Is California facing a crisis of legitimacy

As I have said many times, Fourth Generation war is above all a contest of legitimacy.  (See my recent podcast here ).  Normally, when we think of legitimacy we think of a country, a nation-state.  But can a sub-division of a country, in our case a state, have its own crisis of legitimacy?  I don’t know the answer to that question, but California may provide it to me.  Why?  Because the recent fires in Los Angeles cap a long history of failure on the part of California’s state government.  

No one who reads the newspapers is unaware that California has become a colossal mess, largely because of the refusal of both the state government and urban governments to perform their most basic duties, which begin, as Hobbes tells us, with the establishment and preservation of order:  safety of persons and property.  Some cities have in effect legalized shoplifting.  Bums and beggars have been allowed to take over the streets, making the sidewalks unusable by ordinary people (there is a reason why the first three chapters of Jane Jacob’s definitive book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, are devoted to sidewalks.  Taxes are through the roof but, unless someone belongs to one of the sainted “victems” groups, services are poor or non-existent.  Middle and upper-middle class Californians are fleeing in droves.

Then the recent fires hit L.A. and destroyed upwards of 12,000 structures.  Whole neighborhoods look like Hiroshima.  The fires were not novel, they are endemic to the area.  But both city and state governments were caught totally unprepared. 

Peggy Noonan wrote in her column in the January 18-19 Wall Street Journal:

In Altadena. . . where almost 3,000 structures were last, scores of residents “have defied orders to evacuate, staying behind to protect what is left of their properties from looters and more fires after losing faith in authorities.”

They have lost faith because they are realists: State and local government have proved unequal to the crisis.  Residents patrol the streets and question strangers while “living in a Hobbesian world without electricity or clean drinking water. . .”

In Pacific Palisades, according to the Journal, some neighbors hired private water trucks in case buried embers or sparks raining down started another fire.  Their effort. . . was blocked by law-enforcement officials.

Another Journal columnist, Holman W. Jenkins Jr., had written on January 15,

. . . a pre revolutionary situation has been building in California for two decades, starting with the Third World blackouts in late 2000 not because of any shortage of power but because of large helpings of political cowardice. . .

If California voters don’t wise up now, they never will.  

Well, what if they don’t?  What if a coalition of wealthy California liberals and voters dependent on government handouts can keep a lock on state and local politics despite government dysfunction?  Yes, people can leave, and they are doing so.  But would some rather fight than switch?

I am not anticipating armed resistance, which the Feds would probably put down violently.  What could a California resistance do legally and politically to restore a competent government?

A movement is already underway in Washington state that offers a possible answer.  In that state, as in Oregon and California, the craziness at the state level arises from the fact that one or several cities have so many hand-out dependent voters that they rule the rest of the state, places where people are self-reliant and want government that works.  In Washington, they have launched a movement to attach the eastern part of the state to Idaho and leave Seattle to stew in its own juice.  What if Oregon and California did the same?

Here’s how it might look.  San Francisco, L.A. and maybe Sacramento become their own state, a state that includes Portland and Seattle.  Name it Myopia.  It gets two U.S. Senators and House members proportional to its population.  Inland Washington, Oregon and California remain those states, keeping their Senators but losing House members because of their smaller populations.  It’s all perfectly Constitutional.  I can easily see President Trump backing it.

Whether we are talking about a country or a state within a country, legitimacy crises are best resolved through politics.  That is how to avoid Fourth Generation war.  It may be time to recognize succession can be legal.