San Francisco without Los Angeles?

It’s like Fred Astaire without Ginger Rogers.

Yosemite without Death Valley?

It’s like Abbott without Costello.

Split California apart?

Then there would be no California.

Proposals to divide California are a dime a dozen.

There have been at least 220 efforts to do so since California became a state on Sept. 9, 1850.

Of those, at least 27 have occurred this century.

And some of those 220 plus efforts have been serious enough that voters weighed in on a statewide initiative and the State Senate voted to do so only to see it die in committee in the California Assembly.

Still, it might surprise you to know that there are currently four active movements to chop up California.

Almost anyone who has traveled into the far reaches of Northern California knows about the ongoing State of Jefferson effort.

You can even see signs of support as you head east of Sonora on Highway 108.

But there are indeed three more active endeavors.

One of those is dubbed “New California” led by Paul Preston who founded the effort in 2018 and then appointed himself governor pro tem of the proposed State of New California.

Yes, he has followers although not as many as the rival State of Jefferson movement.

And like any serious 21st century effort to tear California apart, the movement has a website one can access by going to newcaliforniaonline.com.

Preston’s plan is a bit more radical that the State of Jefferson’s bid to tear California asunder.

By the time he’s finished, California would consist of the Bay Area, the counties of Los Angeles and Sacramento, and nothing else.

Every place else would become New California including San Joaquin County.

Given the fact the breakaway state includes San Diego and Orange County the motivation isn’t the real cultural-political fault line that looking at California as the urban coast versus’  the state’s inland area.

Preston has his thoughts.

But if you think about it, the three areas Preston would leave behind are the three areas the rest of the nation — and arguably the world —view as “being” California.

La-La Land.

San Francisco values.

Sacramento politics.

Need one say more?

These are the three boxes that the culture wars and social media trolls have placed all 163,696 square miles and 39.5 million Californians into.

Strike that.

It is the oversimplified characterizations of Los Angeles, the San Francisco Bay Area and Sacramento that California is painted with. And that’s not just by those out of state but by Californians as well.

Don’t misunderstand. 

I’ll defend anyone’s right to throw out crazy and over the edge ideas. 

California being hospitable for what the rest of the nation likes to refer to as “fruits and nuts” is how the Golden State gave America mechanized farm equipment, the silicon chip, almonds, Mickey Mouse, and board shorts.

California is as much a physical place as it is a state of mind.

And it’s soul is not one dimensional.

It is the sum total of the fertile San Joaquin Valley, the soaring summit of Mt. Shasta, the majestic Sierra, the Ventura Highway, Point Reyes, Sunset Boulevard, the Mojave Desert, the Los Angeles Basin, Van Ness Avenue, the Cascades, California 1, Lake Tahoe, the 17-Mile Drive, and the towering redwoods.

It is true our internal political splits whether it is over water, values, or high-speed rail is as stark and contrasted as the Great Central Valley versus the Big Sur Coastline.

The difference is as intense as a 9.0 Richter scale earthquake. 

And with 39.5 million people, we have elected leaders both in Sacramento who represent more people than some states have population.

Our U.S. Senators that represent one 12th of all Americans compared to minuscule states like Rhode Island.

But then again Death Valley is larger than Rhode Island. 

And I’d rather be part of a state that takes in the vastness and stark beauty of Death Valley than one you can pass through in 90 minutes on your way to Massachusetts.

And if California’s politics and 39.5 million people make it ungovernable as more than a few contend, what about the United States of America? 

Perhaps if Preston is successful at breaking up California, he’ll then get his new home state he dubs “New California” to secede from the union.

I’d never join a movement that would do a Lizzie Borden act on California.

I didn’t sign the petition in 2018 to get venture capitalist Tim Draper’s scheme on the statewide ballot to split the state three ways.

Unlike the 2014 Draper plan to carve California up into six pieces, the 2018 effort got enough signatures to qualify for the ballot but the State Supreme Court stopped it from being actually placed on it.

I certainly wouldn’t have voted for it had been on the ballot.

That said, I will never vote for anything that harms the Delta on a large scale such as the peripheral device du jour and send even more water south.

That might confuse the Ginsu knife crowd.

After all, I qualify as a Northern Californian who often looks at Southern Californians as schemers to squeeze every drop of water they can from north of the Tehachapi Mountains. 

But I get that much of northern and central California wouldn’t have developed such rich farmland and its cities without the financial clout and needs of the Southland. 

It’s not as much an issue of not wanting Los Angeles to have “our water” than wanting a family member to unintentionally harm their brothers and sisters.

And while I may not fit into the conservative Inland California mold versus the liberal Coastal California mindset, I get that one would never have existed without the other.

Inland California’s food and water allowed the great coastal cities to become cosmopolitan havens. 

Los Angeles and San Francisco couldn’t exist without Inland California. 

The reverse is also true. 

I am as much a son of Berkeley, San Francisco, Delano, Los Angeles, Bakersfield, Santa Cruz, Santa Barbara, West Hollywood, Fresno, Lone Pine, Barstow and even Sacramento as I am of Manteca.

Yes, some of the family at time acts like crazy cousins. 

Once in a while they get downright sneaky and steal water. But in the end we are still part of that insane, wonderful mix known as California.

California is often described by those who don’t live here as the last frontier.

They are referencing not the state’s rugged coastline, towering mountains, volcanoes, vast deserts, sandy beaches, vast fertile valleys, and sweeping vistas but a mindset.

Anything is possible in a state that can move massive amounts of water 800 miles, hosts great universities that made the initial nuclear fusion breakthrough, and gave the world both the Silicon Valley and Bay Watch.

Our differences as Californians are as stark as snow-capped Mt. Whitney soaring at 14,505 feet and the natural furnace that plunges some 282 feet below sea level in Death Valley less than 100 miles away as the California condor flies.

Even so, split up California?

You wouldn’t split up Roy Rogers and Trigger, nor should you tear apart California.