One Nation, Somewhat Divisible...

Good news for fans of awkward portmanteaus! Organizers for Calexit (the objectively ridiculous combination of the words 'California' and 'exit') have gotten the go ahead to start collecting signatures to put it on the ballot for 2019. So, um, hurray?

Anyone caught on the wrong side of the border after this goes down can find their nearest
California Pizza Kitchen and request asylum. While the restaurant chain will be considered
Californian soil, do not under any circumstances eat the food. California is not great at pizza.

Also, the Bay Area is already
out-pretensioning France by
a factor of deux point cinq. 

Calexit is the proposed secession of California from the United States and I don't know how I feel about this. I mean, I get the why. The Organizer's website www.yescalifornia.org lists the reasons for leaving and they're all pretty reasonable.

"As the sixth largest economy in the world, California is more economically powerful than France and has a population larger then Poland. Point by point, California compares and competes with countries, not just the 49 other states."

Their case is mostly economic and boils down to the idea that if it wasn't for the enormous drag factor of the 49 other states, California would be even awesomer.

Above: a typical Tuesday in San Francisco.
Now, explain to me how Trump's supposed
to be everyones President? Huh? Thought so.

But there's also a cultural argument made even more pointed by this last election. The whole country watched as a short-tempered gameshow host won an electoral, but not popular victory and then immediately started executive signing away all the progress of the last administration despite having the opposite of a mandate, which I guess would be called a grudging, technical win. And a win that doesn't sit so well with the country's most populous, most pot-smoking-est and gayest state. So maybe we'd both be better off?

Admittedly we've been living off the memory
like a middle-aged CPA clinging to the time
his high school football team went to state.

On the other hand, I'm not sure I'm ready to stop being an American. Sure, we have a troubled history and an even more troubled present (because we should know better), but we also cured polio and landed on the moon. And the internet was us, right? Oh, and didn't we single-handedly win World War II? Let's say yes. My point is that as screwed up as everything is right now, and promises to be for the foreseeable, it will-ok, might? Get better. Someday. Somehow. And that we really need to think long and hard before throwing our American-ness up for a show of hands. Like, remember Prop 8?

Maybe instead of voting on whether or not California should leave the Union, why not hold a national referendum on which red states should be kicked out? After all, they're the ones that fucked everything up for the rest of us.

What? They made their choice and it was terrible,
why should we let them anywhere near our next election?