A Group of Right-Wingers Wants to Secede from California and Create a New California

California is an enormous state. When most people think of it, they think of glamorous cities like San Francisco and Los Angeles and a population that is overwhelmingly liberal. But a giant portion of the state is made up of rural farms and mountain ranges and deserts, and these places often couldn't be more ideologically opposed to the left-leaning image that California usually inspires. It's a group of such Californians who have just announced their intention to secede from the state of California to form a new state, conveniently called New California.

Their proposed borders? Well, they're kind of hilarious.

You see, in the most basic sense, the rural parts of the state want to separate from the urban parts. In practice, what this means is the coast from San Francisco to Los Angeles would be (old) California, and everything else would be the new. The funny part? By all accounts, Sacramento would be part of New California in this case, only even the New California people are like "Nah. Y'all can keep it. The Kings are trash."

Now the New Californians' main complaints are that they are taxed at too high a level, and Governor Jerry Brown is spending too much time focusing on gun control and, in the words of one right-winger they quote, "prattling on about climate change and nuclear war." These are pretty standard right-wing talking points. (It's crazy that somehow "minimizing the very real possibility of nuclear war" became a Republican thing, isn't it?) But what do they want to do about it? Well, their plan is to persuade the California State Legislature to approve their plan for statehood.

To be clear, this will never in a million years happen. For one, that's not how a democracy works—representation is based on population (it's almost like people gravitate to cities for a reason!), not how many acres of land you own. Plus, their whole argument is that this needs to happen because the lawmakers in Sacramento can't handle the whole state. You know who that argument is going to alienate? The lawmakers in Sacramento. This would be like if you tried to convince your boss to give you a big raise by arguing that you do a whole lot of extra work because your boss is incompetent. Even if that were true, good luck putting your eggs in that basket.

At the very least, maybe spell "pamphlets" right on your website.

It's hard to argue you can govern the state better when you can't even spell-check your website.