New America, Anyone?

Damn, what a disappointing election that was. I can't say I'm surprised by the outcome, but I had certainly hoped we'd finally get that bastard Bush out of office.

Looking at the exit poll data, the biggest difference seems to have been the Republicans' ability to mobilize its evangelical Christian support base. This is the demographic that Bush/Cheney/Rove have catered to the most with their disastrous policy decisions -- and they were rewarded yesterday with a huge show of support. Evangelical Christians accounted for a larger increase in voter turnout than any other demographic group (an increase of approximately 4 million voters, which is significant when you consider that the difference in the popular vote was only about 3.6 million). And in an election year in which terrorism and the war in Iraq were expected to be the biggest issues for voters, it turns out that a majority of voters interviewed said that moral values were the most important issues to them.

What all this seems to indicate is that the extreme right wing coalition that emerged with Reagan's "Morning in America" in 1980 is evolving into a potent political and social force. (Perhaps the fact that they made "The Passion of the Christ" such a huge box office hit earlier this year should have been a warning sign.) And don't forget that these are the same people who think that gays deserve to die of AIDS, school prayer should be compulsory, and that abortion is murder. And they're not going away anytime soon -- you can expect them to turn out in similar numbers to vote for a Cheney presidency in 2008.

This nation is become a theocracy right under our noses. And since we can't just sit around and wait for a massive heart attack to spare us the agony of a President Cheney, we need to do something a little more proactive. Actually, a lot more proactive.

I consider myself lucky to live in California, a state that -- despite its myriad problems -- is still largely insulated from the president's cultural jihad. Like the rest of the West Coast, California went solidly for Kerry yesterday and has consistently voted in favor of progressive social policies (the most recent being the approval of Proposition 71, a massive stem cell research plan that the Right has fought hard against on the national level). In fact, except for our governor's star power, the Bush administration has shown almost no interest in anything coming out of California, or the whole West Coast for that matter.

So that's where this call to action comes in. It's a thought I had after Bush stole the last election, and I'm even more convinced of its necessity now.

California needs to secede from the Union. We can take Washington, Oregon and Hawaii with us, too, since they seem to be good eggs. (Heck, if we could get Las Vegas in the deal, too, that would be even sweeter.) This would create a left-leaning, economically powerful Pacific Rim nation with the potential to be a strong player on the world stage.

It would be a hard sell, even to most of the people living here, but desperate times call for desperate measures, and the marginalization of one of the most populous and economically viable regions of the U.S. must stop. I'm completely serious about this. The time has come to fight for our rights and reclaim our sovereignty, by force if necessary. This is do-able, people. We just have to band together to make it happen.

What would the name of our new nation be? My choice would be New America, with its connotations of progress and rebirth, but I'm also open to suggestions from anyone else.

Fight on!