Jack of Harts

The Jeffersonian Federation is not some kind of utopian dream come true. They have their problems. Coastal and inland citizens still don’t much like each other. But they keep their problems in house. They don’t air their laundry in public. And honestly. Their coasties or country folk are better than other people’s coasties or country folk. In the end, they have a great big tradition of not caring what other people do as long as they leave other people out of it. No drama. No problem. Live and let live. That’s probably one of the most defining parts of Jeffersonian culture in the end. They have mastered the art of other people’s lives being “not my business” in a way that few other cultures have anywhere. Other people see that as them being easygoing, but that’s not really the case. They are immensely hard working when “on the clock,” but they take their time away from work seriously. There isn’t any job or people who can’t be quit if they are annoying enough. And if the quitting isn’t accepted, they are not shy about escalating their level of quitting until everybody knows a quitting just happened.

The Jeffersonian Federation did not join the Republic of California on day one. They had left the rest of California on purpose, and did not want to be entangled in their problems. But as the Second Great Depression moved on into the Cybernetic Wars and the Islamic Jihad, they grudgingly accepted that it would be best to have allies. The shattered cities north and south of them were out of the question. But the mixture of inland counties and Indian tribes working to secede from the coastal Californians were Jefferson’s kind of people. If there was anyone they were interested in standing beside, it was those people. So they signed on the dotted line and joined up. I’ll note here that they were never a primary source of men and arms used to defend the Republic, or to attack her enemies, but they became a quiet and efficient ally when they signed up. And they have maintained that quiet competence ever since. Outsiders may worry about gang violence in San Diego, or what a cybernetic freak out would do in Los Angeles, but Jefferson? No man. No troubles ever come out of Jefferson.

Jefferson, Lincoln, and Franklin have all been States that people have tried to create or formed and then let fade away over the centuries of American history. There were plans to make both Jefferson and Lincoln out of Texas for a time, and there was an operational Jefferson Territory in what is now Colorado for a few years back in the 1800s. There have additionally been numerous movements to create a State of Jefferson out of the Northern California and Southern Oregon counties since the 1940s. They had their own Jefferson Public Radio network by the 1980s, and a 1990s referendum in favor of the idea easily passed in 31 counties. Some 21 California counties had actually sent official proclamations to the California government informing the State of their intentions by 2013. That made it one of the most organized secession movements of the early Twenty First century. Though most people considered it more a vanity project than something that could really happen. The California government would simply never support it. But then the Second Great Depression came along and changed everything.