The Californian Ideology

In 1939, right at the end of the Great War, a man named Harold Merriweather, a philosopher of some reputation, artist, and brother to infamous traitor Lewis T. Merriweather [2] wrote a manifesto. So-titled the "Social Futurist's Manifesto", the Britain-born exile in the USA penned a series of points.

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We do not come to serve the power brokers, we come to supplant them.​
We believe in unity of classes, the supremacy of the nation, and separation of the races.​
We shall value the woman for her creative abilities and her kindness, for creativity is the nature of all mankind.​
We refuse to accept the tyranny of gods.​
We all will be armed.​
We seek to glorify the future and disdain the past, the great civilizations of history have all done the same.​
We believe in the unity of all, and will create voluntary Unities of Men to achieve this goal.​
We will seek technological progress above all else, along with artistic brilliance.​
We will not let the uneducated, the blind, and the dumb to ruin the fate of those who matter.​
We will never allow treason or opposition to the Nation's well-being to stand.​

These ten points were the condensation of an entire seventy-four page manifesto, and they are considered the summation of Social Futurism. The only country to have had a Social Futurist coup was the venerable Californian Empire in 1950, during the California-Canada war, ending in a stalemate with Canada reclaiming the Californian Northern Territory. California in the present day is a machine, and a cruel one. 'Lesser' races, that is to say, blacks and Native Americans, are treated as expendable resources, usually euthanized at birth, worked to death under intense scrutiny, or killed for fear of them 'polluting the genetic pool'.


Peculiarly, limited acceptance of homosexuality among artists is common and respect for women is a paramount trait in the Californian psyche, though that respect is somewhat condescending and usually sees women as being emotional and unstable visionaries who are necessary for showing men new perspectives and creating beautiful art, but who are typically seen as just a hair less than men by most. All citizens of California are organized into Unities of Men, circles representing different professions and demographic groups which attend to their own needs, though the 'totalitarian' central government in Los Angeles has crushed any attempts to turn these Unities of Men into anything more than lip-service to Merriweather's ideal.


State atheism is considered essential, like many of the long list of 'ideological crimes' that the state has to keep track of, from dissidence to treason to praying before bed. The idea is that religion is a disease, and if allowed to spread, it will infect the entire country and inhibit Social Futurist technological development while crushing artistic originality with moralism. The religious are tortured by the Bureau of Technical Guidance or purged outright secretly in strange 'disappearances'. Spanish-speaking Californians and English-speaking Californians enjoy a twisted form of equal status under the law - though they are rigidly separated, with a complex legal system attempting to balance them.


California is also notorious for warmongering, its Scientific Corporations prone to pushing for filibusters and invasions of land, with the many Californian puppet states, from Yutah to Nevada to the Central North American Union serving as mere appendages for California's digging machines and soldiers. Environments are destroyed, puppet governments hand their dissidents to California for "extrajudicial consequence management", and California continues to treat its "Social Futurist Republics" as little more than colonies.


To be a Californian is to be watched, to experience some of the greatest art and cinema in the world and have an incredible standard of living, at the expense of humanity itself. It should come as no surprise that the American Federation loathes California for their godlessness, opposition to grassroots values, and brutality, while the USA's higher-ups spout anti-Californian rhetoric one day and trade with the Californians the next. In addition, the Texans, bordering some Social Futurist Republics, keep their borders guarded by the best that the borderline-minarchist Republic of Texas can manage, a reason why they rely on so many corporate mercenaries.


However, Germany's unholy alliance with California in the case of a war with Britain and Canada has helped to keep the country afloat, along with Russian aid for crass geopolitical reasons. As the Social Futurist Manifesto says: "We will seek technological progress above all else, along with artistic brilliance."