We're done with American politics personally, and just sort of American in general.
(Side note: anyone who wants to claim things about the parties long ago, the lines start to blur really badly because they have flipped around back and forth a lot over positions. Furthermore both parties have engaged in moronic and sometimes outright criminal behavior at times throughout history - but again, thats history)
Currently we tend to vote democratic because they're less authoritarian-right than the republicans (thought not at all as much as we'd like), but both parties are in that quadrant of the political spectrum right now... Just one moreso than the other. Overall though the current Republican establishment has been advocating for deplorable things though that we cannot possibly stand for, even in cases when the democrats are either being not much better or stupid in their own way. And with a political system like this, why bother wasting votes on anyone except someone from one of the major parties? Its really annoying. We need instant runoff (aka preferential) voting.
In the long run though? We want California to be free.
We're tired of our tax money going to subsidize red states, tired of our tax money going towards stupid wars, tired of stupid wars making enemies likely to target the very people who wanted to oppose them (urban areas are particularly blue), tired of being marginalized by the way the federal government works, tired of two parties trying to pander to swing state voters of which california couldn't possibly be closer, tired of budget problems being inflicted on us by the red-state subsidies and military spending, tired of having some of the worst infrastructure and schools in the nation because.. again.. our tax money is being stolen for stuff we dont even want to spend it on, tired of being on fire and in a state of drought because the feds cant manage the land correctly (they have over half the land in the state) and sell off our water and other natural resources really cheaply without any of that money going to us. This is ridiculous and needs to stop.
Anyone who thinks that we can't survive without the rest of the united states is in for a rude awakening.
California suffers BECAUSE of America, not because of itself.
Without the rest of America to hold us down, we can pay off our debt (Even the debt we'd get saddled with when exiting most likely, since we'd likely have to take a per-capita chunk of the national debt)
Without the rest of America, nothings stopping us from charging companies for water extracted from federal lands, and managing them correctly so we actually *get* water. And of course spending money on desalinization technology we already developed with Israel... except we couldn't build it for ourselves since our money had to go to red states and war. (And if America tries to shut off the water, they lose around 50 major crops which are supplied exclusively from California!)
Without the rest of America, we can spend money on schools and infrastructure instead of.. red states and war.
Without the rest of America, our votes for the top offices will actually matter.
Without the rest of America, we can participate in the international community and help positively influence things.
Without the rest of America, theres little to stop us from expanding our personal and civil freedoms.
Just how independent can we be?
Well, we're the 6th biggest economy in the world and catching up to Britain (And if Brexit goes through, we could very well overtake them and become the 5th) - we'd thus instantly qualify to be in the G8 (Sorry Italy, its definitely nothing personal)
We've got a huge demographic and biodiversity, with defensible borders and a strong technology base.
We have a population bigger than Canada (And our economy is bigger too)
We could spend only 1% of our GPD on military and still be one of the biggest military powers in the world - the United states spends ~3% - which when converted to a raw amount of money is several times more overall than the runner-up, China. (By 'one of the biggest', I mean ~15th, with a bigger military than Canada). If we continued to spend ~3%, we'd have a ridiculously oversized military bigger than Russia's. Though that would ridiculous and silly to do.
California has the money, population, and governance infrastructure to survive on its own. And we think we can do much better than merely 'survive'.
