a people...

1. who know their country has the highest incarceration rate in the world,
2. who know that most of the incarcerated are black and brown males,
3. who know that "a." and "b." were the result of a deliberate choice by the white majority who elected government officials at all levels, and
4. who, without acting to stop it, know that their police are killing people (mostly black and brown males) at a rate not seen in any other "first world" country but frequently is seen in the most backward of countries engaging in genocide,

...but who still think that the United States does not have an authoritarian-element in its governments at all levels. Although they are worried about government infringement on the internet....

Pretend for a moment that you are that Chinese person who has received a decent education, perhaps even having spent some time in the United States.

• Would you think a system built on Capitalist ideology that imprisons many thousands of people - the highest per capita incarceration rate in the world - is much better than your own country, which imprisons a relative handful of people for being outspoken against government policy?
• Would you think a system built on Capitalist ideology that has uniformed police killing more people in the street than any country in the world because of their race is much better than one built on Socialist ideology that kills people who actively engage in and advocate revolution?

If you are any well-educated Chinese citizen, you know that your current government structure is about the same as it was for the past 4000 years, except of course for the peculiar interruption of Western intervention that occurred between 1911-1949 (see timeline above).

Of course the socialism/capitalism ideological argument between ideologues always becomes extreme as indicated in the graphic at the right.

And the U.S. myth is that it is a capitalist state while the Chinese myth is that it is a socialist state.

But you know that the reality is neither the U.S. or China is capitalist or socialist enough for an ideologue. You know that for a Capitalist ideologue the discussion of freedom involves the nature and limits of the power which can be legitimately exercised by society over the individual through institutions. For a Socialist that discussion of freedom requires the addition of the subject of equitable economic conditions that make freedom possible. And you know that these issues regularly are taken up within the political institutions of both countries.

The question for an American becomes one of what are the economic goals of each country at this point in the 21st Century? And the problem is the U.S. has no national long-term economic goals while China does.

In the face of Trump's aggressive political economics in the context of Climate Change, that is a problem which we will explore next. Make no mistake about it. It is a problem and we may be condemning our grandchildren to a far less fulfilling life than enjoyed by Trump's generation.


China's Long Term Political Economy Goals

It is important to lay out a simplified explanation of China's long term goals, generally known as the Chinese Dream, a term likely derived from the idea of "The American Dream" and promoted by President Xi Jinping beginning after becoming the Party General Secretary in 2012. Expanded upon by Xi when the Five-Year Plan for 2016-2020 was announced, the Dream is to completely transform China from a feudal economy to a modern economy.

In summary, after an economic period of relying on low-cost exports and transforming the peasantry into a modern work force in manufacturing and service industries, the goals were the Two 100s:

• the poverty-elimination goal of China becoming a “moderately well-off society” by about 2020, the 100th anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party, and 
• the modernization goal of China becoming a fully developed nation by about 2049, the 100th anniversary of the People’s Republic.

The Chinese Dream has four parts:

1. a Strong China (economically, politically, diplomatically, scientifically, militarily); 
2. a Civilized China (equity and fairness, rich culture, high morals); 
3. a Harmonious China (amity among social classes); 
4. a Beautiful China (healthy environment, low pollution).

The curious question is what kind of American would find this threatening enough to start a trade war with China? And does such an American think the team led by Trump understands the American, as well as the Chinese, political economy thoroughly enough to win such a war? And what is it they think they are going to win? Will not the likely outcome leave both economies poorer with fewer jobs for the non-tech working class?

Of course, the devil is in the details. Literally dozens of plans exist to support the broader Chinese goals.

Many believe that the Made in China 2025 (中国制造) strategic plan announced by Chinese Premier Li Keqiang in May 2015 is the core of the trade war between the U.S. and China. In China Donald Trump’s bluster about the trade deficit is considered propaganda since the issue could have been resolved by accepting China’s offer in early June 2018 to buy $70 billion in additional American goods in a year.

Trump Administration officials and many foreign companies see the initiative as predatory because of long-standing grievances against the Chinese government for past intellectual property theft, coerced (or nearly coerced) technology transfer, and China’s stubbornly protectionist market.

The problem with this narrow view is that from its beginning the Made in China 2025 plan was based upon Industry 4.0 which, as explained in Wikipedia, originates from the Industrie 4.0 high-tech strategy of the German government. The German economic development agency Germany Trade and Invest describes it as a “strategic initiative to establish Germany as a lead market and provider of advanced manufacturing solutions. Industrie 4.0 represents a paradigm shift from centralized to decentralized smart manufacturing and production. Smart production becomes the norm in a world where intelligent ICT-based machines, systems and networks are capable of independently exchanging and responding to information to manage industrial production processes.”

The German government is investing hundreds of millions of dollars into Industrie 4.0-related activities including academic research and industrial trials.

Chancellor Angela Merkel told attendees to the 2015 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, “We must…deal quickly with the fusion of the online world and the world of industrial production. In Germany, we call it Industrie 4.0. Because otherwise, those who are the leaders in the digital domain will take the lead in industrial production. We enter this race with great confidence. But it’s a race we have not yet won.”

In 2016 during a speech at the Hannover Messe industrial exposition, Merkel said, “We have reached a critical moment, a point where the digital agenda is fusing with industrial production. This period will determine the future strength of the world’s leading industrial centers.”

You, unlike Trump and his Deplorables, now have a critical piece of political economy information which, though it dates back to 2015, is important in the competition with China and Germany. It likely underlies all of the objections to the Trump actions filed in September by tech companies such as Apple and Intel. In its documents Intel said:

    U.S. ICT (information, communication and technology) industries… are heavily dependent on global supply chains to produce goods and deliver services cost effectively and according to local needs. We are puzzled as to why the Administration may be using tariffs in part to re-engineer global ICT supply chains that have served U.S. companies so well.

The problem with the United States is while Germany and China have government funded plans for their 21st Century political economy, the U.S. does not even have broad goals. Now maybe it seemed ok to leave the long-term planning to the private sector, such as Apple and Intel which have plans.

But when The Deplorables govern and screw around with international markets using assertive political economics, Americans and maybe the world, will lose.

Keep in mind that China's Xi Jinping in 2009 when he defined China's greatest accomplishment was "to prevent its 1.3 billion people from hunger." Currently his goal is to end poverty in China as explained in Why Xi Jinping cares so much about ending poverty in China: the political significance behind the campaign. Whether China's Rural Vitalization Strategy (2018-22) will succeed is unknown, but this official explanation is more heartening than a trade war:

    ...Farmers will be given more sense of gain, happiness and security as the rural vitalization strategy is carried out. Giving the people more sense of gain will also be the priority as the country seeks to lift 30 million people still mired in poverty during the next three years.
    To make the development of rural areas and agriculture a priority, the country will accelerate the modernization of the rural governance system and capacities and take a path of rural vitalization with Chinese characteristics.
    The goal is to make agriculture a promising sector, farming an appealing profession and rural areas a beautiful home where people can live in peace and contentment, the statement said.
    Different methods should be adopted for different areas to better adapt to village conditions and farmers' wills. The government, society and market must make concerted efforts, and farmers should be encouraged to play the principal role.
    The meeting also highlighted challenges the country faces in its battle against poverty, and called for an enhanced sense of responsibility and urgency. Ensuring that poor people and poor areas enter a moderately prosperous society together with the rest of the country will lay the foundation for the rural vitalization strategy, the statement said.

Americans, of course, understand this as well as their own government's farm policy. Uh, no they don't. It is doubtful that even all members of Congress understand either country's farm policy. 

Sun Tzu's observation "if you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle" raises serious questions. Does the U.S. know itself and does it know China?

One thing is certain. China as a nation has been tested for 4000 years and now has 1.4 billion people. The U.S., the more-perfect-Union, has existed for only 6% of that time and has 25% of that population. Both countries occupy about the same area on the surface of the globe. And the U.S. President is engaging in a trade war with China.

California must reject "Nazi-thought" in our Union government and consider a non-violent civil war for states' rights

"This is the United States of America. It isn't Nazi Germany, and there's a difference. And we don't take children from their parents, until now and I think it's such a sad day. "
                                                                      - U.S. Senator Diane Feinstein (D-Calif.)

This I awakened to read an explanation by the Attorney General of our "more perfect Union" as to why his policy of concentrating "unacceptable" children in camps was different from that of Nazi Germany. You can click on the image below to learn more:

Fox News host Laura Ingraham on Monday played footage of former CIA director Michael Hayden and Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) comparing the Trump administration's policy of separating migrant families with the practices of Nazi Germany. “Well, it's a real exaggeration, because in Nazi Germany, they were keeping the Jews from leaving the country,” Sessions replied adding "Fundamentally, we are enforcing the law. Hopefully people will get the message and not break across the border unlawfully."

The U.S. Attorney General just explained actions taken as "ok" according to the law because he wasn't working for the German government in 1938 trying to solve the Jewish problem, he is working for the U.S. government in 2018 trying solve the brown people problem. That's an explanation he could use for building concentration camps with gas chambers and ovens.

After all, he is just following orders.

Unfortunately, earlier that day Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said at a meeting of the National Sheriffs’ Association in New Orleans: "“This department will no longer stand by and watch you attack law enforcement for enforcing the laws passed by Congress. We will not apologize for the job we do, or the job law enforcement does, or the job the American people expect us to do.”

This is what is known as the "Nuremberg defense" where in Nazi Germany genocide was the law and people were given orders pursuant to duly passed law. And much like in Nazi Germany, there is no immediate threat to the health and safety of the American public that would justify that defense.

Enough is enough. It is time for a non-violent civil war to reestablish states' rights. We can't protect people in Alabama, but we can protect them in California.

Back in 2005, I created a website Three Californias dedicated to dividing California into three states. It soon was used as a reference by others on the web because there is a surprising dearth of focused information on my state. And this November California voters will have the opportunity to vote on a ballot measure to create three California's.

A discussion of what today is known as a #Calexit was included. I knew then that obtaining Congressional approval to allow California to become a separate nation-state was likely to be laughingly referred to as "tilting at windmills" task.

Even seeking approval to create three states out of California would be an uphill battle at best. And it would only slightly improve for Californians a grossly unfair situation that the inherently undemocratic U.S. Constitution gives each voter in Wyoming, Alaska, and North Dakota three votes for President for every vote cast by a California voter. The cost would be a serious disruption in the economy.

In 2005 it was clear to this writer an effort to reorient those living in the other 49 states had to be made. What happened in the 2015-16 Presidential election cycle, seemed to add urgency to that goal. And on June 17 in my other blog I was still trying, with a very long post An American 21st Century Kaleidoscope versus a Civil War? Saving the Union is a struggle against pots, bowls, and mosaics, between individuality, identity, and assimilation, amid unprecedented wealth disparity.

But with this new "discussion" it is clear. Americans east of the Sierra Nevada range have a worldview, even the establishment class, one which could not be changed without a revolt.

Yes, in April of last year in the post here The Chilling Blurt-Blats of Trumpists: Jeff Sessions' Hawaii Incident reminds  us to heed Sun Tzu's The Art of War I expressed a strong concern about the Attorney General of our "more perfect Union" known as these United States:

    But as a fellow American whose frame of reference is Californian, I must consider Jeff Sessions' frame of reference in the context of his childhood and adolescence from the facts....
    It isn't just that Sessions was born and raised in, and lived most of his life in, Alabama, a geographic region historically different from California, though that might give a hint. It isn't just that since the early 1700's no male in his paternal lineage ever called home a place outside the southernmost part These United States.
    Rather it's all that plus the fact that his great-grandfather died at the Battle of Antietam fighting for the South in the Civil War, and that his grandfather, his father, and he are all named "Jefferson Beauregard" Sessions...

• as in Jefferson Davis was selected as President of the Confederacy at the constitutional convention in Montgomery, Alabama.
• as in Confederate General P.G.T. Beauregard.

    Now I know those names were commonly used among white families in the South after the Civil War. And I know that Jeff Sessions didn't name himself. But most other people likely will not share a perspective, a way of looking at things, with Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III - including most any American whose lineage includes no one from the Slave States

But Sessions is just an obvious symbol of a system gone bad.

By 2005 I had concerns about the Bush Administration versus California. But at no time did Bush, in order to win an election, attack trade, migration, or California's history, culture, and largest ethnic group. In fact Bush in speeches after 9/11 took great pains to protect Muslim-Americans from discrimination.

The 2016 election discourse set off loud alarms and the second minority-vote-elected President in the 21st Century was disconcerting.

In popular culture we have made caricatures of Stalin, Hitler, and Mussolini. That is foolish. Hitler, for example, was a struggling veteran of WWI who decided to become a politician, ultimately running for national leadership. In free and open elections at his peak he won 43.91% of the vote in March 1933. By most estimates he had a 40% core popular support and, by 1938 when the economy was going well, only had about a 20% fearful residual opposition. Using today's polling methods, the other 40% were "independents" meaning they had no idea what was going on.

This old Native Californian thinks it is time to recognize just how different California is from Ohio and North Carolina and why California needs to insist on a traditional view of citizenship based on the Constitution and states' rights. California needs to build a mythology around individuality and achievement.

Let's begin with a statement of historical facts. Migrants created the California we know today while white illegal aliens from the United States made California a part of the Union. What 96%+ of Americans don't recognize is the United States government run by the ancestors/predecessors of the current Deplorables and the establishment who...

• from 1880-1943 prevented the families of one group of Californians - the U.S. citizen children of Chinese immigrants - from bringing their family members into California, targeting only this ethnic group of Asians, 
• from 1930-1946 in the Mexican "Repatriation" rounded up and deported one group of Californians - American citizens of Hispanic heritage
• from 1942-1945 rounded up another group of Californians - American citizens of Japanese heritage - and put them into concentration camps, and
• in began 1954 Operation Wetback which resulted in 1,078,168 arrests and deportations by the U.S. Border Patrol resulting in several hundred United States citizens being illegally deported without being given a chance to prove their citizenship.

Sorry America, but we Californians cannot permit a repeat of this kind of bigotry, discrimination, and violence against our people. Since the election, as well as during the campaign, we observed that focused violence and bullying is growing in the U.S. as a result of Donald Trump.

These are signs that what few elements of a democratic society exist in the United States are endangered, a fact which has been confirmed repeatedly.

As noted in How Stable Are Democracies? ‘Warning Signs Are Flashing Red’: "Americans who say that army rule would be a 'good' or 'very good' thing had risen to 1 in 6 in 2014, compared with 1 in 16 in 1995" and offers this disturbing chart:

Which brings me to Hillary Clinton who said (emphasis added):

"I think we know what we're up against. We do, don't we? Donald Trump has pledged to appoint Supreme Court justices who will overturn marriage equality, and if you have read about the ones he says he's likely to support, he's not kidding. In fact, if you look at his running mate, his running mate signed a law that would have allowed businesses to discriminate against LGBT Americans. And there's so much more that I find deplorable in his campaign: the way that he cozies up to white supremacists, makes racist attacks, calls women pigs, mocks people with disabilities -- you can't make this up. He wants to round up and deport 16 million people, calls our military a disaster. And every day he says something else which I find so personally offensive, but also dangerous....

"...You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump's supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic -- you name it. And unfortunately there are people like that. And he has lifted them up. He has given voice to their websites that used to only have 11,000 people -- now 11 million. He tweets and retweets their offensive hateful mean-spirited rhetoric. Now, some of those folks -- they are irredeemable, but thankfully they are not America."

Perhaps verbalizing that observation was a foolish mistake for a Presidential candidate. But now because over 50% of Americans under age 50 apparently cannot bring themselves to say that it is essential to live in a democratic country and 1-in-6 Americans think they would be better off under a military dictatorship, I have to go where many Americans don't like to go in their political debate.

Clinton is a policy wonk who understands what the difference was in Germany from 1934-1939 between (a) those who were were in political power, (b) those who were members of unacceptable minorities, and (c) those who were neither. Most of those who were neither, which was most of the populous, saw a slight improvement in their economic status and were quietly accepting-to-supportive. Those who were in power flourished. Those who were members of the unacceptable minorities were sent to concentration camps where most were murdered by the state.

And Clinton knows that the ancestors/predecessors of the current Deplorables of her parents generation offered up the same attitudes as their Deplorable descendants towards refugees as demonstrated in this survey done just before WWII:

As the Fortune article Here's Fortune's Survey on How Americans Viewed Jewish Refugees in 1938 says about this result so similar to today's attitudes regarding the Syrian refugees: "So much, then, for the hospitality of our melting pot."

Oh, we're not that bad now - we wouldn't let them get slaughtered, you might say. Here are the Gallup poll historical results that show the numbers haven't changed much:

By political party we see just how the results skew with Democrats favoring allowing refugees while 84% of the Deplorables prefer to allow the children of Syria to be slaughtered just like their grandparents did the German children in 1938:

California in the 21st Century is, of course, the Bluest of the Blue states. In the era of Trump bigotry, Democrats gained a super-majority in both houses of the Legislature, it has seven partisan state executives offices all filled by Democrats, two Democratic U.S. Senators, and 39 of 53 (almost 75%) of its House members are Democrats.

And, of course, California Leads The Nation In Resettlement Of Syrian Refugees.

We cannot participate in a nation that is dominated by a political party which has 84% of its members advocating allowing innocent children, women and men to die in a war for which that party's previous President is responsible for inciting.

We cannot accept Trump, supported by the Deplorables, ordering a defacto reinstatement the 1929-1936 Mexican Repatriation carried out by American authorities which forcibly sent 1.2 million U.S. citizens into Mexico, most of whom didn't even speak Spanish but just had "the physical distinctiveness of mestizos."

And, as a Pacific Rim economy, we cannot risk Trump destroying the value of our trade and migration reality.

Trade, migration, and the economy are not the only issues Californians need to evaluate. California's social and cultural policy orientation was broadly attacked with Trump supporters threatening violence.

Though we Californian's have struggled at times with social and cultural policy issues, the fact is since the Gold Rush California has been a leader in creating equal opportunities and a safe community for any migrant from any place - Ohio, China, Chile, Samoa, India, Oklahoma, Japan, Honduras. We have generally tried to provide a fair approach to what we know as civil rights issues.

Today, whether the civil rights issue is abortion, same sex marriage, legalization of marijuana, gun safety regulation, workers' rights, climate change, expression of religion, minimum wage, higher education, use of technology, etc., Californians seek fair answers and work to implement fair solutions. Settling for the status quo has never been a comfort zone in California.

Consider the abortion issue. On June 14, 1967, then California Governor Ronald Reagan signed the groundbreaking Therapeutic Abortion Act. If a "Trump Supreme Court" simply nullifies Roe v Wade, as the Washington Post article What abortion could look like in America under Donald Trump notes only a few states have Pro-Choice laws following California's example while many more have Pro-Life laws:

It is time to protect all those living in California. We need to push hard to wrench back as much of California's sovereignty as we can.

Or we could just sit back and continue to watch an old, white Alabaman determine what civil rights people have and a rich, super-religious, anti-gay-marriage white Michigan suburbanite privatize our school systems.

And we could allow government officials to abuse children because it is the law. Though it really isn't.