California wants out of the U.S.? What a fantastic idea!

Even though it’s been around before under other names, Calexit, a renewed initiative to declare California’s independence, is widely thought to be a negative reaction to Donald Trump’s election.

But disappointed liberals backing the movement overlook the possibility that Calexit is really an insidious false flag operation launched by conservatives to liberate the rest of America from progressive coastal California’s sometimes bizarre, usually fiscally-irresponsible, almost always irrational or incoherent governmental, immigration, environmental, social and cultural impulses.

After all, without California’s 55 electoral votes, no Democrat may ever again win an American presidential election, and the Senate would have two fewer Democrats. America could experience a renewal of respect for biology, borders, markets, private property, public responsibility and simple math, at least outside the remaining liberal Democratic enclaves in larger cities, college towns and the Northeast.

Calexit supporters claim that about 7,000 volunteers are already gathering the nearly 600,000 certified signatures necessary to take the first step — putting a secession referendum question onto California’s 2019 ballots.

If secession were successful, lots of good things could happen. California is already full of sanctuary cities, so, as a sanctuary nation, California could attract millions of illegal aliens, including many already in the remainder of America and from the seven majority-Muslim “nations of concern” listed by the Obama administration. America would have fewer illegals and jihadis to track, regulate or remove.

California would have to assume its share of America’s $20 trillion national debt, which, based on current population, is about $2.5 trillion, and the Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and public welfare obligations owed its current and new residents, unburdening America while increasing California’s unfunded liabilities.

Much of Southern California is dependent upon water from the Colorado, a river that doesn’t run through California. Currently, Colorado River watershed resources are apportioned by a multi-state agreement that would necessarily be renegoti- ated between sovereign nations.

Colorado, Wyoming, Arizona and Nevada all want more water, so SoCal could brownout. California doesn’t produce enough wine to irrigate the Imperial Valley, many thousands of meticulously-manicured SoCal lawns and still sustain and bathe the coastal elite. California’s remaining options would be to develop its own resources or pay exorbitant prices for America’s.

The most efficient method of desalinizing enough sea water to meet California’s needs would use (gasp!) nuclear energy. Photovoltaic modules and wind-generators will never meet California’s energy needs, so the costs of conventional energy imports will increase, too.

California will have to establish an expensive military, a State Department and negotiate treaties and trade deals. If America drops its corporate tax rate, the already-problematic exodus of California-based companies will become a stampede.

To be successful, Calexit would require a two-thirds vote in Congress and the approval of three-fourths of state legislatures, the deliberations of which will likely center around one question, “Will we be better off without California?”

A common answer may be, “Of course, but why stop there? Can New York, New England and Chicago be persuaded to go with them?”

Jerry Shenk is a Pennsylvaniabased columnist whose work is featured at www. patownhall. com Email Jerry Shenk at jshenk2010@gmail.com