The MeidasTouch Podcast - The Last Resort

Episode Date: October 19, 2022

What if California seceded from the United States? If it did, what would happen? Would it usher in a new era of peace and prosperity? Or plunge the US into a new civil war? This is The Last Resort, a new documentary podcast following the rise, fall, and rebirth of CAL EXIT: the campaign for Californian Independence.  It’s a story about a dream for a new progressive utopia on the West Coast. It’s about the fight for America’s future. And it’s also a tale of two friends who started on the political fringe and ended up in the middle of a still-unfolding global criminal conspiracy involving the FBI and Russian Intelligence. Listen to new episodes of The Last Resort every Tuesday on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Visit BetMGM.com for terms and conditions. 19 plus to wager. Ontario only. Please gamble responsibly. If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. Hey, this is Brett Mycelis from the Midas Touch podcast. Today, I want to share with you a fascinating new podcast I just started listening to called The Last Resort. Here's the premise. What if

California seceded from the United States? If it did, what would happen? Would it usher in a new era of peace and prosperity or plunge the U.S. into a new civil war? This is The Last Resort, a new documentary podcast following the rise, fall, and rebirth of CalExit, the campaign for Californian independence. It's a story about a dream for a new progressive utopia on the West Coast. It's about the fight for America's future. And it's also a tale of two friends who started on the political fringe and ended up in the middle of a still unfolding global criminal conspiracy involving the FBI and Russian intelligence. Listen to new episodes of The Last Resort every Tuesday on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts. And now take a listen to this clip from The Last Resort.

My buddy, my motherfucking choice. Last June, Megan Thee Stallion was performing at I need everybody in the audience right now to say, my party, my motherfucking choice. My party, my motherfucking choice. That's right, so let's put all our middle fingers up right now, and we're going to dedicate this shit to these motherfuckers. Y'all ready? That Friday, the U.S. Supreme Court had overturned Roe v. Wade, ending the constitutional right to an abortion. Megan, like many others, was trying to process the horror of it all.

Performer after performer took the stage that weekend to speak out. Phoebe Bridgers. Fuck the Supreme Court, Olivia Rodrigo, I'm devastated and terrified. So many women and so many girls are going to die because of this. Billy Joe Armstrong from Green Day. Fuck America. I'm fucking renouncing my citizenship. I'm fucking coming here. Millions of other people raised their voices in protest that weekend. My party, my business, my party, my business.

Across America, people marched, they donated, and they looked to their government for a response. In California, Governor Gavin Newsom immediately announced an effort to enshrine abortion rights into the state constitution. We are going to enshrine that, codify that, as we should in the state constitution. What do we do? Stand up like that!

Hey, what do we do? Stand up like that! Watching all of this go down was a guy named Marcus Ruiz Evans. We called him up the day of the verdict to get his reaction. People are in pain. I mean, people are scared shitless in California today. I know them. I live here.

And California has a history of saying, we don't like what the federal government does. We're going to pass a law to stop that. What difference did it make? The Supreme Court upheld Trump could redirect funding to the wall. The Supreme Court upheld Trump could ban people from Muslim countries. And he could keep Mexican children in cages on the border. And he could sell off California lands to oil. And there's literally nothing the California government could do about it. And it is because California is treated this way that we have said you must

cal exit. For Marcus, this kind of talk is very on brand because he has spent the last decade pushing an idea that most people would regard as unthinkable. Marcus believes that California should secede from the United States, that we should, quote unquote, Cal Exit. The Cal Exit movement was started by Marcus and another activist, Louis Marinelli, back in 2014. Supporters believe that Cal Exit is the only way Californians can live according to their values. That's great that Gavin Newsom wants to enshrine it in our constitution, but just because you put something in our constitution does not give you any additional legal protection against decisions by the federal Supreme Court. So that's great you're doing that, and that will absolutely not protect us from the Supreme Court at all. We have to get connected

as Californians and push for CalExit before they take away another right. Because this isn't going to stop. Most Americans support abortion rights, but that didn't stop the Supreme Court from taking them away. Maybe that's one reason why, according to a recent poll, a majority of voters believe our system of government doesn't work. That's created an opening for people like Marcus Ruiz-Evans to argue that it's time for change. of government doesn't work, that's created an opening for people like Marcus Ruiz Evans to argue that it's time for change. Still though, Cal Exit? This is crazy talk, right? No state has ever

seriously tried to leave the union since the Civil War, but some experts believe that this moment we're in could be different. Hi, my name is Barbara Walter. I'm the ROAR Chair of International Affairs at the University of California, San Diego. I've studied every single civil war that's happened since the end of World War II, and there's been over 200 of them. Walter helped identify two factors that strongly predicted if a country would fall into civil war. The first factor was something we called anocracy, which is just a fancy term for a partial democracy. Imagine a country where you have elections, but that the person with the most votes doesn't always win. That's anocracy.

It happened in 2000. Al Gore winning the popular vote by a slim margin. George Bush, though, taking the election by winning the electoral college. And then the second factor is something we called factionalism, which is a fancy term for when citizens in a country organize themselves politically pretty strictly around identity. Today, the Republican Party is almost 80% white and Christian. In other words, a faction. So you see, I also call myself a Christian nationalist. And that's not a bad word.

And there's nothing wrong with leading with your faith. And I think that's what the Republican Party needs to be about. So you start to get political parties that are ethnically, religiously or racially based. And then those parties try to gain power, not because they want to share power with the other groups, but because they want to actively exclude them from power. Our radical Democrat opponents are driven by hatred, prejudice and rage. They want to destroy you and they want to destroy our country as we know it. Not acceptable. It's not going to happen. And I'm seeing that both of these two features were emerging here in this country, and they were actually emerging at a surprisingly fast rate. We don't always end up with a government that we vote for.

According to Walter, we don't just see each other as political opponents, but as enemies. These factors could mean big problems ahead. I have no doubt in my mind that there is going to be, sometime in this decade, the very first, very real secession crisis the U.S. has faced since the 1860s. Here's Casey Michelle.

He's reported on Cal Exit for places like Politico and The Washington Post. I don't know if that's going to be in Texas or California or elsewhere, but given the fraying of political bonds and the broader political tensions, people are just going to start casting about for other ideas. And we're going to reach some kind of breaking point, some kind of tipping point for Americans across the country

to ask themselves, is this something that we want to continue? Or if it's not, what are the potential alternatives and what should really be on the table? Marcus from Cal Exit thinks that this tipping point, it's actually already behind us. That Cal Exit isn't just possible, but it's inevitable. Oh, we're convinced Cal Exit is going to happen in the next five years. A lot of people think that that's a little bit extreme, but our point is this. When we started in 2014, people laughed at us. No one's laughing anymore.