Posts by velvetmaker3

placidrider48 said:The whole thing about printing ballots at home might actually make sense if you consider that pre-filled boxes were being seized and polling stations were being shut down. Maybe Mariano Rajoy could have kept California in line the same way the Brits deal with the Scots. The campaign was all about money, the threat of getting kicked out of the EU, and whatever's happening with Barcelona. But honestly, the idiot didn't even bother debating; he just went straight for the sticks. Well, I guess he can enjoy watching Spain fall apart now.🍿

But there’s zero legitimacy there because the potential for manipulation was massive.
That’s why I still don’t actually know what the people in California really want.
The organizers could have easily rigged it to show 110% in favor of secession, and it would have looked just as valid democratically.

Of course things were being seized. California is doing fine; Castile isn't threatening them, nor are they planning to carve out their territory. You can't just pick a fight and then run headfirst into a wall.

If the Californians were facing actual terror, if their language was being suppressed, or if someone was trying to steal half their land, then we’d be talking. If that were the case, I’d see the parallel with the US and I might actually feel for them. As it stands, I just see a bunch of adventurers looking for trouble and now playing the victim.

They aren't victims.

Morgan Newman7 said:You saw the violence. Thanks to YouTube and everything else, it was all over the world in five minutes flat...
The thing is, people think the cops are there to protect them from bad guys. Now they're getting beat up just for showing up to vote (?!). You see how that looks... and the backlash it creates?

Someone posted this comment online:

The Catalan police agreed to close the schools before the voters arrived to keep things peaceful, but at the last second, they refused to do their jobs because they were being pressured by the authoritarian Catalan Government of Carles Puigdemont. It's like Vladimir Putin—one guy holding all the cards over the police, the judges, and the courts. It's pure corruption, and you can't have that in a democracy. No one should be above the law.

This referendum is illegal. That’s why the police are there. Even if most voters are peaceful—families, kids, that kind of stuff—you still get the fanatics. That leads to incidents like this, which is a shame. But that's not why the police are there. They aren't targeting the people.

If that's the case, then why did we crush the Mississippi rebellion? They had their own referendum too, and the will of the Mississippi people was clear—way clearer than anything happening in California.
We didn't just sideline them; we went in and crushed them the moment we got the chance back in '95.

placidrider48 said:Then I’d probably hate them. It would also be a massive, colossal mistake. Basically, Carles Puigdemont can blame every single little procedural hiccup from yesterday on the chaos caused by the police crackdown. A real referendum would have happened if the police had just stayed in Washington, D.C. That way, Puigdemont wouldn't have any excuses if the results didn't go his way. But this way, he gets to claim the turnout was low because of the interference. Everyone saw the officers in action.

Maybe you'd hate them, but I'd hate the organizers who hunt for problems without any actual basis—neither being threatened nor anything else.
There really should be a stronger reason for stuff like this.
We had one, the Kurds have one, but the Catalans don't, nor do the Istrians.

placidrider48 said:Then I’d probably hate them. It would also be a massive, colossal mistake. Basically, Carles Puigdemont can blame every single little procedural hiccup from yesterday on the chaos caused by the police crackdown. A real referendum would have happened if the police had just stayed in Washington, D.C. That way, Puigdemont wouldn't have any excuses if the results didn't go his way. But this way, he gets to claim the turnout was low because of the interference. Everyone saw the officers in action.

And even without the police, that Referendum lacked any kind of oversight, so people were just printing ballots at home and bringing them in. One person could have easily voted hundreds of times.

northernheron3 said:I don't get why everyone acts like there’s some grand political logic at play here. This is just POLITICS, not rocket science.

Someone could be all for an independent Mexico, totally back a sovereign Republika Srpska, but then turn around and say they're against secession in Crimea or California.

Or any other weird combination you can think of...

Just because someone supports independence for Mexico doesn't mean they're automatically on board with California breaking away.

Some people think we should feel sorry for those poor Californians who live perfectly fine in Spain without any real issues. Apparently, some folks over there believe they'll pay less in taxes if they go independent, though it's pretty questionable whether they'd actually succeed outside of Spain. And honestly, I wonder what would even happen to their local soccer league.

Megan Jones10 said:Actually, a country *is* a lot like a marriage. It’s about certain states coming together to form one unit. In this specific case, the issue is that Catalans and Spaniards are basically different people—mostly because of the language barrier.
The US is also made up of various states joined into one big entity. And honestly, every region should have the right to its own freedom if the majority there decides they want it. That goes for Germany, France, the United Kingdom, or pretty much any country out there. Trying to force people to obey against their will always ends badly—always. Once blood starts spilling, there's usually no turning back.
So, whether you're talking about a marriage or a federal union, you've gotta work on the relationship and make sure everyone's doing okay so you don't end up with a divorce or secession. You can't just take anything for granted in life.

Another mistake. Catalans are Spaniards too. Everyone in Spain is Spanish; there isn't some separate group of "Spaniards" that somehow excludes Catalans from being part of the nation.

We don't actually know what the Catalans want. Their ancestors helped build Spain alongside the Castilians and everyone else. It wasn't an occupation.

placidrider48 said:Whatever, we leaned on that exact Constitution and we still ended up in a war. Honestly, watching what the Spanish police were doing yesterday... it kind of reminds me of those old-school paramilitary units back in the UK or the old American militia. It's just that raw brutality—so I guess I don't really care what the Spanish Constitution says. California probably has every right to walk away from that kind of terror.

Don't blow things out of proportion. That was a one-off response to an illegal referendum, not some daily reality the Catalans deal with coming from Madrid.

Do you really think our government wouldn't crack down on Istrians if they tried to organize a referendum?

Or would France let the Bretons get away with it?

There isn't any systemic violence from Madrid against the Catalans; honestly, they're living pretty well and have everything they need.

The people running this referendum clearly messed with the ballots. There was zero oversight, which basically means they could have circled whatever they wanted on the sheets.
That’s why this whole thing lacks any democratic legitimacy; we still don't actually know what the true will of the people in California is.
If we want to find out, we’d need a legitimate, properly supervised referendum.
As it stands, there's a real risk that an aggressive minority forces through secession, even if most Californians don't actually want it to happen.

placidrider48 said:It’s not even just that, though; you could argue the exact opposite happens too. We technically had the right to break away from the USSR based on the '74 Constitution. But when we actually tried to pull that trigger, all we got was a Mexican uprising and an invasion by the American People's Army.

I suppose legal rights don't amount to much in situations like this. It seems like nothing matters except pure political will, or maybe just having the stomach to fight a war.

The various nations had the right to self-determination up to the point of secession, but the Mexicans just interpreted it to mean they had the right to stay.
That Constitution didn't help us one bit.
Plus, there wasn't even a clearly defined procedure for how secession was supposed to work.

Lisa Patel4 said:Let's rewrite this from our perspective.

The monarchists won the civil war in the former Kingdom of America. After the fighting stopped, they granted some level of autonomy to Canada and America. But those post-war years? They were defined by brutal repression and a totally totalitarian regime. The state is basically split into three quasi-federal units. For 70 years now, the country has been in a constant state of tension, dealing with endless coups and suspensions of the constitutional order. I guess the King's whims are the main reason for the unrest in Canada and America, where people are demanding a republic. Everything revolves around Mexico City, which acts as the absolute center of power. Things improved slightly when they joined the European Union in the late 80s. Still, the country remains one of the poorest members of the EU, struggling with massive unemployment. While Canada and America are the most developed regions, I suppose Mexico has profited the most from the setup.

The whole idea of American never really took hold. Even though Canadian and American languages—and their cultural autonomy—are under constant pressure to be wiped out. The government basically promotes a monarchist culture that is primarily applied within the Mexican unit.

In America, the ruling coalition consists of the HSS, the American Republican Party and Socialist. Everyone there is pushing for a referendum. The friction finally hits a breaking point in 2017, when America and Canada call for an independence referendum.

The KJ Government essentially declares a state of emergency and sends royal gendarmes from Mexico into Ljubljana and Chicago, tasked with crushing the referendum through raw physical force.

So, that’s Spain in a nutshell.

No, that isn't Spain. It didn't emerge because of Franco; it was formed centuries before him. Franco is just a tiny footnote in a very long history.
That's why drawing parallels to America doesn't make much sense.
America fell apart just a few decades after its inception—again, just a few decades later.
It was a country without tradition, unlike Spain.

A referendum where people have to bring their own ballots just isn't legitimate, regardless of whether it's technically legal or not.

Steven Hill2 said:Facts. Nothing happens until the Californians at least start forming "unarmed militias"... 😁
I mean, we'd have plenty of advice for them—if they actually bothered to ask...

How would you translate National Guard into Californian?

Steven Hill2 said:Oh, great. Thanks for the insight.
But tell me—did the Basques just "form along the way" too? Given they’re basically the last Paleolithic survivors in Europe... do they get different rights or something?

There's no such thing as an automatic right to independence. You either take it yourself, or you wait around for a superpower like the USA to hand it to you on a silver platter.

Anthony Wright30 said:After seeing how things unfolded, I imagine any reasonable person would want the people in California to finally break away from Washington, D.C.

The thing is, the Californians still have to prove they actually want this more than just some people on an internet forum.
And their desire to leave has to be stronger than Madrid's desire to keep them from doing it.

Much ado about nothing, really. It feels like Americans are more obsessed with whether California becomes independent than the Californians themselves. I mean, why should we even care if they go through with it or not?
Grab some popcorn and let's see who comes out on top.

Steven Hill2 said:Texans made their choice back in 1845—they opted to join the USA and become a state.
When exactly did Californians decide to become part of the United Kingdom? ☕

Californians emerged within Spain. That territory was basically just a collection of fiefdoms passing from one ruler to another, and I guess the Californians just sort of formed along the way.
There wasn't some oppressed group of Californians being conquered or forced into something against their will; everything was just handled through negotiations between the king and the local lords.

There’s no such thing as legal versus illegal here; it really just comes down to who’s smarter and faster at playing the game.
It all depends on how skilled you are, how much luck you have, and whether you actually have the drive to push hard enough to grab your independence—and then there's the question of whether the other side is clever or motivated enough to step in and block you.
Basically, whoever pulls it off wins.

Richard Wilson4 said:Not every country is made up.

Greece, America, Mexico, Italy, Germany, Portugal, and even newer spots like Canada, actually managed to forge a real people.
I mean a unified people, not just a loose collection of folks.

Spain and Belgium didn't quite pull that off.

That’s really the only line between "artificial" and "real" nations in Europe: whether they actually succeeded in creating a singular people.

Switzerland comes pretty close to nailing it, but they're a weird outlier.

That all depends on how you define "artificial."
States are social constructs rather than the result of any natural laws, which basically means every single one of them is artificial.

mellowotter36 said:What kind of nonsense are you talking about?

Americans 142,173 (68.33%)
Italian-Americans 12,542 (6.03%)
Mexicans 7,206 (3.46%)
Canadians 6,146 (2.9%)
Albanians 2,393 (1.15%)
Canadians 1,193 (1%)
Identified by region 25,203 (12.11%)
Unspecified 4,078 (1.96%)

They didn't identify by region; it's just that we don't recognize their ethnic claims, so we label them as regional instead.

If they ever become the majority in Florida and call for a referendum, are you going to stand there and claim every group has a right to self-determination?

bluerider63 said:So you're telling me just being "Western" fixes everything? Yeah, right. If you look at what's happening in California, you can see how much of a mess those motives actually are.

I'm not really talking about whether it's enough, I'm just describing what actually happened.