The insanity of California’s government and Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) has placed new strain on the California (People’s) Republic.

A FoxNews editorial asks if the “Third-world” style blackouts together with a new season of wildfires will lead to a voter revolt by the 40 million people of the state.

Crime – more and more unreported – is exploding across the State, especially in the big urban complexes. Fox News reports that theft is exploding. (As I discussed in another commentary here.)

Another, very “liberal” website, The Conversation, warns that California’s current, increasing woes are what all of the Fifty States can expect a steadily deteriorating dystopia. It paints an incredibly dismal portrait of the State.

California is working hard to avoid any chance of voter revolts, however. As (a very biased website) American Liberty Report claims (apparently accurately), California’s recent “improvements” to the voter registration process seem to be able to nearly guarantee that California voters will continue to vote very strongly for free bread, circuses, and socialism in general, and against anything reasonable.

Many people (including some readers of TPOL) trace much of California’s current woes to the voters, in fact. The approval of Prop 13 back in 1978 of “property tax reform,” and the Prop 47 passages in 2014 are examples. It is more and more likely that California, under current laws, will EVER have an election result that is opposed to more and more government control. No matter what party label is attached to the candidates and issues.

So forget “voter revolts” and worry about actual armed revolts. As I’ve pointed out before, California is increasingly a third-world country. I’m far from the only commentator to say so. It is more and more likely that actual revolt by many in California is not a matter of “if” but of “when.”

After all, you don’t need even a plurality to be successful at armed revolt. As we understand from history, both the American and French Revolutions were supported (at least initially) by only one in three people. If that. And those actively rebelling were much fewer: the famed three percent, in fact.

And the revolt could come from more than just people deeply angered by having homes and businesses burned, or having family and friends die because of power outages. Indeed, the potential rebels could come from virtually any part of the political spectrum: from Antifa and the various campus socialists and communists to white supremacists, black nationalists, hispanic gangs and cartels, and even various religious groups. To say nothing of people who have gone beyond “tea party” and “moral majority” and Trumpista philosophies.

However much a dystopia California is today, even a quickly-suppressed rebellion, by virtually ANY group fairly widespread across the State, would make it truly horrific. Already approaching the status of “failed state” similar to Greece or even Venezuela, it could fall quickly into the same status as Syria or Somalia. A place in which incidents like the recent ambush of a Mexican-American fundamentalist LDS family would be commonplace. In which attacks on CHP officers would be a daily event. In which IEDs would be used against police and fire departments, town halls, and state offices. In which stones and fireworks are fired at first responders. In which homeless encampments (and the homes and businesses of political opponents) are burned out by arsonists.

The situation is dire.

The folks working for CalExit (succession from the FedGov) and New California (the “51st State” project that would divide California into a massive urban and small urban-rural pair of states) have an increasingly short time to succeed. Maybe the success of one (or both) of these movements might be enough to further delay the collapse of California. But they may not be enough to PREVENT that collapse.

But I think that they have to try.