California: The Road Warrior Is Here
High-Speed Madness
Take the new high-speed rail project, whose first link is designated to zoom not far from my house. An empiricist would note there is already an Amtrak (money-losing) line from Fresno to Corcoran (home of Charles Manson). There is now no demand to use another lateral (getting nowhere more quickly?). There is no proof that California public agencies — from universities to the DMV — can fulfill their present responsibilities in such a way that we would have confidence that new unionized state workers could run such a dangerous thing as high-speed rail (e.g., if we can’t keep sofas and washing machines out of the local irrigation ponds, why do we think we could keep them off high-speed rail tracks? Do we think we are French?).
If one were to drive on the 99, the main interior north-south “highway” from the Grapevine to Sacramento, one would find places, like south of Kingsburg, where two poorly paved, potholed, and crowded lanes ensure lots of weekly accidents. Can a state that has not improved its ancestors’ highway in 50 years be entrusted to build high-speed mass transit? Can a state presently $16 billion in arrears be expected to finance a $100 billion new project? Can a state that ranks 48th in math field the necessary personnel to build and operate such a postmodern link?
We Are Scary
One of the strangest things about Road Warrior was the ubiquity of tattooed, skin-pierced tribal people with shaved heads and strange clothes. At least the cast and sets seemed shocking some thirty years ago. If I now sound like a reactionary then so be it: but when I go to the store, I expect to see not just the clientele, but often some of the workers, with “sleeves” — a sort of throwback to red-figure Athenian vase painting where the ink provides the background and the few patches of natural skin denote the silhouetted image. And stranger still is the aging Road Warrior: these are folks in their forties who years ago got pierced and tattooed and aged with their sagging tribal insignia, some of them now denoting defunct gangs and obsolete popular icons.
I am not naïve enough (as Horace’s laudator temporis acti ) to wish to return to the world of my grandfather (my aunt was crippled for life with polio, my grandmother hobbled with the scars and adhesions from an unoperated-on, ruptured appendix, my grandfather battled glaucoma each morning with vials of eye drops), when around 1960, in tie and straw hat, he escorted me to the barber. The latter trimmed my hair in his white smock and bowtie, calling me at eight years old Mr. Hanson.
Like Road Warrior, again, what frightens is this mish-mash of violence with foppish culture, of official platitudes and real-life chaos: the illiterate and supposedly impoverished nonetheless fishing through the discounted video game barrel at Wal-Mart; the much-heralded free public transit bus zooming around on electrical or natural gas power absolutely empty of riders, as the impoverished prefer their Camrys and Civics; ads encouraging new food stamp users as local fast-food franchises have lines of cars blocking traffic on the days when government cards are electronically recharged; the politician assuring us that California is preeminent as he hurries home to his Bay Area cocoon.
On the Frontier
I find myself insidiously adopting the Road Warrior survival code. Without any systematic design, I notice that in the last two years I have put a hand pump on my grandfather’s abandoned well in the yard and can pump fresh water without electricity. I put in an outdoor kitchen, tied into a 300-gallon propane tank, that can fuel a year of cooking. I am getting more dogs (all vaccinated and caged); for the first time in my life I inventoried all my ancestors’ guns in all the closets and found shotguns, deer rifles, .22s etc.
I have an extra used pickup I chose not to sell always gassed in the garage. For all sorts of scrapes and minor injuries, sprains, simple finger fractures, etc., I self-treat — anything to avoid going into the local emergency room (reader, you will too, when Obamacare kicks in). And the more I talk to neighbors, the more I notice that those who stayed around are sort of ready for our Road Warrior world. At night if I happen to hear Barack Obama on the news or read the latest communiqué from Jerry Brown, the world they pontificate about in no way resembles the world I see: not the freeways, not the medical system, not the educational establishment, not law enforcement, not the “diversity,” not anything.
Hope and Change
Yet I am confident of better days to come. Sometimes I dream of the booming agricultural export market. Sometimes hopes arise with reports of gargantuan new finds of gas and oil in California. At other times, it is news of closing borders, and some progress in the assimilation of our various tribes. Sometimes a lone brave teacher makes the news for insisting that her students read Shakespeare. On occasion, I think the people silently seethe and resent their kingdom of lies, and so may prove their anger at the polls, perhaps this November.
One looks for hope where one can find it.
Well said, Mr Hanson. Things are little better in south TX.
My wife is a math teacher at our local community college and parrots your complaints regarding students and their lack of preparation for college level work. Fully half of the students in her elementary algebra class fail, these people are unable to fathom fractions, have no idea what to do with signed numbers, and simple linear equations are beyond their grasp. These are things my generation had to master before 8th grade, yet for all the money we throw at our school systems today these kids are graduating high school as barely functioning illiterates.
I can’t wait for November. I’m hoping for some change.
That’s OK. The New York Times says algebra isn’t necessary any more. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/29/opinion/sunday/is-algebra-necessary.html?pagewanted=all
Don’t forget. According to Obama, it’s also discriminatory to require a high school diploma to work.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/jan/1/eeoc-high-school-diploma-might-violate-americans-w/?page=all
I believe it was Santorum, not Obama, who was ranting on about how getting a good education was elitist. At least Romney doesn’t believe that, as far as I know.
Santorum didn’t rant that education was elitist. He admonished the administration for hyping “College for all” when the country needs plumbers, electricians, mechanics, gunsmiths, all sorts of skilled trade. The American University environment turns out a crap product with the exception of the engineering/scientific students. As a hiring manager for a large Defense firm, I wouldn’t give you 10 cents for most of the liberal arts graduates, especially the Ivy League schools. I recently received a resume from a graduate with a BA in Education. There were 33 typos/ungrammaticals on the first page. However, she positively glowed with self-esteem!
My Dad once said that too many are educated beyond the limits of their intelligence. Sad, but true.
If high school diplomas are required, how will the medical professions be sufficiently diverse under obamacare.
Can there be any doubt that diplomas are racist?
yes! Thomas Sowell has several columns on this proportional representation issue. BookTV replayed a 1990 interview of him 2 weeks ago. Available in its archives. on podcast. He tackles many of the racial absurdities. Nice. He is an 82 year old black economics prof at Stanford. Read some columns on his website or creators or townhall. Free education and common sense.
Re: education? It is obvious that democrats are rapidly taking up arms against a meaningful education. The socialists would rather emulate the USSR on the 40-60′s and educate only those with potential, and everyone else should work a regular job. Since they plan to redistribute the wealth – including IRA’s, 401k’s, pensions, etc it won’t matter what work you get, you will get assigned a place to live and food stamps according to your needs.
The elitist leaders will live high on the hog (read Hunger Games)and every state will be required to fill quotas to take care of the elite (left) ruling class.
Resources will be doled out to those loyal – just as is done now – (vote xyz party! They ‘bring home the bacon.)
Ruling jobs will be passed along by parents to worthy Party members (children) so there won’t be any ‘upstarts’ that see injustice and try to change it.
If so, they get to become part of the ‘masses’
Why Hunger Games? That’s low hanging fruit although entertaining. Aim high. Go for 1984, Animal Farm and Brave New World.
The reality is that the NYT is no longer necessary, Tommy.
Wow, I just read the N.Y.Times article, and it sounds so much like the “free campuses” of the ’60′s. Just what about the sorry state of education in this country vis a vis the rest of the world does this guy not understand? All part of the dumbing down of America, IMHO.
Yes, but these illiterates most certainly have the lastest and most expensive cell phones with all the “cool” apps!
Sounds like Cali has entered the Mad Max level not the Road Warrior one.
Exactly what I was thinking. The first movie of the series, “Mad Max” is far more appropriate. There, civilization was crumbling but not yet extinct. Such government as there was was run by effete, incompetent types who definitely resembled the current version. Furthermore, the physical setting, the grassy tablelands of Eastern Australia almost perfectly resembled California rather than the arid outback featured in the later movies.
There’s another movie I would recommend 2003′s “Masked and Anonymous” set in a post-apocalyptic SoCal, a bizarre, awful movie but with an A-list cast and top-notch music set in a CA that has somehow become a lawless, banana-republic.
I would recommend watching the movie “Idiocracy”.
Right. Mad Max first as things unravel, then The Road Warrior after the balloon goes up, then Beyond Thunderdome for the greasy, mohawk-wearing rabble who survive. I’m guessing they can use the L.A. Colosseum for the cage fight scene.
On the other coast, we can replay Escape from New York. (“Call me Snake…”)
It would be nice, however, if the parasitical financial services industry executives (Charles Ferguson, “Predator Nation” — fantastic read) that systematically engineered the catastrophe in the 2000′s that has resulted in the cratering of state budgets and high unemployment (which, in turn, helps to crater state budgets due to loss of tax revenue) would be sent to work in the pig manure factory that manufactures methane for Thunderdome. Of course, the chances of that happening under Obama the Corporatist are almost as slim as they would be under Captain Dressage, so once again they get away with it. If you are not a complete cynic in America of the 21st Century (as I am), you aren’t keeping up with current events.
Give it a rest with the “evil financiers/bankers caused all this.” All it does is prove you a marxist shill. Our economic troubles were caused by GOVERNMENT INTERFERENCE IN THE MARKET. If banks were involved, it was because in a SOCIALIST STATE YOUR WEALTH IS DETERMINED BY YOUR POLITICAL CONNECTIONS. Romney IS A CAPITALIST. These problems will not exist if his economic policies are put into play. It really is that simple.
But, truth be told, it is my experience that people who whine about how all candidates are the same simply want to give themselves a reason to opt out of the process because, well, you know, it’s just so darned HARD to put up a fight.
Mark S – you blame the banks incorrectly. You need to blame the democrat party. For years, they used to berate banks for “discriminatory lending” because they upheld lending standards and wouldn’t loan to people who couldn’t afford it. But, democrats had a policy that for some reason everybody had to own a home. And so they pushed that policy and pushed their pets Sallie Mae and Freddie Mac to do everything possible to make it happen. When republicans tried to shut it all down in 2006 they were vilified by the dems. The banks were smart. They knew what was happening. They had never wanted to lend to people who couldn’t afford it but were basically bullied and forced to so they devised ways to later shed the risk. Once again, another democrat party ponzi scheme broke down and failed miserably.
Strange metaphor for California’s decay:
Road Warrior was awesome, all the following Mad Max movies sucked…..
Road Warrior was authentic and gritty. It was a unique because it didnt SEE itself as “unique”….it didnt “behave” larger than life, like a Blockbuster, it was just a simple movie with a authentic edge…It did this because it wasnt MADE in California.
The Hollywood Mad Max SUCKES in comparison….Its pompous, embarassing, and silly. Flowing White Robes for the Good Guys, Leather Fetish Costumes for the bad guys, and ridiculous looking machines from a cartoon universe…however much money was thrown at the the sequels, they never had the heart and soul of that first low-budget original.
All the things IN modern dysfunctional California that destroy the the appeal of the “real, original” California, are the same things that ruined The Road Warrior.
One was authentic. The other an arrogant attempt to re-invent and “improve” what already was damn near perfect….
With the predictable lousy results, no matter HOW much money thrown at it.
Root, standard for that era of Hollywood. First Blood, Rocky, and even the 1st Friday the 13th were gritty and serious movies. Their sequels were superficial money grabs.
Face it! THE UNITED STATES IS GONE!
You should see California whoever is in charge has given the state away to
the Mexicans!
And it’s beginning to look like Mexico here. I only wish I could move to another decent country. I never wanted to live in Mexico ever!
They have never been able to make it a decent country due to their horrible
culture.
No. Just California.
Road Warrior is the sequel. Mad Max is the original. Beyond Thunderdome follows thirdly. Okay? Good.
Algebra has been discredited as nothing but a racist social construct.
LOL
Well, if the South Texas public schools suck, surely more tax cuts and salary/benefit reductions for the teachers will do the trick.
As in California, where Arnold’s Car Tax neatly cut revenue reduced to the state by 6 to 8 billion dollars annually.
The real issue with Govt budgets at this point: Republicans cut taxes, and say they’ll cut spending to cover it. Then they gesture at Democrats to cut spending to pay for the tax cut. Democrats say screw you, that is your problem to fix, you need to cut the programs that nobody want to have cut. So nothing happens.
Idiots all around.
Well, we can all see the headlines coming when California goes bankrupt:
Mitt to California: Drop Dead.
We can only hope that Mitt will be that strong.
The weird thing here -
Mitt is building a beautiful house for himself right smack in horrible, horrible California. I’m sure he’ll hate every minute of living there.
Mitt Romney just make no sense at all to me.
When California craters (and that’s not far off in my opinion) I don’t want to see it “rescued.” Instead, I want it to be held up to the rest of the country as the end result of Socialism. I live in Yuba City, but this state must be made into an example of massive governmental failure. Perhaps the pain will wake up the voters here and generate a purge of the corrupt politicians in Sacramento (hey, a guy can dream, right?).
I like the idea that was posted a few years ago on a law professor’s blog. California comes to the Feds, hat in hand, begging for help. Feds give California three years to clean up their act and get their house straightened out. California obviusly fails in this (can’t cut union benefits or pensions and God forbid we tick of the illegal alien lobby, while businesses and entrepeneurs flee the state), and the Feds pat them on the head and say, “Nice try California” and then proceed to write out a check to……
THE TERRITORY OF CALIFORNIA!!!!!
Hey, when you go bankrupt or default on your mortgage you don’t get to keep the business or the house. The bank comes in and sells off the assets. And then we let them reapply for statehood at the municipal or county level. This could work out well for us. We eventually have a State of California” consisting of hard working Northern (despite Pelosi idiot land San Francisco) and Central California, while the southern parts turns into an even more chaotic mess, that we could eventually sell it back to Mexico. Hey, they love it so much. Let ‘em have it!
Those of us in “sane” parts of the state like OC and SD don’t want to be sold back to Mexico….just sell em’ LA County :)
And VDH-the Newport Beach yacht crowd aren’t obvlious to the problems in Sacramento-none of them vote Democrat!!!
Hear, hear!
“San Diego is home to the largest concentration of military in the world. It is the homeport to over 60 percent of the ships of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, and over one-third of the combat power of the U.S. Marine Corps. There are over 100,000 active-duty Navy and Marine Corps personnel assigned to the ships and bases in the San Diego region.”
Would ANYONE here want to hand THAT over to Mexico?! H E L L no!!!!
– Spike, military wife
Problem is, the Federales can’t be trusted to handle the money for the budget of the Territory of California any more than we can trust the State Government of California with it.
Under no circumstances should SoCal be relinquished to any entity, to do so is nothing less than cowardice. The genetic cataloging of illegals should be undertaken with the clear understanding to illegals, upon deportation, that subsequent illegal re entry to the USA will be met with summary execution. Their families can come retrieve the body at the border, or what’s left of it after the coyotes have their fill. After a few dozen of these carcasses are returned, I foresee a significant drop in illegal immigration.
Illegals are cowards, plain and simple. Instead of cleaning up their own government, by whatever means necessary, they slink over the border and demand to be fed, clothed and housed. I, for one, am ready to take up arms to protect my country from these parasites.
Wish people would keep saying tht the spanish stole it all from the american Indians and have no more claim than we. RE: DNA. DNA can be done in 15 minutes flat. Eric Topol, M.D. at Scripps did an interview on BookTV March 2012. BookTV/Sci Tech March 2012.
That actually wouldn’t work. The Mexican people for all of their flaws are tough and deal with much worse from that from the cartels every single day.
An actual reversal of the situation in any short time scale would require something akin to ethnic cleansing on a mass scale backed by military force. I do not think we have the stomach for it and the various Argentine “Dirty War” style tactics required to handle the cartels and the various leftists would probably render the military unreliable.
The first time say some mouth sanctuary city type say a Catholic priest is “vanished” means that the millions of White Catholics (not to mention the Brown ones) will become unreliable and too much of this risks a civil war withe the left and the 3%
What we have to do is fall back, regroup and push back as we recover. We must keep what we control. Expanding that requires social changes in a big way moving from a mature aging post industrial society to a land hungry one with more kids This must be done organically not be fiat as well which renders it challenging.
Put bluntly, I don’t want to farm unless I must (I have and am good at at, it just sucks) and plans that require me or mine to risk life and limb for farmland or the benefit of the wealthy (I am a populist ala Pat Buchanan) would be rejected outright. I’ll also reject religious appeals too.
So what do you have?
Unfortunately, what will have happened by then is all the liberals who have fouled up their nest will have moved to conservative states and begun the process all over again. Witness Colorado and Nevada.
Yeah, but….
You know what the great thing about a cautionary tale is?
If enough folks are paying attention, they don’t have to make the same mistakes the other guys/gals did!!
“The lesson of history is that people do not learn from history.”
— Will Durant.
And New Hampshire!
The problem is when the people flee the land of pelosi, feinstein, boxer, brown liberal ruling class they bring the BS with them. It must be ingrained into their psyche to lose all common sense and intelligence and revert to brainless libtard robots. They need to fence off Kalifornia and let the animals fight over it and leave the rest of the nation alone.
And Florida.
When I ask our liberal transplants from Nu Yawk City a simple question- Why are they trying to turn this state into a cesspool just like the one they ran away from?, they just give me a glassy-eyed and drooling stare.
They don’t get it. They just don’t. They never have. And they never will.
Like liberals everywhere, they have been so conditioned to think of themselves as superior and all-knowing, that the mere thought that they may actually be the most ignorant people of all never crosses their mind.
Facts don’t matter to them. They are liberals, they don’t need no stinking facts.
I’ve had the same experience. I once asked a co-worker from Venezuela who was (and probably still is) a big supporter of Obama, “Why would you come from a place like Venezuela and then vote for someone who wants to make us more like Venezuela?” She had no answer except to say that she didn’t think Obama wanted to make us like Venezuela.
I just wonder if some people aren’t congenital Leftists for whom the only cure is to experience first-hand the effects of Leftism. My parents are a good example. They proudly voted for Obama, support the healthcare bill, etc., etc., yet about had heart attacks when a letter arrived from the IRS informing them that they owed several thousand more dollars in income taxes and who tell me how they like their new doctor because he practices medicine “very conservatively.” So, like a lot of hypocrtical people on the Left, their liberalism “is for thee, but not for me.”
It’s the way the brain sets up beliefs. In the neurons – very hard to change.
So true! And, boy, have they fouled their nest and left the foul results to others. The ultimate selfishness! Beware the newcomers, neighbors!
Well said. If we are going to support States Rights, then the States will have to take responsibility for their actions.
If Cali goes down, there will be a cost; however, there will also be a lesson. Cali is the Greece of our Continent with the addition of a antibusiness sentiment that has caused business to flee and take their jobs elsewhere.
Great article which tells is like it is.
1/3 of all Welfare Cases? Can one find a better reason for border control and enforcement of law?
Except the border control will be by Oregon, Nevada and Arizona
Wrong. I can just see Mitt getting all squishy and touchy feely and reaching out accross the aisle….yadda…yadda…yadda and bailing out that state to the tune of billions of Federal tax dollars that the rest of us will never see again. I’m also scared of the David Souters he will nominate to the Supreme Court, but anything is better than Obumbler, anything.
Assuming Romney wins, and I think he will, he will have coattails. Republicans will keep the House, and may gain a few seats in the Senate. The Republican Congressmen and Senators that get elected will be more conservative than Romney, but Romney will not veto any legislation that they pass. I would also expect that any nominee he selects for the Supreme Court will have some business background, along with a faith. Work hard to get Romney elected, and that means talking to people you haven’t spoken to since Obama was elected. Some of them are embarrassed, some are disenchanted. Find them. Turn them.
I had a conversation recently with a young lady of my acquaintance. She was an avid supporter of zero, but had come to the conclusion that he really was evil.
She was planning to sit this one out, but I told her that doing so would be the same as voting for zero. I think I convinced her. If she is any example, the Won is in trouble. This is in Ill-annoy mind you.
I certainly hope you’re right. California needs to face the ugly consequences of its fiscal profligacy or it will never change. The only way you ever get a drug addict cured is to deny him access to his drug of choice.
Besides, I don’t want one thin dime of my tax money going to bail out these idiots. They got themselves into this mess, let them get themselves out of it.
Why should hard working responsible Americans bail out the California Communist Corruptocrats? Make the State go bankrupt so those obscene public employee contracts can be torn up! I live in California and we need bankruptcy!
And from everybody else, too. If ever a state deserved to get what it is getting, it is California.
Your prepping is a start; but do you have several parameters of defense around your rural abode ?
Highway 99 may well became Road Warriors Gateway from the ghetto to the latifundia and their storehouses.
I expect an autocorrect turned perimeter into parameter, and myself feel the next stage is the earth berm. And trusted boarders.
The presumption is a watch is kept. A bead is kept on the unknown through the gate, and firing begins promptly on any one over the top.
The best bet would be to make the place look either abandoned or well looted already and not worth the bother. Building an obvious fortress would attract attention and make people think it might be worth getting together a mob and overrunning the place.
Boarders could be an issue. Get more than 3 people together and you get politics. Get one sociopath or climber in the mix and it won’t be long before they are trying to unseat you. If they it is a group of stranger with no kind of bond, well, you’re out of luck. Family would be the way to go, if you can even trust them, or close friends and their families, preferably each on their own homestead but close enough for mutual support.
I was considering security while there are still reasons to leave daily for long periods.
Heinlein described the typical house built during the Crazy Years as
a cozy bungalow with a white picket fence…which would stop a tank
and everything of importance on the underground main level.
Niven described defensive decorating for urban dwellers:
Have cheap stuff visible from outside, and all the good
stuff hidden away inside.
The central question is, after the Fall, will the society give in
to the vandals, or replace Foxes with Lions in its government and
pass Heinlein’s Law:
No action, civil or criminal, may be taken by anyone or on behalf
of anyone injured or killed during the commission of a felony.
Tom Perkins,
RE your earthberms: better get the right permits for that. In most California counties you require an earth-works permit any time you move more than 50 cubic yards of earth.
These regulations purportedly serve a purpose: they prevent landowners from disturbing wetlands, polluting ‘unique waters’ with fills of unknown quality, aerosolizing ‘particulates’ like dust that might foul the air, and from diverting surface waters (usually claimed by the state) to private cisterns.
Oh, and btw, these ‘guidelines’ are forced on the states by the Federal EPA, and county supervisors all over the Southwest are charged with fronting for them. So good luck with that ‘bead’ on the ‘over-the-top’ official serving you the Environmental Quality warrant.
How about using concrete Jersey traffic barriers & large cement flower pots set in place as a barrier & they can be decorated for the purposes of concealing the true purpose & to improve the appearance?
The key here is to think about how you can create a defensive position that doesn’t appear to be a machine gun concrete pillbox.
Remember that old saying : There is more than one way to skin a cat besides sticking its head in a boot jack & yanking hard on the tail.
Getting creative while requires a little more thought will pay off in the end.
Funnily enough, this is tried and tested: I believe it was some time in 1990′s that the frontage of U.S. embassy in London got embellished with enormous concrete flower pots.
What will happen is that neighborhood watches will become more militarized or you’ll start paying protection to local gangs to secure your property.
California is getting what it tolerated. They deserve it. They earned, now they need to own it, and I’m laughing.
Outsiders may be saying that about the United States someday.
They are already saying it.
We native Californians, from the state of Nixon and Reagan, did not tolerate it. It was imported. All your lost souls and gay cousins, every asshole in your family, gravitated here and made all this crap happen.
I recall a long time ago warning people in other states what was happening and asking for their political support to stop it, and was called a racist and various things like that for my trouble. The Illegals invasion hadn’t yet hit the rest of the country, you see. I was not called names by liberals, but by your average cowardly American who didn’t want to be seen as un-PC, and who enjoyed kicking around California for its own sake. Now look what you get.
I have no confidence that the same attitude and resultant destruction will continue until there isn’t a corner of the US where an American can live as his parents did.
Yeah, because NO native Californian ever turned out to be gay. Sure thing boss.
p.s. Seems like you have some assholes in YOUR family too. Catch my drift Bruce?
While Bruce may have a__holes in his family, you seem to be ground zero for the same in yours.
Hey hey hey, you two. New Shimmer is a desert topping AND a floor wax!!
I lived in California for seven years. It was the most repulsive place that I have lived in, in all my ninety years. And I have lived all over the world. I am not talking about the Hispanics; I am talking about native Californians as well other Americans who migrated there. I live in Arizona now. What a difference. It is truly remarkable how one state’s culture can differ so much from another, especially in states so close to each other.
Really? Arizona so much better? I’ve lived in both California and now in AZ, but I don’t know which is worse. There are more bums here than I have ever seen ANY where – I counted four different vagrants digging through our trash here in MidTown Phoenix. No one wears appropriate clothing it seems- I don’t care that’s it’s 112F outside, dress as if you ARE outside. Don’t pick your nose, scrape cooties from your scalp and flick them on the ground, don’t start loud arguments in public streets. I see this on a daily basis, along with shuttered shops in yucky graffitoed mini-malls. WE BUY GOLD every few blocks. Drive Thru liquor stores. There are more bars and corner stores selling drug pipes than churches in any given city. Bums now have gotten a new trick when asking for “spare change” they have the audacity to knock on your car windows as you sit in your car. Very unnerving. This is Phoenix Arizona.
Birds of a feather flock together. If they all went there from elsewhere, it was because they weren’t tolerated in their original homes. If they found a home in California, it says something about the conditions that existed there; doesn’t it?
It is both depressing and an outrage to see what has become of my beloved state of California.
Rather than ban plastic bags, it seems the only thing left that can possibly save CA is to ban Liberalism.
I cannot laugh; CA is bad, but the problem is that its inhabitants will NOT stay there, to die a putrid death. When the pickins’ get slim, they will hop into their cars, and invade other states.
Our only hope is that NV, AZ, UT, MT, TX, and ID, among other western states, are armed to the teeth. Their sacrifice will keep them out of the Eastern states.
We hope.
Hollywood could help a turn-around if they would only make movies extolling Judeo/Christian values but first they’d have to learn them. High-tech and the motion picture industry are the most visible exports of CA. We have no choice but to use Google et.al. and we might try to support the movie industry out of patriotism because it brings in money like petroleum would, but who can stand most of those people? With few exceptions like Star Wars and Arnold Schwartzeneger, who cares? Actors are paid to utter the writer’s words and then must think they’re the profound characters they play. I used to like Ellen Barken and she was never really A-List. Who do these people think they are?
I’m sorry; did you type “Hollywood could help?” **doubles over in intense laughter followed by repeatedly pounding head on floor**
Hollywood has no interest in what you ask for, it makes fun of it. And far too much of the entertainment audience accepts what it is given.
Amen! Hollyweird has served as the chief proganda tool, for Cultural Marxism, for decades. The Creatures within are revelling in the chaos, degeneracy, and destruction.
I thought about the education part last night. I think Dr. Hanson has a more severe picture of how bad education is because he taught at CSU, and taught classics. There are still good, well-educated, bright students graduating from California schools. The big valley is worse off than other areas, and CSUs will attract the largest number of students who are not college-ready (just as Dr. Hanson describes). A lot more remediation is required at those campuses than many others. When I was teaching at Pierce College, we were given the responsibility of making sure transfer students to CSU Northridge did not need any type of remediation. Something like 80-90% of their regular students who did not attend community college first in the mid-2000s could not do college English or Math. I teach in South Orange County and moved here two years ago. I also went back to my hometown of Redlands just this last weekend. It is not so bad here or in Redlands.
Our roads still work, Road Warriors aren’t out there, everyone does NOT have full sleeves, and my students tell me openly that they were not challenged or asked to learn in high school. They are frustrated and disappointed and sad. They also do the work they are asked to do in my classes, and learn and do well!
South OC and Redlands are both conservative bastions. Redlands is beautiful, clean, with new stores and businesses opening (yeah – like a miracle), benefiting from its private university, right next to bankrupt San Bernardino, an entrenched, corrupt Democrat machine town for decades (with a CSU!). San Bernardino isn’t just corrupt, ugly, dangerous and bankrupt – it had 40% of residents on government aid in the 80s. Now, it has to be over 70%. One county over, Riverside seems to be doing well – it’s at least clean and decent, although not as conservative as it used to be, but the county is. My students here in So. OC all have jobs – some, more than one. They can get them! Business are constantly advertising for help and do hire students.
And one more thing about South OC. Driving north to LA (where I lived for 6 years, working downtown) on the 405, you can always tell the county line. That’s when the road dramatically narrows and one’s 4WD is almost essential unless you want to go 40 MPH in the slow lane. Think I’m joking? I actually needed my Landrover to drive to work or go shopping at home along CA Highway 1 (Lincoln Blvd.) in Marina Del Rey and it’s even worse now. News came out just yesterday that Holmby Hills, a small area of 40 wealthy families, wants Beverly Hills to annex its enclave and withdraw from the city of Los Angeles. They have not had their streets repaired in get this – 86 YEARS. You can tell the street and sidewalk thing in BH too. You can see the exact spot where Los Angeles ends and BH begins in the road itself.
If people can’t see the evidence with their own eyes, which is literally in the roads and streets, then no – they won’t see anything. And as I said before, 99% of them won’t live more than two days without government aid, and have no knowledge nor ability to care for themselves.
Christian values? Hosea 6:6 is no longer popular among Christians. To my eye they have become the people Jesus railed against. With the usual consequences. Evil so concentrated (instead of diffuse) that instead of individual bad acts we get a state full of bad actors. .
“extolling Judeo-Christian principles..” No. Judeo principles they ARE extolling. It’s called Talmudic principles. The ones funding and running the media are, in fact, “Judeo” to confirm the conspiracy theorists (factists?) so you will most certainly NOT find Christian principles extolled anytime soon. As a matter of fact, if you WATCH the media- you will find Christianity or any sort of morality as we know it not extolled, but vilified. Christians can only be backwoods racist hicks on TV. Don’t’ you know that? They have to be the “bad guy”. Any biological father must be a bumbling idiot. Every family is required to have one gay. No one’s allowed to stand firm to one’s Christian beliefs unless they are some sort of political crazy. Gah, don’t you even WATCH tv?
In the movie Serenity, by Josh Whedon, a whole planet of people, sort of like California’s coastal zones (or NYC or Chicago) simply become brain-dead, then dead. Below, a “Search & Rescue” lady leaves a video recording why:
“It’s the Pax, the G-32 Paxilon [Progressive-Zombification-of-All-Things-Californian) Hydroclorate that we added to the air processors (of the planet Miranda -- i.e. Golden State). Well it works. It was supposed to calm the population, weed out aggression. Make everybody safe, peaceful. The people here stopped fighting. And then they stopped everything else. They stopped going to work, stopped breeding... talking ... eating.. There's thirty million people here and they all just let themselves die... [even as Californian elites have mentally died and gone perfectly brain-dead.]
BUT “there are people… they’re not people… about a tenth of a percent of the population had the opposite reaction to the Pax. Their aggressor response increased… beyond madness. They’ve become [Reavers].. they’ve killed most of us. not just killed, they’ve done… [barbaric, beastly, unmentionable] things.”
She whirls, grabs a gun and fires — then aims the gun at her own head – but a Reaver is on her, knocks the gun away and bites her face — She screams continuously as the Reaver tops her, biting at her and tearing at her clothes, at her skin…[end of scene]
True Serenity came to California via Pat Brown’s earlier generation. Road-Warrior-Reaverville has been delivered by son Jerry Brown, in the name of Progressive Enlightenment, in the faith that the Alliance Government can make people better. But what Progressives put into the air, the news channels, the culture, the minds the progressives love to meddle with and ruin: brilliantly unmakes humans into zombie coastal elites, dumb in a smart kind of way… or zombie inland aggressors dumb in a violent/thieving kind of way.
Strange that the old (almost entirely mind-wiped and erased unto extinction) school believed mankind will always be tragically fallen… and that created one beautiful paradise, a paradise now run down into the ground and reaching hell.
Stranger still is that the coastal elites have tons of fight left in them, they will fight holders of the Tragic View, a view which will save everyone. Coastal elites would rather die than switch thinking. They will do their best, and have always done their best, to let inland California go to waste, and finally after the state is bankrupt.. even the coastal regions will go to waste… before they admit Progressive thought is nothing but decline and unending tragedy.
In this thing, Coastal Elites of America, who now keep the nation under hidden slavery of rule by few, are not unlike Southern Aristocrats of the Civil War era. At that time they, in their bones, knew they were wrong. It took a war to change their minds, not really to convince them slavery was wrong, rather… to convince them to admit their pride kept them from doing the right thing: Setting people free. Pride enslaved them, and their pride enslaved blacks.
Pride maintained by wrong-headed political elites is the only thing stopping California from being great again.
But pride is the hardest thing to kill, is it not? Californian elite pride is really much stronger than any other state’s pride. California elites will kill anything, including their own state, in order keep their pride alive, that they and only they can make California and its ill-governed citizens better.
But Cali finances will die. Bankruptcy looms. Perhaps elite Progressive dreams that are nightmares can also die.
What a funeral that will be!
“But Cali finances will die. Bankruptcy looms. Perhaps elite Progressive dreams that are nightmares can also die. What a funeral that will be!”
Don’t long for the funeral. At that funeral you will not be a pallbearer. You will be among those who get stuck with the bill. The funeral home will be owned by the prosperous Federal Bailout Brothers and the procession will lead to the End of America Cemetery with the Most Reverend B. Hussein Obama providing soothing words of consolation to the mourners from the Holy Book of Marx while the Teachers Union Choir sings hymns of praise to Him (The Reverend) in the background.
Re-read the Declaration of Independence, particularly the preamble:
‘all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer,
__while_evils_are_sufferable__’
Do you really think the solvent states will allow themselves to be
beggared, bled dry, in order to provide a temporary transfusion to
the failed states ?
“Do you really think the solvent states will allow themselves to be
beggared, bled dry, in order to provide a temporary transfusion to
the failed states ?”
Seriously Anon, allow themselves? What choice is there? So what if other states are solvent and their citizens don‘t wish to bail out California? What does that have to do with it? What are they going to do….refuse to abide the 16th amendment? The federal government is going to provide the bailout and you are going to pony up the cash via your federal taxes regardless of the solvency or insolvency of the particular state in which you reside. They will either take it from the citizenry thru federal taxation, or print it, or borrow it from the Chinese who will probably take California as collateral (just kiddin’…..but maybe not a bad idea).
Clearly, my accidentally anonymous post was unclear.
Let me be more direct: An individual is powerless to
resist the Federal Government – short of violence.
A large corporation, such as IBM back in the 60′s,
could and did successfully resist Federal antitrust
actions in court; There were lawyers who spent their
entire careers on the case, and retired early and rich.
A State such as Texas, which has a larger economy than
most European nations, can and will use political and
legal means to avoid compliance with Federal attempts
at confiscation of _wealth_ not money. One example
would be Fed attempts to set price controls on oil.
As to taxes: when the inevitable inflation devalues
the Fed funny money to the point where workers are
barely able to afford necessities, there will be
a move to a cash economy, barter, and other means
of tax evasion; When everybody is doing it, the Feds
will be unable to stop it, and the Feds will run out
of money to pay for enforcement.
What will happen to those who depend on the Federal Dole
to survive, and what they will do about it, is another,
much uglier story.
You are SO correct. I was married into a family of them for 15 years. The older generation made billions and put it in trust for their nearly-all-psychologically-messed-up progeny. Their businesses have died by the thousands and the kids have run off to Texas, Colorado, Idaho and Montana. Living off their trust funds. Trillions of dollars of wealth losing value rapidly. The buildings housing the once prosperous industries sit idle. The old folks paying the taxes on buildings they cannot lease.
You hit upon something very significant. I have always said that Pride is far more problematical than the mistakes we make. Without Pride we would eventually make the right choices.
“They didn’t learn how to open a good history book or poem, much less acquire even basic skills such as mowing the law or hammering a nail.”
Best typo ever–indeed, it is time to “mow the law”. I would put it, “mow the laws, however. I think that would help.
Sadly well said. I have always thought science fiction a primer for how to see trends and think in the longer term. Science fiction writers who are not politically correct have seen this coming for a long time.
It is as you say: you cannot have the wholesale transfer of intellectually dead people from the Third World and pretend they are the same as the intellectually aggressive past immigrant that made America simply based on politically correct faith and thrust aside any concerns with charges of racism.
As someone who has traveled extensively within the Third World I can tell you they are charming backwaters of almost laughable failure compared to America, plied by old buses and trains held together by spit and grease. The train station near Chandni Chowk in New Delhi has to be seen to be believed.
Immigration together with liberal programs that sustain and excuse away their failure will destroy America as surely as a hostile invasion of Kalkars from Burroughs’s moon.
Science fiction as a primer can, in addition to Road Warrior, be seen in Orwells 1984. He was a bit off on his timing, but was right on with his foresight.
Actually I’ve recently wondered if Orwell was seeing the future, or if the future has elected to emulate his writings.
My fave way of describing our present day circumstances is to say that we live in Brave New 1984. I think its accurate. We have Big Brother as described but he’s a sex fiend and wants to assure that we are all constantly in heat. As C.S. Lewis described decades ago this assures our sales resistance is suppressed.
Orwell was spot on just a few decades too soon, One of THE most unbelievable parts of 1984 were the cameras and microphones in the woods used to spy on citizens. Every single day I go running on a new trail in the AZ countryside north of PHX, I see two government cameras attached to the trees, in heavy steel boxes, painted to hide them. I give them the finger running by, both ways.
One camera I might believe was for watching animals, NOT two cameras pointed at each other. Big brother is here, and he IS watching you EVERY damned where.
Mad Max is coming soon also, to YOUR home town. Be prepared, buy salt, potassium, water filters for hiking. ammunition. store gasoline, the electrical power drops between one second and the next, and everything changes forever at that point.
Orwell completely missed one important aspect of his dystopia. He assumed an abnormal state-sanctioned aversion to sex would be a tool to control the masses, when the exact opposite is true. Unbridled promiscuity is the modern bread and circuses designed to keep the populace pacified. Huxley got this one right.
Actually we live in a bad gene splice of Huxley and Orwell.
Sex may be one of the aspects of bread and circuses, but population control of we great unwashed masses is being done through on-demand abortion and state sponsored contraception.
And many other ways. Like fluoride in water and toothpaste (reduces both fertility and intelligence), like mercury in vaccines (also does both), like vaccines which cause inability to carry a pregnancy to term, like, probably, chemicals in your razor blade ‘lubricating strip’ which reduce sperm count, genetically modified foods with infertility vaccine built into them, not to mention all the television programming designed to destroy family, femininity and masculinity, morality, etc..
The only problem with the Hiroshima-Detroit comparison by Glenn Beck is that the photos are of Yokohama, not Hiroshima. (Trust me, I live in Saitama City, on the opposite-north-end of the Tokyo-Yokohama agglomeration.) Even so, Yokohama wasn’t in very great shape in 1945, either, so the analogy holds.
I visited Hiroshima in 2009, my family is from Detroit. I was struck by the difference, Hiroshima is wall-to-wall six-story-plus apartment and commercial buildings, with a neat pedestrian commercial area featuring covered arcades. Virtually all of it is post-1945. The closest large structure to the detonation point is probably the baseball stadium where the Hiroshima Carp play.
Detroit arguably has a better baseball stadium. Otherwise, Hiroshima wins, it looks like a starship compared to most of Detroit.. Everything that racial politics and machine politics and government assistance can do to a city has been done to Detroit. It took longer than the blast wave and firestorm in Hiroshima but the effects were no less devastating and the rebuilding will take no less time, although the destruction has to sop occurring first to rebuilding to begin. One wonders I they will build a memorial and museum to commemorate he weapons used, as has been done in Hiroshima. They can have the Good Intentions room, and the Unintended Consequences room, and the Public Unions room, with scale models of Detroit before and after Section 8 to show the destruction.
With any luck, it will horrify future generations.
As an inner city landlord for 30 years, I would upgrade “Section 8″ to a room of its own in your proposed museum as a city destroyer. Alternatively you might just call it the HUD room. Please don’t leave out the picutures and bios of its major supporters, especially the Republican ones, who of course themselves never lived near any section 8 housing.
Yes, re: Section 8. What a disaster.
Oi, Section 8. My part-time job that keeps me in the ranks of the under-employed rather than simply being unemployed is to proofread apartment complex newsletters, and some of our clients are section 8 complexes. Not only is the staff list at such a complex inevitably two to three times longer than the one at a regular complex, but you wouldn’t believe the list of programs we (taxpayers) pay for – free lunches all summer to replace school lunches for people already likely receiving food stamps, free classes of all kinds from exercise to karate to cooking to job prep to ESL and GED to movie nights and other free entertainment and parties. Normal complexes have these things too, but they pay for them out of customer rents.
I have a friend whose Dad was in ‘flooring’ in Rhode Island. He said every time someone moved out of a HUD apartment, the flooring would be replaced whether needed or not, and no matter how long someone was in the apartment. Bribes were what got the contracts.
There may also be another industry of corruption out there, one of public administering for old folks, killing them, and getting their social security checks. How many 100 year old SS recipients are there? It would be interesting to make a map based on SS Administration records, and compare to the known demographics. The anomalies would be where corruption exists in government, and where, if there were any FBI agents who cared, they would zero in and find the murderers and criminals and put them behind bars.
Which “Future Generations”? The descendants of the builders of Detroit? They’ve fled elsewhere, and are rapidly dwindling in total Global population. I’m referring, of course, to White people.
Are you referring to the descendants of the present population of Detroit? They are the ones that destroyed Detroit. I’m referring, of course, to Blacks.
Unless Whites, as a Race, snap out of our collective malaise, and timidity, and lunatic, suicidal delusions of Racial Utopianism, and stop caving to every screaming, demanding, agressive Race Hustler, and stop LYING about Race – no one will be left, to care about What Happended to Detroit, or California, or New York, or Atlanta, or Phoenx, or Philadelphia, or Western Europe…
Is it not likely that culture (low culture) is responsible for the decline in Detroit rather than race? While race can be used politically, if the people were elevated in their apprehension of their true interests it is unlikely they would support those political leaders who relegate them to a life of low living and dependence, slipping into servility and eventually, into slavery. It is true of a white underclass in America as well as other ethnic or racial groups.
Like the analysis, hate the conclusion:
Yet I am confident of better days to come.
How do you do that without violence? There’s no choice but to take out the trash one way or the other. VDH is on the back foot here, waiting to react to the next outrage and hoping to finesse.
Passive-reactive tactics are not enough. The police are now corrupt antagonists — those vigorous ticket writing charades to secure the boat payment are now commonplace. In the last year, I’ve seen them in CA, CO, AZ, MS and UT. Will someone tell me I was just unlucky and there’s really no problem there or elsewhere? Seems to me it’s down to you and your family, friends and neighbors to come up with a pro-active strategy backed by heavy weapons. Urgently, that includes zero tolerance for the new Homeland policy to seed the skies with drones. If that battle is lost, turn out the lights. The hand-pump on the well will be worse than useless.
Meanwhile, zip, no sense of outrage of any kind from Romney. Would someone explain why Romney is the source of our salvation? Trust us, we’re told, the man has ‘hidden depths’. Right.
Tick-tock tick-tock. An increasingly frightened Supreme Court — Scalia, no less, perhaps taken aback by the venom directed at Roberts — has just discovered a ‘previously unknown’ state right to restrict ‘intimidating’ weapons (WTF?). We’re near midnight.
Sadly, there are simply not enough bullets.
Certainly not with the Department of Homeland Security buying 450 million hollowpoint .40 caliber rounds.
I’m glad I stayed with 9mm. You can get 100 HP rounds at Walmart for $27. 223 is still hard to find.
When I was a kid growing up in the vestigial remains of the Jim Crow South I dreamed of living in California, having a “Little Deuce Coupe,” having my 409 “gitty-up,” or spending my evening with “The Girls on the Beach.” Later I even had some attraction to “going to San Francisco,” though I never quite made it to having flowers in my hair. For those of us in the un-cool parts of America, California was what we dreamed of.
As late as the early ’80s, it still seemed idyllic when I languidly took 101. It was still nice in the late ’80s when I spent a week in Monterrey at a training class, though if I’d “approached” the comely lady lawyer in my class the way she “approached” me, I’d still be in jail; CA was getting wierd.
My wife’s family settled in the Central Valley, not far from you, in the ’80s. I visited them fairly often from the mid-’90s and the deterioriation of civil society was dramatically obvious. In the ’90s we’d fly into Oakland or SFO and drive over the pass to Patterson. After a few years getting out of the Bay Area was just too much hassle especially since CA law disarmed us. Alaska Airlines flew into Sacramento and we began to take that route down I-5. Over the years, the guard rails and the lights disappeared and the road surface deteriorated. My last trip down there in ’11 was just plain scary as I drove south on I-5 in the middle of the night. My mother in law passed in ’11 and we inherited her property. We sold it for what we could get and won’t be going back to Failifornia.
I had that dream also. Good Memories, are good.
Was graduated from CSU Fresno in 1980, left and never looked back. Might revisit Yosemite some day but really knew it was heading downhill withe the first tenure of the loony progeny of Pat Brown.
For all of you that might consider visiting CA, don’t plan on listening to CD’s on your car stereo. The roads are so atrocious that the bouncing of your car will wreck CD’s in the player. I use USB compatible car audio with an IPod. If you do come this summer, be ready for a flurry of road construction. They seem to do this every two years, so us locals can see a little bit of our taxes are being used for something useful. They don’t increase road capacity; they just repair the most egregious sections to be found in areas with Democratic representation in Sacramento. The “Golden State.” riiiiight.
Been up and down I-5 to Orange Co. and San Diego a number of times in the past 6 years. Southbound in Kern County, you have to pay attention big time, to avoid potholes. I noticed the potholes and cracks in the pavement seem to be worse where there are overpasses above the highway (?) Kid outta college now, don’t have to make that drive anymore. Son heard VDH speak at his school while he was a junior — said he wished he had just one prof that was as interesting.
Last summer I drove from California to Kansas (northern route) and back (southern route). The worst stretch of road on the whole trip was a section of CA 101 just north and south of Santa Barbara, one of the wealthiest enclaves in the state. I spent the night there (hadn’t been there for about 15 years) and was dismayed to see the decline of the beach area – gang grafitti, filth, homeless people. I couldn’t get out of there fast enough. I live on the Central Coast and it’s getting bad here, too. But, Santa Barbara’s fall from its hayday was astonishing!
What???.I’ve been up and down I-5 four times in the last three years,on a motorcycle at that.The hwy is in excellent condition.Exactly what is wrong with you?
Guess you’ve just become accustomed to bad roads – or you’re just stupid, in which case you fit in nicely in California.
As to that “family farm” you keep introducing in your essays: “You didn’t build that!”
All the working people of America need to know…
Greedy corporations are the cause of all of the problems Hanson discusses in this article. Sixty to Eighty acre farms are not viable only because big agribusiness has stolen all the land from independent farmers and made them slaves working for nothing but room and board. If the workers would rise up and seize the land from greedy agribusiness, every farmworker could such a tract of land of his own.
Declining educational standards happen becuase greedy corporations do not want people to be educated. They want docile slaves and mindless consumers, and they alos don not want to pay the taxes necessary to maintain a proper scool system. If taxes on corpoartions were only high enough, the school system could educate everybody to a very high standard; in which case, the students would rise up against the greedy corporations and crush them for good.
Crime only occurs because a pitiles corpoarchy allows so many to starve it should not be surprising that some resort to violence to obtain what they need. Ironically, in the case Hanson cited, there was no vioence at all. They were desperate starving people who risked being poisoned to obtain food they would need to survive a few days more. If we would only raise taxes on corporations high enough, we could provide all people with the housing, food, and health care they need and crime would disappear.
It is truly sad that you can believe such tripe.
1. “Corporations,” are not the biggest problem. See any analysis of Adam Smith’s masterwork, or engage in ECON101 at any reputable college, to understand comparative advantage. If a big, evil corporation is such a problem, why are you working with a computer, created and manufactured by evil corporations? How about that electricity, all from wind and solar power I assume? Don’t decry capitalism and suckle it’s teat at the same time, you sound like a damned fool.
2. Raising taxes on those who produce only increases costs on the goods or services produced. You’d figure that decades of thievery by government overseers would sink in at SOME point….
3. Corporations have nothing to do with public “education.” If corporations sponsored education, they would create and enforce rules that were beneficial to the practice of education. Education would not be undertaken for no benefit, because it would be a waste of resources in such an instance. Again, ECON101 or Adam Smith; you cannot afford to be so gullible in this world.
4. It is NOT the government’s place or responsibility to provide food, medical care, or other staples of life to anybody. It is the individual’s responsibility to provide for themselves without interfering with another’s right to do the same, and the government’s place is to SAFEGUARD THE RIGHTS INHERENT TO THE CITIZEN’S LIFE. This is precisely why communist visions, such as your comment alludes to, fail miserably. Your rights and your business are not mine, and do not pick my pocket to line your own. When you rob Peter to pay Paul, two things are certain: Peter will love it and Paul will hate it.
Yeah, California is having problems. We still are the most prosperous state. We have been for decades. Where exactly are things great? Maybe a few spots lucky enough to have oil or natural gas. Most of the world is in resecession. Unemployment is too high in most of the civilized world. Yes education is in trouble. The US Goverment noticed that people with college degrees, on average, make more money than HS grads, so the government made it a mission to get more people into school rooms without regard to quality or what subjects the students were taking. For profit diploma mill private schools and more kids getting BA’s in liberal arts than sciences lead to Americans oweing more in student loans than credit cards. But there are so few options for HS grads anymore. It used to be you could make a good living off what you learned in shop class. I am not sure of the solutions, but just because some things worked better in the past does not mean that past solutions will work today.
Wow. This has got to be parody, correct? I can’t believe than anyone other than an occupant of some (fill in the blank) “studies” curriculum at one of our finer Ivy League institutions could write such tripe.
As an aside, I live among Amish who are busily farming their 60-80 acre farms. It is obvious that they are doing quite well. It is also obvious that they are very industrious. Hmm. Could there be a connection? Perhaps some Ivy League institution could send teams of researchers here to study these religious Neanderthals and see if there is a connection between “Hard Work” and “Success” Then they could turn that into a “Studies” program!
I’m guessing your post is sarcasm, yes?
“Declining educational standards happen becuase greedy corporations do not want people to be educated.”
Stardards have declined, but for different reasons than you state. Corporations recruit local talent, but will go aboard to get those who can fulfill the roles. Shame that our public schools fail to teach anymore.
Folks, pay careful attention to what “Throbbin” is writing. For those who think that progressives will have learned a lesson when California goes down the toilet “Throbbin” is giving you a heads-up. Corporate greed will be the reason for the demise and certainly not liberal governance. My bet is that old “Throbbin” is warming up “Wall Street” for his next targeted post. Great post, Throbbin! Thanks for the insight into the liberal “brain” and the heads-up on things to come.
This comment lacks the humor necessary to be either parody or sarcasm. No, gentle reader, behold the full Monty of Marxist indoctrination. Corporations are the new kulaks, you see. Social justice demands they be stripped of their ill-gotten gains in the name of “the poor” (formerly known as the “proletariat” except they don’t really work anymore). Welcome to class warfare in the post-modern era. And be very afraid because the man in the white house believes this very same drivel.
“Crime only occurs because a pitiles corpoarchy allows so many to starve”
—
This has got to be a parody. Morbid obesity is a major health problem among the “poor.” And if evil corporations were the problem, then California should be getting better, not worse, since so many evil corporations are feeling the state.
Spell check needed
When you channel Dear Leader you have to put in some clues that you’re joking.
YOu forgot the sarcasm tag!
Wow! Your insane drivel (surprised you didn’t mention the Illuminati or the Bildebergers as it seems the PCT type have drifted from the far right to the far left recently) actually answers a question that has been bugging me lately. How can over 40% of American still support the stunningly incompetent, affirmative action, empty headed, empty suited, socialist failure currently at 1600 Pennsylvania.
Wow, there are people like you out there, and even more frighteningly you can vote and are allowed to drive a car.
Not only that..But they are permitted to reproduce as well!
How frightening.
For exhibit A explaining WHY California is in the deplorable condition described by Dr. Hanson, I give you: Throbbin’ Yobbin.
His post is too letter perfect not to be a product of the UC system.
“If the workers would rise up and seize the land from greedy agribusiness, every farmworker could such a tract of land of his own.”
What if someone else in turn seized the land from the workers who seized the land from the greedy agribusiness?
How do restore property rights, when it suits you, if you have abolished pproperty rights to secure the particular situation which suits you, but may not suit someone else?
You are, of course, insane.
“If we would only raise taxes on corporations high enough, we could provide all people with the housing, food, and health care they need and crime would disappear.”
Where do you begin with a statement like this? Quite possibly the most inane, childish, and naive comment I have read in quite a while. Hey, how about this one: If we gave everyone 10 million dollars, we’d all be rich and no one would have to work!
God help us.
I find Dr. Hanson’s report highly moving and deeply unsettling. Here is a man of high education and erudition, a superb scholar in History, living in the two worlds of near-vanishing small farming and educational/technical elitism, scared as hell of the retrogression of the social structure and governance of a major state the size of several European counties. In a time when the anti-capitalists are blathering about “sustainability” he finds himself living, when he is in Selma, in a society that is clearlly unsustainable. When he goes to the economically thriving environs of Stanford he finds himself among the ruling elite who have utterly no awareness – or concern – for the Road Waarrior conditions 150 miles away.
The lesson and the message are clear to all who read his words. We have this example of the destructiveness of “progressive” (Socialist-directed) governance right under our nose, and 40% of our electorate are eager to expand it. The journalist world is complicit, dedicated to go beyond ignoring it, but promulgating it. These are matters that the need to be made apparent to every voter in an election that is critical to our future.
I wish Mitt Tomney had a measure of charisma, but have been heartened by his increasing demonstration of straight talking and willingness to confront the charlatans in this White House. One thing that every voter needs to know about the Mormons is that, unlike any other denomination, their faith is tied to a traditional America in its very doctrine. Not only that: one of its tenets is that their members take care of their own welfare and do not expect the government to do so. With VDH, I lam guardedly optimistic and see hope that this very decent and highly competent man will continue to show his moral and managerial capabilities and leadershipqualities. He is truly a lot better than just a mere best of two.
“With VDH, I lam guardedly optimistic and see hope that this very decent and highly competent man will continue to show his moral and managerial capabilities and leadershipqualities. He is truly a lot better than just a mere best of two”
Stuart, I sincerely hope you are correct…but the tide of social interaction, lack of classical education, and lack of personal responsibility bodes ill for us all.
Well said. I would add that Stanford is also unsustainable, if for no other reason that without the food from rural areas, it could not survive. Same could be said for it’s energy and water sources. Yet is is those from the detached, elite areas that are promoting policies that are jeopardizing the lifeblood of their own enclaves. Rome’s population fell precipitously, and so could say, San Francisco’s, if they blow up their own dam. Even the Romans weren’t dumb enough to blow their own aqueducts. Who knows, maybe the Romans did just that in a fit of environmentalism? Perhaps we need a revisionist history book on the subject. Sounds like a fun project for the good Professor. ;o) I’ll bet there are a lot of left-leaning institutions that would buy truckloads of that, while passing on works like “Who Killed Homer”.
The Romans didn’t blow their own aqueducts, but the Goths and Vandals didn’t know how to maintain them and let them collapse.
The collapse of the Roman Empire is a fascinating read, and there are remarkable parallels to the present situation. Perhaps VDH could do a column on the similarities some time? The Goths and Vandals didn’t invade, really – they were invited in to settle border areas and act, essentially, as border security for the Western Roman Empire; when things collapsed they simply took over.
It’s true that the Goths were at least somewhat invited in but the Vandals invaded and were very destructive of Gaul, Hispania, and Roman Africa. There is a good argument that the Vandal conquest of Africa and Rome’s loss of its produce and tax revenue was the proximate cause of the dissolution of the Western Roman Empire. The Byzantine Emperor Justinian reclaimed Africa and most of Italy very nearly restoring the Western Empire but was thwarted by the Plague, thus sealing the fate of the Western Empire and Roman Europe. Roman infrastructure fell apart because there simply wasn’t the money to take care of it and much of it was looted for building material. After a generation or two there simply wasn’t the skill to take care of it and in many cases the knowledge of even what the Roman artificacts did was gone. What would we think of an iPad if there’d been no electricity for a couple of hundred years?
Jack Whyte’s “The Skystone” and its progeny do a superb job of describing how Roman commonplace became magic over a couple of hundred years; it is a great take on the Arthurian legend.
Is there anywhere else to move? I look at CATO’s economic freedom index and Switzerland, Canada, Australia and New Zealand are really the only nations who are freer and also share a similar heritage. Does/Can the answer be found internally? I just don’t think so.
If the US goes under, those four, and the rest of western civilization won’t be far behind. That is why the US has been the main enemy of the global left since Lenin. We are all that stands between civilization and Thunder Dome.
Incredible though it may seem, the Obama administration is plotting to hand over the Arab world, from Libya, to the Gulf to Syria and Iraq – to the Muslim Brothers. The goal is fourfold:
1. to create a new Caliphate that will ultimately be in the service of the neo-Communists. At least that is their hope.
2. to destroy Israel
3. to bring America to its knees by controlling the foreign oil market while prohibiting domestic production (aka Thunder Dome).
4. to sow chaos through a new global Jihad.
This has been one of their primary objectives since gaining control of the Presidency in 2008. They feel that dramatically reducing the population of the Earth is their duty.
It is good to see that John Bolton is part of Romney’s foreign policy team.
You’ve got to be kidding! Don’t go to Canada. Canada is a socialist nanny state. I’m an American who has lived here for five years and can’t wait to get out. Believe me when I say that it is very easy for a person who has grown up in a free country to recognize oppression.
The health care system in Canada is, just like all other socialized health care systems, a system of denial and rationing of care. I pray that my husband and I don’t get really sick while we’re still here. Canada spends between 50% and 60% of its GDP on health care. This is unsustainable. Canada will be Greece in a decade or two.
Everything here costs two to three times what it costs in the U.S. It costs almost $50 for a case (24 cans) of beer. I rarely buy chicken or beef anymore because it’s so expensive. And we live in the largest beef and poultry producing area in Ontario. American products sold here are down-sized and cost three times as much.
We have a modest home with modest furnishings, bring in about $4,000 a month from our pensions, and can barely make ends meet. We don’t dine out or go to movies; our clothes are the clothes we had when we retired. We don’t travel much, just three hours south to visit family occasionally. I don’t know how families with children make it here.
Our house is for sale, and we are moving back to the U.S. as soon as the signatures are on the closing papers. This plan may change, however, if The One is re-elected, because if he is, the U.S. will be no better than Canada and then there will be no place anywhere to escape to. For the time being, though, if you want to travel “the road to serfdom,” move to the welfare state known as Canada.
Thank you for the tip on Canada, bad deal.I don’t remember who said it but to paraphrase: This is it (USA), there is no where else to go for FREEDOM.
While it’s clear from the tone of your post that you’re unhappy, I think you’ve let your personal situation colour the “facts” which you presented.
Health care does not consume 50-60% of GDP here. The actual figure is about 10%, as opposed to 15% in the States. (These are OECD statistics.) It does typically consume about 50% of provincial government revenue, which is possibly what you’re referring to.
I hope you don’t get sick either, but if you do you will probably get excellent care. I’ve had three life threatening medical events in the last 15 years and in every case was treated promptly and superbly. The system is far from perfect and could actually benefit from a larger private sector, especially in diagnostics. And waits for elective surgery can sometimes be long. But when you take everything into account it’s actually a good and effective system.
Things do not cost “2-3 times more” here. Overall, prices have been found to be 15-20% more for many items. Many others cost the same. The example you mentioned, beer, is one of the few exceptions. Keep in mind too that since most health care costs come out of taxes a large chunk of your disposable income is not going towards health insurance premiums.
Neither is Canada a socialist nanny state (though your province, Ontario, has strong tendencies in that direction.) Unlike the U.S., Canada has a majority Conservative government which has been steadily rolling back the liberal policies of the few previous decades. Opinion on this is, of course, split, but keep in mind that most socialist voters are found in Quebec. Absent that province Canada would elect Conservatives almost all the time. Canadians generally support government, but don’t insist that it look after them from cradle to grave as is increasingly the case in the U.S.
My wife and I live on about $4,000 too, and we live well. It mainly depends on whether your house is paid off and whether you’ve acquired an investment portfolio over your working life. That is true anywhere. And speaking of houses, very few in Canada are worth less than the buyer paid.
I’m not trying to sugar coat the real shortcomings here, but you have presented a very one sided and inaccurate picture of Canadian society.
The published fact that there are more MRI machines in the City of Philadelphia than there are in the entire Nation of Canada tells me all I need to know about the quality of healthcare in Canada…
A Canadian wood products research study used an MRI machine to peer into logs. Yes, logs, as in logs cut from trees. The purpose was to “map” the knots inside the log and estimate the products that could be produced. The researcher who presented this study at the conference said the machine was not being used.
If Canada is that bad, then why don’t you leave? I am 76 years of age, was born in Alberta, as were my parents, and I believe that we are the most fortunate people in the world right now. The whole world seems to be in turmoil, and it is no doubt that we may all be affected, but whatever the case may be, at this point, I am glad to be Canadian.
Nina: On behalf of my fellow Americans, “You’re welcome.”
Bullcrap!
Maybe you got royally ripped off in ON but not here in QC and we pay the highest
taxes anywhere in North America.
$23.99 for a 24 of Labatt’s Blue (plus deposit)
$4.98 Lb for a good ribeye steak.
Gas is a little expensive though @ $1.35 L which equates to $5.40 a gallon.That I have trouble with seeing as how we are sending several hundred thousand barrels daily your way and you guys pay less than we do.
And we’ve found ways of living on $3,000.00 monthly combined gov’t pension for 2. Sure it’s tough but it can be done and before I forget-the medical system.
Maybe not the best in the world but damn close. It’s saved my life a couple of times. Sure there are plenty of horror stories regarding terribly long wait times for diagnoses but when you make it into the system you get taken care of.
And worst of all, the Canadiens stink!
Here in Alberta, Canada’s oil-rich Texas, we’re doing well economically, but…
We’re being swamped by immigrants. Hanson mentioned 1-2% being undoable; here in Canada, we import 1% of our population each year in new immigrants. By 2030 it will be 50%, few of them from commonwealth nations (I wrote a post recently going into greater detail).
Fast food places are entirely run by Filipinos. Indians and Arabs own the liquor stores. The Cantonese own half of Vancouver, and I’m sure there are a dozen other such geographic/commercial ghettos. It’s flipping fast. Just a few years ago you’d see native-born Canadians – teens or old ladies, looking for a way to get out of the house – serving your coffee. Now it’s almost inevitably someone with an accent.
Even Fort McMurray – one of the main driving engines behind the oil sands – is 50% immigrant, and the whites that are there are entirely prole. You don’t see much of the cowboy spirit, of young men working hard.
The amount that immigrants cost us through social services is just slightly less than our deficit, and yet they keep brining them in. Human Rights tribunals protect immigrants from offensive speech, while demanding that businesses kowtow to their cultural demands.
If there’s any hope at all, it’s that a reaction is growing… but on the East and West coast, the same liberal pap reigns. Besides, fleeing to another country isn’t an option. Soon there wont’ be anywhere left for us to go. See Copperhead: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRKnYyyqkic
Central California sounds as much like “The Omega Man” as it does “Road Warrior,” with Prof. Hanson in the role of Neville – forced to retreat to an armed compound at night as destructive, bloodthirsty mutants wreak havoc on what remains of the “civilized world” while trying to destroy him and his way of life. God help him – and us.
What saddens is that I know many people who actually seem excited for this kind of anarchical reality to come into existence. I’m sure they’ll enjoy it much less when it arrives on their doorstep. I, for one, just hope that California’s inevitable bottoming-out (probably won’t be as bad as The Road Warrior, but you never know) will serve as a lesson for the rest of the country to get it together, and prevent this from happening elsewhere.
“Since about 1992, on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) testing, California ranks between 41 and 48 in math and science, depending on the year and the particular grade that is assessed. About half of the incoming freshmen at the California State University system — the largest public university in the world — are not qualified to take college courses, and must first complete “remediation” to attain a level of competence that was assumed forty years ago in the senior year of high school. The students I taught at CSU Fresno were far better prepared in 1984 than those in 2004 are; the more money, administrators, “learning centers,” and counselors, the worse became the class work.”
This is what drives me insane. Since the “Great Society” began back in the 1960s, we have spent literally trillions of dollars on education all over the United States. Yet today, education in public schools in America is arguably worse than it was back in the 1960s. Worse, the Democrats’ only answer to this is MORE MONEY! All you hear from Obama is shoveling more and more money into this failed system with absolutely no accountability and very little success.
And not a single Democrat is willing to take on one of the root causes of this disaster, which is the teacher’s union. Never has a single organization spread more misery and failure on to the overall population. But the Democrats always kiss the Teacher’s Union’s ring in every election, never once questioning whether or not what they are doing is actually harming this country.
As for “No Child Left Behind?” Yet another bloated Federal project that is a failure, only this one created under the Bush administration. Have national scores skyrocketed since No Child Left Behind was instituted? Have more kids stayed in high school and have gone on to successful college careers because of it? Not at all. And yet for some reason we stick with this stupid program that’s costing Americans billions of dollars each year.
Education is going nowhere fast in this country and simply throwing money at the problem is NOT the answer. In fact, not a lot of money is needed for a really successful school. Don’t believe me? Well, just look at the private Catholic schools which run on budgets that are just a fraction of the ones possessed by public schools. Yet not only do the Catholic schools survive, they thrive and turn out fine students. The charter schools are not that far behind them, either, and they still put many of the public schools to shame.
Money is not the answer. Structure, discipline, tight security in the schools, strict rules, and decent teachers more interested in teaching rather than marking time until they get their pensions would make a big difference in what we have now. And the bottom line is, what we have now really isn’t working. Time to try something new and not necessarily more expensive.
While your assessment about NO Child Left Behind is accurate, remember that the NCLB bill was a joint effort and fully co-written by the Democrats in the form of Ted Kennedy. It passed by 85% in the house and 90% in the senate.
In support of you other point, the Democrats have no ability to correctly address the causes of their failures. They have wholly abandon their support for NCLB (and deny they ever were in support) to blame the Republicans for the program’s inevitable failure. What’s important to the Democrats is to pass popular legislation, take credit for passing it to maintain a charade they are doing something. They then blame Republicans for failure, and demand new legislation that requires more money. The Republicans’ primary error is continuing to expect that the Democrats actually want to solve problems.
It drives me crazy that all people talk about is money when they talk about education. Nobody talks about the dumbed-down curriculum and non-existent standards of academic rigor and discipline that are the norm today. And even more frightening is the fact that the new teachers who have come into the system for the last 20 years are themselves products of the same failed schools that are now hiring them. So we have dumbed-down teachers teaching dumbed-down students. That’s a recipe for success?
I’m a retired teacher. Put me in a room with a blackboard; chalk; a world map, paper, pencils, and crayons; an accurate history book; and some anthologies of classic literature, and I could turn out by fifth grade what we’re currently turning out from most universities. Money is not the answer. A classic curriculum, adademic standards, and discipline are the answers. And get rid of all these feel-good self-esteem programs and bring back character education.
You are absolutely correct. The real solution is essentially that simple. But the Teachers’ Union will see that it never happens.
The “teachers’ union” qua union doesn’t control nor much care what is taught in the classroom. There isn’t a bargaining law in the Country that lets them control the curriculum or even much influence educational policy such as discipline and grading standards.
The problem is that teachers have spent their whole lives in the classroom and surrounded by people who think like they do; they marry teachers, socialize with teachers, go to the same entertainments and events as other teachers. The problems in educational policy come from the Education Schools and from state and local boards of education. Unfortunately, the teachers act as a political party in elections to school boards but it isn’t nearly so much a factor of their unionization as a factor of their common beliefs. The Education Association is just as politically powerful in right to work states that don’t countenance public employee collective bargaining as it is in fully unionized states.
We conservatives/Republicans control the majority of the state governments but I’m willing to bet that practically every one of those Republican governors when confronted with choosing a commissioner/secretary of education or appointing members to the State Board of Education or the Board of Regents did it as an afterthought and probably called one of his/her “friends” in education for recommendations. If we paid half as much attention to who is appointed or elected to these vital positions as we do to a nothing state house seat, we could change educational policy practically overnight. The one thing that we can’t change by attending to these positions is federal discrimination law but even that isn’t as onerous as the general counsels and AGs make it out to be; most “compliance” with discrimination law is really cowardly settlements to avoid the bad publicity of fighting it out. In today’s World, it is really hard to win a discrimination suit unless you can show some direct and intended harm to an individual plaintiff. It is really easy however to get some chickens**t general counsel or AG to recommend a settlement to political principals who have less knowledge and usually no more guts than s/he does. Most of the decline in both discipline and academic standards can be laid squarely at the feet of fear of discrimination suits.
I finished high school in the earliest days of “integration” in The South when the NAACP made sure it picked the best and brightest to be the brave souls that first went to the white schools. Sorry, but those kids who came to my school as juniors and seniors couldn’t have gotten out of the eight grade their on their own if their lives depended on it. The myth of integration was that all it would take was equal resources. It was quickly apparent that equal academic performance was going to take generations and nobody was willing to deal with that so the dumbing down began and continues and when every disciplinary incident gave rise to a discrimination suit, discipline disappeared. The dumbing down and the lack of discipline just made it easier for the Gramscian types in the Ed Schools to invent leftist curricula and indoctrinate future teachers.
I will guarantee you that the majority of your town’s school board was elected with the endorsement of the NEA in an election held on the third Tuesday after the fourth Monday after the second full moon when Venus was with Mars and the only people who voted were teachers and other public employees and those who had their hooves in the trough some way or another. Want to make a fundamental transformation? Have all local elections on the General Election day. Yeah, people will complain about long, complex ballots, especially in states that allow initiatives but really, if you’re too stupid to vote, you’re too stupid to vote.
You brought up what you perceived as the lack in academic ability of people who were integrated into “white schools”. About that, allowing that it is the case, is there not an argument that could be made on behalf of people who were slaves and forced into relationships to breed more children for their size, and ability to work alone? Such people’s progeny would inherit what their parents had and didn’t have. In this respect I think that the calls for “social justice” may have some merit, but they must be framed up in this respect. But it is a sensitive issue, because it would be embarrassing for a people to admit that they were bottlenecked for a couple of hundred years to be big and dumb. It is not to suggest that anyone has a direct responsibility for slavery, but that the society which allowed slavery does have such a responsibility to the people it now calls equals, who were not simply brought down emotionally, culturally, and economically, but genetically. I think that there is merit in this, but what do you say, and if you do agree what do you think could possibly rectify?
They need to grind their way out of it. The Irish dealt with it, as did the Italians. Nobody in America wanted the Eastern Europeans with all their crazy Marxist ideas. Blacks were willfully kept pig ignorant for a couple of hundred years in The South. I don’t know whether Blacks have higher or lower IQs than Whites; being a Southerner, God knows I know some damned dumb white people; they revel in it.
But lets stop denying that they were so far behind and bringing everybody else down to them. Sorry, but being a Southerner, when I see a Georgia-Alabama game I just see rich white frat boys having a contest of which side has bought the biggest, baddest collection of black guys. But, of course, you guys just think that is a bowl game.
You’re assuming they were bred conscientiously for a total slate of traits (assuming they were actively bred that rigorously) beyond the merely physical. And you’re assuming that that kind of breeding is the sort that would stick beyond a generation or two at most.
Anyone who has seen animals knows that specialized breeding has to be actively maintained or the artificially brought out traits have to be reinforced by selective breeding every generation. Stray dogs all pretty much revert to a common type within a few generations.
I would expect that any issues of lower intellect enforced by selective breeding, assuming such would be possible, would be pretty much erased by now.
And now, I’m going to go take a shower to clean off the nasty feeling of uncleanliness just writing that post has left.
One problem. Parents. You could not get away with your scenario. You’d be out on your ear in no time. The little sociopaths in your classroom would scream bloody murder and their parents would have your head. I was in High School in the sixties in an average medium sized town in the MW. Parents were the problem then and they still are. We don’t rear children in this society. We let them rear each other. Nothing demanded nor expected = worthless kids. Worse adults.
California doesn’t educate children, it traumatizes them, cramming information for standardized tests into eager minds that turns their wonder into weary. Teachers’ Unions have effectively stripped teachers down to robots, dishing out dumbed-downed lessons from the same book, on the same page on the same day. There are too many layers of government from the Feds, to the State, to the County, to the City each protecting their jobs by promoting the next “new” wave of educational mumbo-jumbo for raising scores so that those government workers keep their overly inflated job security. Most of those in authority have ever even entered a classroom, let alone taught in one for years.
Few in education are even allowed to really educate. Until the strangle hold of the unions can be broken, teachers will increasingly be less effective and fewer will be competent enough to raise California from the depths its educational reputation has sunk. More money isn’t the answer. Give teachers responsibility and authority. One without the other means nothing and the parents, and students know it.
I weep for the state I went to school in.
Otherwise, none put it better than Rudyard Kipling:
AS I PASS through my incarnations in every age and race,
I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market Place.
Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.
We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn
That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn:
But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind,
So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind.[...]
With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch,
They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch;
They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings;
So we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.
When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “Stick to the Devil you know.”
On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “The Wages of Sin is Death.”
In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “If you don’t work you die.”
Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true
That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.
As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool’s bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;
And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!
Love that poem. Hope we don’t get to the point of going to God like a soldier.
Been hearing about the “Gods of the copybook headings” throughout my 6 decade long life. Finally I have now read the poem. Had to do some goggling to understand it. Worth the effort. Thanks. The last line in the poem makes it sound like the ‘gods’ are the bad guys. They are not and were not meant to be so by Kipling.
Well, they’re not the good guys, either. To me, the “gods of the copybook heading” represent such entities that are responsible for the irrepressible drumbeat that is the heartbeat of the world, and the money behind it all. I think the poem is about the cynicism of all of the retinue of the money movers, whether socialist or capitalist.
NCT has it right. The Gods of the Copybook Headings, while they tend to speak in Alger-ish aphorisms, are the gods of what *is.* The other gods, the Gods of the Marketplace, are the gods of what could be – the problem is, what could be isn’t always what is. When he says “marketplace,” he means “people who are selling something.” Not in the sense of honest transactions, but more like what the Dread Pirate Roberts alluded to in his timeless line, “Life is pain, Princess. Anyone who says differently is selling something.”
There is a reason moral philosophers (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is%E2%80%93ought_problem) refer to a particular conundrum as the “ought/is” problem. It is often true that a thing *ought* to be a certain way, when it *isn’t.* Confusing an ought for an is, or thinking an ought leads logically to an is, is the first step on that famous road paved with good intentions.
They are neither good nor bad but indifferent, immutable laws of reality. The Law of Conservation of Energy is neither good nor bad, it just is. The Second Law of Thermodynamics is neither good nor bad (although a Zoroastrian might identify his anti-god Ahriman with entropy and his pro-god Ahura Mazda with order) — it just is.
Same with Thatcher’s Law that “the trouble with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money”. Or Stein’s Law that “that which cannot go on, won’t”.
For a chilling sci-fi take on this, look up Tom Godwin’s short story “The Cold Equations”.
http://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/the-cold-equations/
one of my favourites among kipling’s work, but see also “the old issue”.
In the words of Chief Engineer Montgomery Scott “the fancier they make the plumbin’ the easier it is to break laddie”.
Bankruptcy looms over CA, but NY and IL is just as bad. They expect the feds to bail them out, but if Mitt wins, well just forget it. When pensions are reduced or terminated, the government workers will wonder it this was a wise choice of occupation.
I am worried that salaries of police, fire and EMTs will be reduced, such that it not worth showing up. At this point road warrior will be reality causing many to die. Only with Marshal Law, e.g., US military, will these society continue. Hence they will be ruled by dictatorship. Maybe this is what they want, e.g., Obama and his socialist party. I am in complete wonder, why the good people of these states vote for these same failed policies and leaders in, for sure they see it coming, yet they do nothing. Government handouts and benefits, e.g., bribes, do get many re-elected, but soon many will die, and the people will all know why. Short term gain leads to long term pain.
Yes but. There will be internal war but the casualty rate will be at least 10 to 1 if not much much better. War must come but a better world can come out of it.
They will show up to work reduced salary notwithstanding. Better a smaller salary than none at all. The job market in those states isn’t exactly booming.
One may use the small family farm, all sixty acres of almonds, as a metaphor for the small business person, the small stakeholder, the small merchant, storeowner, mechanic, all the various people who with their own grit and determination have built every society.
We can contrast that with (and since this is VDH’s blog I shall try to reach back to a time of history that he shall appreciate) the modern day ‘latifundia’, the large estate operation owned by Roman senators and equestrians, run by hired hands and toiled on by slaves, that increasingly through the Roman governmental model with its attendant rent-seeking and favoritism took over society and took away what the small stakeholders had. It took a few centuries but the model proved to be inflexible, parasitic and destructive to the state.
I am not ‘anti-corporate’, but we must leave room for the entrepreneur, the small stakeholder, the small farm, the small business, the main street diner, and so on. That is our bulwark against government stupidity, corporate thievery and the knaves who think they know better. What California is losing is, more than anything, the people who would roll up their sleeves and fix things. Once you lose them they don’t come up. Ask the Romans.
My granpa made a good living from a hundred acres of cotton. Not a trace of the home place now.
I assume you’re of an age at which a “grandpa” would have been farming that 100 acres in the late 19th Century or the first half of the 20th Century, in which case 100 acres in cotton was a big cotton farm and there really weren’t a lot of places where you could put together 100 contiguous acres that were suitable for cotton farming: some of Texas and Oklahoma, some of California if irrigation was available, and some few places in the Southern coastal plains.
In the days of the 100 acre family farm, maybe 20% to at most 40% was in actual cultivation; the rest was pastureland and woodlands. Cotton was hardly mechanized at all until the 1960s and you needed a large Black or in TX and CA Mexican population to tend it. That was the big advantage the Western cotton farmers had over the Southern farmers; the Mexicans went away after the crop was in, the Southerners had to deal with the Blacks year round.
When I was a kid, our cotton allotment on the home place was ten acres and we rented another 20 acres or so of cotton allotment for the last few years that we farmed. Moving the hands and equipment around from field to field was one Helluva time-consuming process and you’ll learn to appreciate that Country song about driving an International Harvestor tractor down a main road as you chug along at six or eight miles an hour as the trucks whiz by. Until that crop was “laid by,” meaning you stopped cultivating it for weed control, and during the harvest season, that thirty acres or so often had a couple of dozen Black field hands working it for shares or wages. “Chopping” cotton required a hoe and lots of field hands. Picking cotton by hand required even more labor and all it took was just the backside of a tropical storm or hurricane and the rain made the crop worthless, so you worked FAST. I’ve been out picking cotton by moonlight and truck and tractor headlights when the weather threatened. Before Roundup and the mechanized cotton picker, cotton was very labor intensive – and as labor intensive as was cotton, it wasn’t even in the same league as tobacco. The happiest day of my life was the day we stopped farming and subdivided those damned fields. That said, though, if I had a hundred acres of paid for cotton land, I could probably make a pretty decent living even today but I would have to have a close personal relationship with a friendly banker because of the capital costs of mechanized farming of that much cotton. Big cotton farms are best left to the corporate farmers, and to me at least, farming is best left to someone else. The best way to make a small fortune in farming is to start with a large fortune.
Thanks for this troubling view of life on the West Coast. There is an awakening across the US on our plight. It’s denigrated but thriving, and it is focused on turning around before we hit the end of the road to serfdom. People now have the internet for gathering together, and the TEA movement’s focus is on replacing the political class, one politician at a time, with people who value free markets and a government that lives within its revenues. FreedomWorks is one organization in the forefront, and the book, “Hostile Takeover” outlines the plans for returning to sanity. The title refers to corporations that are failing, not violence, but through the election process.
One thing that would be beneficial to other Americans; a video documentary on what is happening in the Central Valley. People need to know.
What VDH is describing seems less like ‘The Road Warrior’ and more like ‘Idiocracy;’ a society where stupidity and crudeness are the norm; and the masses are content to wallow in filth, ignorance, and decay because they cannot conceive of anything better.
“Filth, ignorance and decay” appear not to matter to those fed, clothed, housed, provided with medical care and legal representation…where’s the incentive to “conceive of anything better…” when living on the taxpayers dime?
Was Idiocracy science fiction? Or documentary? I have trouble telling at times.
Actually, Idiocracy was a “haircut” of the 1951 SF short story The Marching Morons by Cyril M. Kornbluth;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Marching_Morons
It just seems like a news report to people who pay attention to the news.
cheers
eon
I knew that. I read “The Marching Morons” long ago, and immediately recognized the source for Idiocracy. But where a 1951 novel had to be subtle in how it conveyed the depravity of the new society, Idiocracy could be as crass and vulgar as it wanted to be: I’ll never look at a Fuddrucker’s sign the same way again.
“But… it has _electrolytes_.”
Idiocracy is exactly what came to mind while reading this, only not hilarious.
The same progressive idiots are seeking to tear down the AES electrical power plant in Redondo Beach, CA, that’s been producing power for something like eighty years. They want to replace it with a park complete with a salt water pond. The plant is a few hundred feet from the Pacific Ocean.
No real way to pay for this seizure of productive property. The money will come from that $16 billion state deficit somehow. Also no real plan how to pay for its maintenance and the inevitable bums who will set up housekeeping and the gang problem it will attract.
Why turn it into a park? To raise the local property values.
They truly believe electricity comes out of the wall by itself, even as we suffer through rolling brownout and outright power failures after minor storms.
Fools.
Sorry, folks. Hope is premature. The fact is, we haven’t hit bottom yet. We’re only at the very top of a looooong slide down.
Something new and vigorous will indeed replace what is now moribund, corrupt, venal, deceitful and enervated. But the process will be painful and vastly destructive, and the new world at the other end will be unrecognizable by those of us from the old – assuming we live long enough to see the birth of the new.
Toynbee had it right.
Exactly correct.
Yes.
I don’t know about Toynbee or Rudyard but Benjamin Franklin warned this would happen. One of the themes of the Old Testament is that Mankind is bent. Prone to self destruction. This has not changed. We are progressing towards dictatorship because our society is disintegrating. Dis integrating. Falling apart.
Christianity was the glue that bound and though it was an imperfect amalgam the fabric held together through thick and thin. No longer. Mankind is once again ‘each going his separate way’. Politicians can not help us. Romney and most of the governors will be stuck with massive austerity measures and the debauched populace will not stand for it. Anarchy will ensue and dictatorship with military rule will be necessary.
China will be the world’s sole super power and we will emulate them for a distant second tier status along with Europe/Russia. The islamists will wage nuclear war against each other, Israel and India. Rumor has it the end is near. Look up for your redemption draws near.
Yes, China will be a threat, for sure, but they have their own issues.
Indeed, “ghost cities” being just one example. Russia has more to fear from China than we do. (We have the Pacific Ocean as a “moat”; Russia has only the Amur River.)
I’m wondering how long it will be before one or more of China’s “provincial governors”, notably in the western part of the country, try to set themselves up as feudal warlords, going back to the way conditions were in the period leading up to the 1925 revolution.
Then again, they may have already done it, and nobody outside of China has noticed yet.
cheers
eon
Thanks demographic change! Hail diversity!
Future headline: “Pacific Ocean swallows California.”
Future headline, next day: “Pacific Ocean spits out California: ‘Can’t afford to keep it.’”
We have 50 (not 57) states in the US. The failures (CA,IL) serve as examples to the rest of how to do things wrong (elect liberals). Over the next decade, 40 or so states will succeed, and the other 8 or 10 (MA, RI, CT, NY, MD, IL, CA, HI, maybe NJ and WA) will be on the receiving end of some real “tough love.”
Some of us have been saying that for a long time, except it would be more a matter of kicking the West Coast and Northeast out of the US and letting them have their own country(ies) to which the US could ship out the liberals, multigenerational welfare recipients, criminals, illegals, etc. We would in return take any industry, entrepreneurs, and conservatives who wanted to come. We’d also take the military assets as we’d need them to keep the mountain passes and river borders secure against raiders and looters coming from those new countries.
You Sir, are right on. Change is coming.
Yes. This is our only hope of keeping some semblance of what was once these United States. However every major city in the Red states is chocked full of worthless takers. We won’t be able to get rid of them and rehabilitating them would take generations. Seems an insurmountable problem.
You’re right about that. Those blue abscesses turn the electoral tide of many otherwise red states. They are a problem. Walling them off would be one solution as would be offering residents free transportation to the new socialist states because the dole would be ending soon.
Let me say that it would be best if nothing like this ever happened. Any division of the country, let along its collapse, would be extremely messy. Still, that seems to be the way of things: nations go strong for a while then fall, breaking up into smaller units in the process.
There should be little need to offer free departures. Once the parasites realize the gravy train is about to permanently derail, they will voluntarily depart in search of new hosts to suck dry.
When Britain partitioned its India colony in 1947, there was a huge cross-migration of Hindus into the new India and Muslims into the new two-part Pakistan. (East Pakistan seceded in 1971 and became Bangladesh.) Upon the breakup of the US, expect a similar cross-migration of liberal moochers to the Left Coast, Mid-Atlantic and New England and productive conservatives to the South, Midwest and interior West. The latter regions can then set about the business of restoring the Bill of Rights and rule of law. Some other positive results of the breakup:
* The confederations or independent nations of the former US will be free to enact and enforce their own immigration laws. The smart ones will declare all Muslims persona non grata and give them a reasonable time frame (3-4 months?) to put their affairs in order before leaving. Here in Dixie I would advocate extending that policy to Haitians and Puerto Ricans, who have wrought untold havoc on southern and central Florida respectively.
* The UN, IMF, WTO and all other “new world order” abominations will wither and die. None can survive without Uncle Sam’s largesse.
* NATO will dissolve, forcing Europe to pay for its own defense and putting an end to those welfare states. Center-right parties will take power in many of those nations and expel their Muslim fifth columns. Belgium and Italy will likely break in two.
you forgot VT, ME, MI, NY, MN and OR.
To be fair, you should cut at the western edge of the Cascades/Sierra Nevada – eastern WA certainly had nothing to do with this mess.
New America will arise out of the coming economic and social collapse of the country. It will be centered in the High Plains, Northwest (East of the Cascades) and Mountain West. It will be energy self-sufficent and have plentiful agricultural resources. Producers, entrepreneurs and young people will begin to migrate there in growing numbers as life in the blue states and big cities becomes more and more intolerable. The Federal dictatorship will be too busy handling insurrections and anarchy in the rest of the country to try and prevent New America from forming.
“I think the people silently seethe and resent their kingdom of lies, and so may prove their anger at the polls, perhaps this November.”
From your lips to God’s ear. Surely He has not abandoned us too.
Oh yes. He has. Once we were helped and shepherded as the bearers of Light to the world. Now as we terminate millions upon millions of the unborn and promulgate and extol sexual perversion without measure through every electronic and cinematic means … He must let us suffer the consequences of our own sin. There were still many good Jews in the land as The Lord allowed Israel to go into Babylonian captivity and when He allowed the Romans to level Jerusalem. Now it is our turn.
It’s never God who abandons us. It is we who abandon God.
Betcha he’s saving a place at the table for us still. ;-)
Dr. Hanson, again you have smitten the nail right on it’s flat little head. I knew it was over for us in kalifornia when the “enlightened” electorate put “you know who” back at the helm of our sinking ship.
This description of CA, and particularly the acquisition of survival skills by Hanson and others in the central valley, reminds me of similar accounts by former white Rhodesians and South Africans as their societies decended into “Road Warrior” like hell-holes.
I believe Robert Heinlein described this decent process as “bad luck”.
BTW, you do know that they no longer make much Silicon in Silicon Valley.
“reminds me of similar accounts by former white Rhodesians and South Africans”
It’s gotten only worse. Skyped with an old friend in Capetown last weekend and he mentioned that the genocidal talk is definitely in the air down there. That bloodbath is coming.
When that happens, it will be the first of many or we will end up like Russia.
“When that happens, it will be the first of many or we will end up like Russia.”
South Africa or the US? Do you mean the splitting of the USSR?
I meant the Russia of today with that murderer Pukin running it. It will be the first of many bloodbaths because that will be the only way to fix what is wrong.
Here’s the entire Heinlein quote from his novel “Time Enough For Love.”
Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded-here and there, now and then-are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty. This is known as “bad luck.”
Not one of the 3 libraries in my town has a copy of “Stranger in a Strange Land”. Amazing.
For just $9 you can get the Kindle version.
Order a hardback edition, read it again, and contribute to your local public library. Ask for a receipt, so that you can deduct the charitable contribution of the purchase price on your Schedule A.
The collected sayings of Lazarus Long are right up there with the old testament for a source of long-view wisdom.
“sooner or later, everyone must shoot his own dog”
Simply redefine “dog” to match current parasitical class…….
you might want to look up one of heinlein’s lesser known works, “farnham’s freehold”.
…plus the best of them all, “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.”
I thought that too…. when I was in college. Then I became a card carrying adult and realized most of the “Writings of Lazarus Long” were jazzed up ripoffs from the Old Testament, Book of Proverbs and the collected works of Roy Blount Jr.
If you are referring to the “tiny minority” that I think you are referring to – utter rot. That “tiny minority” generally foments chaos and disaster, lives as total parasites, and acts as an acid bath on the culture and mores of an existing Host population. The “tiny minority” invariably gets the boot, when the Host awakens in time. The “tiny minority” likes to tell themselves that they are much more beneficial than they are, and have ever been, and usually takes credit for the geniunely creative efforts of the Host. The “tiny minority” tells themselves that they have been persecuted, throughout the ages – but they’ve never been “presecuted”.
They’ve been caught.
There is no hope, Mr. Hanson. California is finished. Get out while you can.
The Anaheim riots are strong evidence of that. On the surface, it is about two Mexican youths being shot by cops. But it is really, under the surface, about something else. The Mexicans here now feel that control of the state is within their grasp and they are going for it.
Anglos and Asians will flee into exile. Within 25 years, California is either a Spanish-speaking independent nation, or it is part of Mexico.
You are right Eric. Reconquista lives in Kalifas. Heed his words, Mr. Hanson. Maybe those dog fighters would like to have a place close to their dump site with a hand pumped water well. Come to Texas and be a neighbor with Glenn Beck. Oh, and bring what you inventoried in your closets also, we will meet them on the banks of the Pecos. There is only one answer.
What a lot of people don’t understand is that the police don’t exist to protect individuals or their property. They exist to ensure the orderly functioning of the state. The Supreme Court has ruled in this way at least twice and any honest cop will tell you this is true. That’s not saying they don’t fight crime and chase thieves because, as Mr. Hanson points out, that if they do not, the rats overrun society. Unfortunately, the more police are pulled back from “little crimes” like theft and vandalism, the more the rats are encouraged and the the more people who would never have otherwise done so will devolve into rats themselves because there seems to be no real penalty for doing so.
What seems to be happening in California is that the liberal kooks are pulling the police tighter and tighter around themselves while letting the rest of the state fall into ruin. They won’t get it until the mobs storm through the gates and take them, too. Then again, that might just make them call for even more welfare to bribe the rats away from their self-righteous cocoons.
As Mr. Hanson points out, things have been going bad for quite some time here in “The Appalachia of The West”. The Valley has now been marginalized by an overwhelming liberal majority on the coast and Sacramento. We cannot vote ourselves out of this mess.
IMHO, the most significant quote of VDH’s article is “A third of the nation’s welfare recipients are in California.” In other words, California’s population is roughly 12% of the nation, but around 33.3% of the welfare recipients in the US live there! This little statistic is a major reason why California has not completely imploded yet. Soon, however, even help like this from the gubmint isn’t going to help this miserable state.
I disagree, Mitt and John and Mitch will bail them out with China’s money. God Bless America, RICO all banksters, their ho politicians and IMPEACH the liar, Eric Holder.
I appreciate your articles Mr. Hanson and I feel your pain and have a dose of your optimism that it will get better. There is, however, only 1 way for that to happen. God Bless America and RICO all banksters and their ho politicians and IMPEACH the liar, Eric Holder.
One of the most depressing essays I have read in a long time. But I see it. My great-grandfather owned land where SFO is now located and my grandfather owned a large tract in “rural” Lafayette. Now? Slums, tenements, and the HS my mother graduated from you don’t go anywhere near if you are a white or speak only English.
And the idiocy that has destroyed California now is showing up everywhere in the country.
Dr. Hanson;
Provocative and unsettling update on your plight. I see an analogy within your essay, that of the prodigal son. We have taken our inheritance, equity built up by our parents, and started to squander it in the 60′s. We won’t return to our senses till we’re eating corn husks with the hogs, or; have hit bottom. The only remedy is bankruptcy, in California and the US in general. Yes, people are waking up and angry, but; it is such a socialist mess that the best and brightest will need years to right things. In the mean time it will be years of anguish for all.
I’m seeing lots of cars with California license plates and moving vans here in Medford, Oregon.
Also, a surge of Spanish speakers.
Ripples, indeed.
“..even the professional services warn that they can kill off natural pests, but not keep out human ones.”
That pretty much says it all.
Mr. Hanson,
We are the same age, and I was raised a little south of you, in Visalia. Although I enjoy you work, your description of present conditions in the Valley both saddens and disturbs me.
When i was younger, i used to wonder why my parents, both urban Irish Catholics, would haul their 7 children to live in the middle of the nowhere back in the 50′s. Stranger still was the number of people with similiarly unlikey backgrounds whose chose to make Visalia their home. One I remember well was a lawyer who was a graduate of Yale and Harvard law school. One assumes that he could have found more renumerative work somewhere else.
Why did they come? The valley of that time was as you described. Our teachers seemed mostly to be graduates of midwestern teachers colleges with a certainty of the transforming power of education. My English teacher, the delightfully named Maud Prigg, used to assign herself the reading of the juicer soliliquys when teaching Sakespeare, reciting them from memory. Today, I’m afraid that most high school graduates rarely hear Shakespeare read with such love; indeed, they graduate thinking the Shakespeare is the fellow who makes fishing poles.
There was a lot less toleration for bad behaviour, and you still could get in trouble for smoking and use of bad language in school. Now, I’m under the imression that if you show most days to school sober and straight, you have very good chance of being named one of a couple of dozen valedictorians. Stabndards, as you point out, have somewhat decline.
I could go on, but needless to say, I know now why my parents chose such an unlikely place to move there; it was so damn pleasant. I recently visited there many years. Walking around Main Street, gazing at the old Fox theater and the Chinese restarant that opened in 1922 and still operates, I smiled and said a silent prayer to my parents. It was a prayer of thanks.
Well, those days are gone, and I expect things will get worse before they get better. But I am so grateful for having been raised in that time in that place. Thanks for the opportinity to reminesce.
Jim
“Stabndards, as you point out, have somewhat decline.” Now THAT is classic! ;-)
There is hope. The whack job liberal environmentalists on the Bay Area City Council will do us all a favor by blowing up the Hetch Hetchy. There will be no water for San Francisco. This will cause all the groups of people in San Francisco that are in desperate need of pyschological help will leave and we can start over. Maybe we can move them to the Artic…
One needs to always look at the brightside. Liberals are so stupid that eventually they will extinct themselves with their whack-job ideaology.
Move them to the Arctic? What and have a shortage of snow two years later? Send them to the middle east that’s where their love lies.
We who live in and near the Arctic don’t want them; we have enough degenerates and parasites already, thank you.
“Broz!” he shouts.
“Not today,” Max replies, firing his M240 for effect. The results were immediate, ugly, and final.
/Rack one up for the forces of good in a landscape of evil…
Mr. Hanson:
I can only hope things are not that bad. That you exaggerate to achieve an effect with your article but my fear is, you do not. I once lived in California and travel there often. I have notice a change over the years and it is not for the better. I have never read a more disturbing article as the one you have written.
Then I read some of the comments posted and they disturb me also. From individuals who wait for a savior to save them. To others who feel the answer is to blame some outside element and to cling to a all pervasive government to protect them. What happens when government runs out people to blame? Even Stalin had to blame new enemies of the people once he ran out of kulacks, white guards, and Trotskyites!
People wake up! Mr. Hanson’s article is perhaps a call from the wilderness or at worse a Cassandra’s call! If we are to be saved, we ourselves must do it! Or we will be like Mr. Hanson just trying save what we have from modern raiders no matter what they are called.
Unfortunately this story in some ways understates the situation. I was looking to buy farmland in the central valley, went there are was shocked, absolutely shocked at what I saw. There were shantytowns like you see in the slums of India. Now the liberals here will say: “yes but those are the illegal immigrants, not Californians”. Maybe so but those shantytowns have brought incredible crime, huge amounts of drugs and violence. You see, citizen or not, poverty like this affects everybody. The poverty there was mind numbing to see. I didn’t buy land there, it was simply too dangerous. I live in the “safe” burbs of N. Cal. The crime is now here too. Two times in two months they tried to break into my house. Read in the paper many of my near by neighbors were hit recently. And this is the safe area. It’s one thing to be robbed, it is quite another to be robbed by a meth addict. A robber wants your stuff, the meth addict’s paranoid delusions in withdrawl convinces him to take your life too.
I spent about 8 months in Tucson, AZ in 2010. I lived in a fairly nice area but outside of that area there were real problems. While I was there the federal government had withdrawn from parts of the state. It posted signs advising people, citizens of the U.S.A. not to enter parts of the U.S.A. People who lived in border towns could not leave their homes because they would be invaded while they were away. Rumors were you had to be armed at all times. As I said before Tucson was basically ok. Parts of the area around it was turning into bandit territory. Looking at it that way Mr. Hanson may still have it good in the central valley of California.
Every word is true. I am fifth-generation. It is all 100% true.
Many Californians will vote for O in the belief—or is it expectation?—that he will come to their state’s rescue at some point. Sure, and California will fix enough of its problems after that so that further bailouts would be unnecessary? It’s more likely that the state’s radical environmentalists will call for expeditious exploitation of its energy resources before that happens. Although I don’t think the country is crazy enough to give O another four the spectacle of California being turned down by the One at its time of greatest need would certainly be something to behold. Hope and Change this fall everyone.
While Road Warrior is the more recognizable title, the first in the series which was Mad Max directly addresses liberalism and I’m guessing that this is the movie that Professor Hanson is really talking about.
The first time we see that liberalism is still a driving force in society is when a lawyer gets a captured biker out of jail who was part of a vicious gang rape but too stoned and stupid to leave afterwards.
The second time is that the end of the film when Max is getting ready to kill the same biker in revenge for killing his wife and son. The biker says you can’t kill me because the psychiatrists say I’m sick.
The beauty of this is that the whole film is about the dying of society. Oil is stockpiled and it is apparent will eventually run out (society has lost the means to process it). The liberal’s battle is lost. The battle to create an ideal society is over. The battle left is to create a society where it is possible to even have a family. Do the liberal’s even care, do they even acknowledge that? Nope. They hold onto their power, their laws and are in essence in cahoots with the biker gangs. Live for today, get what you need from whomever gets in the way and screw everyone else.
The one issue that I have is they try to demonize the “bikers”. The truth of the matter is, overall, bikers are probably the most patriotic of American citizens and will fight to remain free. But like most things, people will demonize what they don’t understand. You have more to fear from a person wearing hiking boots, cargo shorts and a t-shirt that says “have you hugged a tree today”.
I want to cry when reading the way Central CA society has devolved. We have not fallen that far in the Shenandoah Valley but you see signs. It is more common than not to find young mothers with no husbands. Kids that have no interest in work and the ones that do can’t make change.
It is a different world. Not sure what the catalyst will be to regain our ambition.
My mother and father moved from California after the Watts riots of the 60′s. They hauled us to Colorado. Unfortunately, the rest of California followed along behind us. Now Colorado is following California into the abyss.
I recommend strongly that you don’t drive after happy hour in Denver, and walking at night is akin to being in “Death Race 2000″ where the drunks get extra points for hitting you. When a drunken illegal mows down a family in Denver, you’ll hear the familiar refrain from the reporters: “Arrested six times for DUI.” Or more. They can’t be deported and you can’t prosecute or jail an illegal, so here’s the car keys back.
In addition, our Denver area is plagued by groups of young blacks who target white and Hispanic folks in the downtown area for assault. They don’t rob them; their intent is simply to take out their racist rage by beating up non-blacks. This is not reported on the television or in the papers, of course. I occasionally have to drive into Denver from the rural area where I live, and I arm myself heavily before I go. It’s a Mad Max world out there, indeed.
Thanks for the tip. We have been starting to look for a new state, and CO was one we were considering. I’ll cross it off the list. Texas is quickly going to follow CA into the abyss regardless of what a “miracle” the governor touts it to be. A recent planning projection saw 2 visions of Houston by 2020. One was scattered gated communities surrounded by vast communities of impoverished. The other was a massive decline in population which would last until 2040 or beyond.
Mr. Hansen is right. No society can absorb and unlimited number of poor uneducated people who have no interest in joining and contributing to a civil society. The institutions are overwhelmed and collapse.
I’ll let you in on a little Tejas secret. When we get too many mojados running about we truck em out to the King Ranch, shoot em and throw em in a hole.
Well, bless his Holy Name, eh?
My country,’ tis of thee,
stripped of my liberty, of thee I sing;
land where my fathers died,
land of the pilgrims’ pride,
shut down the mountainside and closed everything!
2. My native country, thee,
land of the tax and fee, of thy land I love;
I love thy rocks and sea,
thy woods sold off from sans pause;
now grabbed by rapter clause, imperious from above.
3. State music swells the breeze,
and distortion from all dead trees, sweet freedom’s gone;
let mortal tongues awake;
let all that breathe partake;
let rocks their silence break, the truth prolong.
4. Our fathers’ God, to thee,
author of liberty, from thee we flee;
now witness our creeping blight
snuffed out freedom’s holy light;
trampling us by their might, we’ve crowned a King.
Imagine This
Imagine love of heaven
It’s easy if you try
Fear of hell below us
A Father in the sky
Imagine all the people living forevermore
Imagine lots of countries
It’s natural, you see
One for every race and culture
For everyone, a place to be
Imagine all the people living like human beings
You may live as a dreamer,
but I prefer the world that’s here
I don’t care if you join me
But I refuse to live in fear
Imagine your possessions
the wealth from your own hands
spent to benefit your family
and not some other man’s
Imagine all the people living on their own
You may live as a dreamer,
but I prefer the world that’s here
I don’t care if you join me
But I refuse to live in fear
- Robert S. Oculus III
Another great piece from Dr. Hanson, though he should remind us again why he is optimistic about the nation’s future. In WWII Budapest, it is reported that the Nazis (doubtless to the approbation of their Islamic admirers) would line up Jews who were chained together on a bridge over the Danube. They would shoot the more fortunate one on the end, who would fall into the river, dragging the others to their drowning deaths one by one. The world economy has the prudent states chained to the feckless, and ultimately to other economies, eventually to Greece, Spain, Ireland, and the rest of the EU disaster states. In the US, prosperous states, like Texas and North Dakota, are chained to disaster states like California and Illinois. It’s hard to see how their collapse doesn’t drag the rest of us into the abyss with them. We are, I fear, close to fiscal collapse, followed by political and social collapsed. I will link to this from my Old Jarhead blog.
Robert A. Hall
Author: The Coming Collapse of the American Republic
All royalties go to help wounded veterans
For a free PDF of my book, write tartanmarine(at)gmail.com
Worse than you think. Texas and North Dakota are chained to the deficiencies of Illinois, New York and California it is true. But Illinois, New York and California are chained to the deficiencies of Texas and North Dakota too as antintellectualism grows and heartland values fail along with the failure of the heartland demographic. You want to play at being “Road Warrior” and living in Batman’s back alley world? “Be careful what you wish for, you might get it.” And my corollary: When you wish for something and you get it, don’t complain.
You got it. Don’t complain.
“But Illinois, New York and California are chained to the deficiencies of Texas and North Dakota too as antintellectualism grows…”
I don’t know which variety of idiot you are, lefty or sociopathic libertarian but here’s a flash: credentialed and intellectual are not synonyms, lefty and intellectual are not synonyms. You fools have been told by your perfessers and frauds like RonPaul, RonPaul that you’re only a smart person if you believe as they do. They’re wrong, you’re wrong, and most of the credentialled in America are profoundly ignorant.
“No society can successfully absorb some 6-7 million illegal aliens…”
It wouldn’t have to if there wasn’t all the socialism supporting them. If they can find work they can stay, if they can’t they go back to Mexico, how hard is that?
The problem is that the people, including the middle classes, want their free loot from government while trying to keep others from getting the loot too. Good luck with that. The problem is not with the immigrants, but with the “there’s a free lunch after all” Californians.
In the immortal words of Ted Hayes, when presented with the straw man of deporting 10-15m people: “They got theyselves here, they can get theyselves home”
And my retort to Ted Hayes: you came here in chains but you are not tied here now in chains. Be like Moses and make a land of milk and honey somewhere else.
Solution to California’s problems:
. . . . Sell California to Greece.
A coarsening of popular culture — a nationwide phenomenon — was intensified, as it always is, in California.
Don’t be so rough on your home state, professor, the national culture is sinking just as fast. Europe, too. Popular culture is about what’s acceptable behavior and, given that TV and movies can show something in action that’s unacceptable, or is fast becoming ok, and can even do things that aren’t even impossible at all, pop culture has become the prime mover in society.
When I see a “hip hop” group barking bad poetry about ‘hos and pigs, pants around their upper thighs, ball caps skewed sideways with price tags hanging from them, atonal hateful nonsense that woulda got you committed to the nut house 30 yrs ago… I think, “Man, we’re going down. We’re gonna get poorer and things are gonna get rougher.”
Nothing good comes from idiocy, except more of it. Especially when it’s extolled as the next great thing. It’s easy to do and even easier to sell, and at low cost, too.
Read “Pilgrim’s Regress” by C. S. Lewis. There is nothing new under the sun. AND Phoenix does rise. Or can.
“Pilgrim’s Regress” by C. S. Lewis – Thanks for this recomendation
Pilgrim’s Regress, a great title dripping with irony. As new things emerge, we see the roots to the old. This takes me back to punk song We are Devo! sung with full confidence by a guy with whom I attended college. Trouble was, every time you heard it, you were left less sure about how things were gonna turn out.
By contrast, your hip-hop “artist” doesn’t claim to know anything, not even how to write music or sing, and certainly making no claim to cultural prescience. This is the difference between art and trash. From Mona Lisa to Piss Christ, human aspiration has declined. Question now is, how low can we go.
re Your last question. St Paul goes into some depth on the subject in his descriptions of men in the Last Days. Further on Lewis: He wrote Pilgrim’s Regress in the forties I think. He saw the rot way back then. As did Orwell and many others.
Orwell, now there was prescience. While we know him most as a novelist, some say he was the best essayist ever. His book 1984 was both right and wrong: what he got wrong was how modern agitprop would work. It’s turned out that mass opinion programming would finally be made to work by surrounding populations with pleasing lies about domestic enemies lurking in the global political economy, instead of as he foresaw hammering national populations with urging people to resist putative external enemies. From the USSR to the USA; from ascetic sacrifice to profligate ease… manipulated either way. But either way, always pious.
If Hanson were smart as he appears in his articles, he would have been gone a long time ago. He exhibits the same affections of attachments to people, place, culture that un and underemployed manufacturing laborers have for two decades.
When the house of cards collapse the fringes will go rabid long before he dares to uncase any defense. In CA, Hanson will fight a two front war with the authorities protecting the criminal element against himself. He might say as it already is this day. Not really. The reins of civilization still hold.
When its too late it will be too late. He will lose that which he clings to and that which is all he might save if he let go.
It will take a Dirty Harry type and bunches of them to change the path.
A Clockwork California.
^^^ Ding, Ding Ding!!! Thread Winner!!!
the sad reality is that VDH’s eloquence is confined to echo chambers like these; those to whom it is addressed either refuse to hear it or believe the author to be a pawn of Fox or talk radio or some similar horrible. And on a broader front, as liberalism fails on a global scale, our elites continue to insist that it can work.
Wasn’t there a US Congressman way back who lamented that “if only I had been able to talk to Hitler.” They continue believing in the false god of equality of outcome, ignoring that the only societies that have produced anything of the sort were hellholes that citizens readily risked life and limb to escape.
And people wonder why anyone would want to own an AR-15 with a high-capacity magazine?
Imagine you are alone on an isoldated farm at night in Central California. You hear advancing footsteps and whispers in the orchard. You know that calling the Sheriff is futile. Cutbacks to fund the pensions have decimated the force. Someone might be by sometime. You are literate. You remember reading a book called Uruhu about the Mau Mau in Kenya. You immediately identify with what it must have felt like to be a British farmer in rural Kenya. You realize you are alone but, fortunately, you had to the foresight to arm yourself well.
Problem is …. being surrounded in a wood frame house with even a few armed attackers outside is the pits. One needs a tunnel running from inside the house out to the perimeter. Well concealed entrance and exit. Then when the zombies get inside you can dispatch them with ease from outside. Claymores would be good but we can’t get them. Kinda dangerous to have around the kids as well.
Pity that Ruark is hardly read these days.
The title of one of his books is also a recommendation: Use Enough Gun.
Not what left/libtard advocates of the Cloward-Piven strategy imagined… they forgot they were parasites who depended upon a functioning society to survive. Impose order on chaos? With what?
You basically nailed my feelings on everything in the State. It’s absolutely despicable the level of denial we see from politicians and the majority about how terrible things are out here. I have several guns now for this very reason. The lawlessness is getting worse all the time.
Go to any urban liberal demonstration/ rally and you will find a parade of tattoo-ed, pierced, dyed “diversity” such as what once confined to the silver screen via “The Road Warrior”. They represent the urban mobs/ tribes which will run riot as soon as their food stamps and UI checks run out.
Since Obama has taken office I have stocked-up on emergency supplies, extra food, obtained alternative sources for water, and for the first time in my life purchased weapons. I hope things get better, but I fear the social decay is pretty far advanced by liberalism, drugs, crime and lawlessness.
…but I fear the social decay is pretty far advanced by liberalism, drugs, crime and lawlessness.
Yeah. Welcome to the Liberal Nirvana. Societal chaos represented as perfection.
The Odds of Where Master-Mind Rooks in History, are Heading
By Robert Winkler Burke
Book #9 of In That Day Teachings
7/30/12 http://www.inthatdayteachings.com
With Apologies to Rudyard Kipling
AS I PASS through my incarnations in every age and race,
I make proper prostrations to the Gods of the mental place,
Always there are mentalities ever so quick and sublime,
That herd, and pen and shear lesser brains they find.
These Mind-Masters shout, Beware the Mind-Masters over the hill!
While using every stinking meme and trope and linguistic trick until,
These right lip of the Intelligence Bell Curve control every stooge soul,
In the fat middle, being too busy to see their Master-Mind’s rogue role.
Which is to use every trick that the bad Master-Minds use!
Hence the Mind-Master makes rubes, and that is his ruse!
He always says, The other bad Master-Minds try to confuse!
Listen to me, they say, using same schemes to brain-bruise!
Prophets, saints, geniuses are Founders, so smart on Curve’s flat right,
Are disbelieved by the controlled souls out-mentalitied without fight,
Out-thought souls are stuck and enslaved in the Bell Curve’s middle,
Always a Mind-Master who with their fogged brains plays fiddle.
Alas, and alack, you can tell a Mind-Master, Don’t speak with piano background!
This is a Neuro-Linguistic Programming trick so hypnotizing, it’s most unsound!
Mind-Master says, is your head small? I’ll misdirect and put an old helmet on it!
Prophets, saints, geniuses and Founders say, Stop the shenanigans, dog gone it!
Nothing is so proud or uncorrectable as a Mind-Master enveloped with fame,
It would take a Job-like experience to get him to stop playing his head game,
Tomorrow: as surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
True enlightenment stops, when Mind-Masters all correction do spurn.
Today, as surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The hardest thing for prophets on Earth is to Mind-Masters turn,
To turn a Mind-Master from cheap trickery that makes puppets and cons masses,
Is hard. History loves thoughtful love, but is less kind to trickster lads and lasses.
Will the masses awake to see how Mind-Masters, their brains have been abusing?
It’s dangerous to wake up mentalities enslaved by Masters: morality-eschewing,
Mind-Masters won’t stop, they believe they get our thoughtless lives improving!
Madison said, No, leaders aren’t angels, man’s uplift is Mind-Masters’ undoing.
As a teacher, I read plenty of bad poetry back in the day. Seriously, stick to prose, where you are clear and occasionally coherent. ;-) You have fallen in love with weak rhyming/repetition and your meter is all over the place. I will grant you that I only skimmed it, but it is not working.
When the illegal become legal in the second term, they will immediately bring up their extended families. The result is that half of Mexico will be up here within five years. What then? The social costs will become enormous and Atlas will Shrug. This I know. When VDH leaves California, it will be time to pack it in.
It is past time for VDH to have left.
Frustrating, depressing, realistic, frightening and inevitable.
If people from around our nation think this is isolated and will only happen to and in California they are mistaken.
The mass shock,surprise and disbelif coming to our citizenry when our entire economy collapses is going to be very unpleasant indeed….the essay above is a clear description of the ultimate outcome of the choices made by our corrupt political and financial systems.
Meanwhile as citizens we are too busy laying blame and bickering all the while grabbing and protecting our ‘share of the action’. VERY drastic changes are necessary to avert looming and predictable, but avoidable, catastrophy.
There will be no hope and change no matter who is elected; it’s painfully obvious we simply aren’t collectively willing to do whatever is necessary to reverse our course. Our elected officials are too enamoured with their power to jepordize it by enacting remedies they know are our only solutions. Good men and women who could and want to make changes to the system are too smart and too wise to shoulder the huge, thankless and invariably increasing dangerous task of correcting our direction.
– dead, Brown its embalmer, Obama is Hades.
If there is a second obama term he will be as Charon; taking the souls of the dead to hell. In this case sending the “Last Great Hope Of Humanity” to perdition…
I was waiting for you to holler “You Dang Kids!!! Get off my Lawn!!!!” But alas, you did not.
PS: Professor Hanson, I share your sentiments, but you sound like you woke up on the wrong side of the bed when you wrote this one! I think your books on the ancient world are really good.
Sounds like you need to get out. I’ve met half a dozen economic ‘refugees’ from California in and around Cincinnati, where I live in the last year. They all say it was the best thing they’ve done, even if they miss the scenery and and it took years to make it happen. Get out while you can.
A good man cannot be harmed. All who call on His name will be saved. There is no hope for the world and never was.
Professor Hanson,
Thank you for the article. I find myself wondering if the ability to see the downstream results of current policies, trends and culture is both a strength and potential weakness. A strength of course in the ability to analyze, teach, write, and provide wise counsel, but like anything else each talent we possess can also be a curse. What do I mean?
For my own part, I tend to see the long term consequences in terms of _what will happen if nothing changes_. I don’t have to consider the things too formally, they just come to me. Much like my step-son who can pick up an instrument and begin to play a tune by ear without really trying, I observe trends/policies/laws, and the long term consequences jump into my consciousness. These days those consequences are very disturbing. Like you, my home is becoming outfitted in case the modern conveniences which I used to assume might not be available in the future. Or in case our institutions change how they interact with society.
What does not factor into my “strength” however is the ability to project possible changes that will alter the result which my mind so readily brings to consciousness. I tend not to be able to see the “tipping points”, beyond which the course of events appears to be unalterable. I suggest that we still have not reached them, but cannot offer any defensible proof.
Part of the reason I write this is because I live in east county San Diego. I see local public schools with good teachers, teaching at least some of our students in rigorous ways. Some of my 6 kids and step-kids aspire to do hard things, while 2 of 2 college age are proof of your statistic (they had to take remedial classes in English and Math before being able to take credit classes, despite high grades). I read with astonishment that 3 state cities are bankrupt, wonder how in the world the HSR project can actually be real, read the details of AB32 with disbelief, and wait for the financial cliff to claim the state, yet still daily life continues and many good, upright, ambitious and hard working people, including young people, do cross my path. I feel like I am in a different world from much of California, though the tattooed and pierced populace is certainly broadly represented even here.
I do what I can, attending Tea Party rallies, providing financial support to conservative organizations that are making efforts to change our course, writing to elected officials, signing petitions, speaking out, and recruiting other citizens who are on the sidelines (like I used to be) to pick something, one thing, and roll up their sleeves, open their checkbooks, and get involved.
You have an amazing ability to capture the essence of the danger of our current direction here in California. Would it be possible to spend some time reflecting on the critical lynchpins in altering that direction, or reversing some of the losses? For the average citizen it is overwhelming to consider how many different areas need fixing. Many efforts will be wasted, despite good intentions. Perhaps you can put some thought and analysis into areas where we can focus our energy and resources in order to make strategic gains? In the military we call it “concentration of mass”, where you bring enough resources to bear on one objective in order to ensure you achieve your goal, while also considering “economy of force” whereby, to the best of ability, no more forces/resources than are necessary are committed to one particular effort (because there is always another pressing need). There are so many concerns here in California, yet we need to prioritize which problems need to be attacked first. As we do so, the example we provide could inspire similar minded citizens in other parts of the nation (much like Wisconsin). Let’s face it, if we can make some significant gains even here in California, big things are possible in more reasonable parts of the country.
I remember a time, almost a 1/2 century ago, when moving to California was considered a definite move in the right direction. It was THE place to go, a modern, flourishing, attractive, youthful enclave with its western border situated on the beautiful Pacific; an oasis, a land of opportunity that attracted the best and the brightest to leave their old eastern and staid, stagnant, mid western environs and come to where the action was, the wellspring, the progenitor of the prosperous, enlightened, modern America of the future. That was in the early sixties. Tragic how that idyllic vision became so tarnished and how disturbing the notion that America will fulfill its early fantasies and follow in California’s faltering footsteps. On a more hopeful note perhaps it will be seen for the failed, liberal, utopian nightmare its become and act as the impetus for a much needed paradigm shift.
The perceptive saw California’s problematic turn long ago. In 1975 I met a sophisticated Brazilian woman in Salvador, Bahia, who had just returned from living in California for a decade. She said, “California used to be the best place in the world to live. Not anymore.”
VDH is a national treasure, along with his colleagues at Hoover, Tom Sowell and Peter Robinson. I am a native Texan who has lived in New York City and spent many summer vacations in Carmel, California. I loved New York so much when I lived there; and California too — its beauty, its climate — even Los Angeles (Mulholland Drive is right out of Fantasia).
I have heard and read VDH’s mournful elegies for a state he clearly loves. He says he has hope, but it is so faint; so nostalgic, a sad musing on what could be but never will be. Like VDH, I think all is lost for this nation; California is simply in the vanguard of its decline.
Texas is and will be one of the last holdouts, but Democrats have been resurgent in recent years, and may yet reclaim their lost ascendency through sheer demographic changes, as the illegal Hispanic population swells.
But we welcome the Californians who are swarming here, hating our heat, missing their lovely weather and their landscapes and seascapes (although many parts of Texas are quite beautiful), but missing most of all what used to be there: the freedom; the civility; the lost art of being Californian.
Want another example of Californias FISCAL insanity?
Back on July 1st. Representative Barbara Lee, speeking at Cal-Pep, an “HIV/AIDS advacacy organizsation” in Oakland, California isn’t waiting for ObamaCare to kick in. Nope, low income HIV patients state wide, can now receive public funded HIV health care under Medical. Alameda County will be the “launching ground within California”. (Current cost within the county is $7.5 million under the Ryan White Care Act program but will be expanded.)
Now I don’t argue the merits of such a move but as usual, it’s “damn the cost, full speed ahead” (and into state bankruptcy).
Source: MercuryNews.com, July 2, 2012
Bummer. Most depressing outlook I’ve read in six months.
Thank you Mr Hanson for your very enlightening and pointed article.
My wife and I insisted to our two boys they get a good education (no debate there). If they started slipping a little in grades we dealt with them, we didn’t blame the teachers. If they complained about homework, tough, they did it anyway. They weren’t allowed out on school nights. If they had issues with school work, they either sought our assistance or the teacher’s. Today, our oldest is an electrical-computer engineer with one of the largest engineering firms in the country. Our youngest majored in history (loves military history) and is an officer in the military. They both understand personal responsibility and what it means to do the right thing no matter how hard. All this despite having to deal with some bone-headed school administrators, teachers, and politicians.
Please keep up the good work writing your articles. I always enjoy them.
VDH must’ve been in a state of shock writing this essay, given that he grew up and lived in the Valley. I’m originally from a breadbasket state, Indiana, and now live in another, Minnesota. As kids we were told how productive and vital the Central Valley was to the nation. Now we read about bankrupt farms surrounded by salt flats caused by edicts from Sacramento to save some snail darter thing, so the gubmint had no choice, sadly, but to deny the farmers there based on this state of “emergency.”
You’d think, that if any place deserved to prosper, it’d be the Central Valley, where so much brains & brawn were put together with such natural wealth. So much bad and undeserved news nowadays. Most of it caused by willful self-destruction.
I live in California and have been down in the central valley in the past year. Everything in this article, as best as I could see, is true. But I would say the article is wrong in that it actually looked worse than described. Literal shantytowns of presumably illegal immigrants. Astonishing abject poverty on a level I thought existed only in third world countries. In the “safe” burbs where I live we are beset with crime, my house twice in two months, my neighbors in the following months. Up and down the street people have hired the security companies to keep themselves safe. Drugs are everywhere. The meth is the worst, when these people get strung out they get paranoid and delusional and will kill you in addition to robbing you. And meth is everywhere out here.
Instead of yet-another-socal-pipeline sending NoCA water to SoCA, how about sending it to the Central Valley so that farmers can get back to farming? Then there will be more jobs, people can get off the dole, etc…
CW: As a disenchanted lifelong Californian and an admirer of Texas, I had to share this with you.
I’m a big fan of C-SPAN “Book TV”. A recent author pitching her book at the Chicago Times Printers Row Literary Fest, was “New York Times” columnist Gail Collins. The name of her book is: “As Texas Goes: How the Lone Star State Hijacked The American Agenda”. You guessed it, she iss extremely critical of how you govern in Texas.
Speaking in a bankrupt city in a bankrupt state (never mind the soaring murder rate) and listening to the condecension of both her and her audience was gauling to say the least. The sheer irony of it all. (But then again, what else would you expect from anyone associated with the NY Times).
What you are missing is pictures. Adding visuals would increase the impact of your sobering words. (Not that it should be that way, but…)
This is some of Professor Hanson’s finest work — brings together many of the things upon which he is knowledgeable, including, and in particular, California. As one who lived in California as a graduate student, I have often mused about just how great California could be if it could be rid of a big chunk of the population. Any I don’t mean the immigrant population — I am talking about the blindly liberal and their fellow travelers.
California now leads the nation on the road to the world of the “failed state.” Sadly,the disease is spreading rapidly.
I will be passing this article on to others.
@Bay Area Non-Idiot; the problem is, and I am stuck for now in CA living in the East Bay, we can’t take those weapons with us when we are out and about. I feel relatively safe in my home, but outside…not so much. Tried to get a CCW but only got as far as the application since Mr. Rupf wouldn’t issue to anyone but his cronies/possee and the new guy Livingston is nothing but a pension building political hack.
Well, Mr. Hanson, you sure were “in a mood” when you wrote this one.
While I agree that California has major problems culturally, financially, and politically (especially !), the picture looks not so dark or inevitably dismal as you paint.
The longer I live the more obvious is becomes that the only constant in life is change – a cliche perhaps, but nonetheless, true. Our society is changing (and many would say not for the better), but when you talk with young people today, their concerns are both very similar to ours, but also different. And I think young people today are much more aware (as a group) than we were at the same time in our lives, of the world around them. They also seem much more “saavy” to the “facts of life”. They recognize corruption when they see it – its just that many of them haven’t reached the point in life where they have the money or the reputation to challenge the “powers that be”.
But they will.
There IS hope for the future and the inevitable decline you implied throughout this article is not that future – all evidence you may marshal to the contrary.
So cheer up!
ps: Two Sundays ago I drove from The Grapevine to Sacramento area up Highway 99 and most of it was fine & has been upgraded and recently paved. I also recall exactly the spot you mentioned and it is bad. But guess what? They’re working on it now. I can’t remember if it’s private contractors or CalTrans, so not sure how long it will take, but at least they’re working on it. :-))
I visited the Philippines recently and visited a nice home in a Manila suburb. All of the homes here have high concrete walls. I also noticed that on the tops of these walls the builders had cemented broken bottles with their pointy parts aimed up, apparently to dissuade would-be robbers from trying to climb over the walls. I thought it was pretty sad, but understandable in a poor country. I suspect we’ll see more of that as things devolve in America. Only in America, when Johnny the Meth Addict tries to climb over your wall and cuts himself, you’ll get sued and end up paying for his habit. Our country is sick, and getting sicker. I’m sending my money overseas.
The other 3rd world homestead trademark we may see develop here is the home generator. As the “green” energy sources stress the grid, I expect we’ll see more brownouts and blackouts. To the extent they become semi-regular people will buy home generators to avoid computer wipeouts and the like caused by unreliable power. Then the enviros will scream about how much more pollution these unregulated generators cause and local and federal officials will levy inspection and license fees and control the distribution of home generators. A new home sales regulation will require inspection of and confirmation of the license of the generators. Many people will decide to avoid this and transfer the generator under the table and more people will become inured to the idea that the laws generally do not need to be followed. Government agencies will be created to address the whole problem and on and on it goes. Meanwhile, I will have retired with my money to a small nation in Central America daring the US government to come get me.
in every aspect of the “new” california, the liberal mindset has taken hold. The result is the “new” california, a third world nation, barely above an african country, and sinking slowly beneath the waves.
There are two glaring errors that must be addressed in your post. The nonsensical notion that, “Terrible governance was also a culprit . . .,” flies in the face of rational thought that, Terrible governance was, is and will ever be THE culprit! With, “Manufacturing jobs, small family farms, and new businesses disappeared due to globalization . . .,” you define the effect as the cause. All that destruction came and continues to come as a direct result of, “Terrible governance.” The people voted for the Terrible governance, those who stayed on the sidelines voted for it also.
It had better start this November or it won’t start at all.
1) I would like to read a complete description of this conversation…Last week I explained to a passer-by why he could not steal the peaches from my trees; he honestly thought not only that he could, but that he almost was obligated to.
2) Shoot and kill the thieves. Claim they attacked you…they still have self defense in CA don’t they?
3) Oddly I see some justice in all of this. The first time I visited CA 40 years ago I felt put down because of my accent and country ways. When I returned home folks asked about CA and I said, beautiful place, it would be wonderful if all the folks living there disappeared and normal people could move in. Don’t feel so uppity now do you all?
The head-on crash of reality and left-wing Utopian fantasies brilliantly portrayed.
Hanson at his very best.
If gas was so expensive, why was the Road Warrior always driving so fast for?
In a high/lethal threat environment, going slow makes you a target. Military convoys go as fast as is consistent with not falling prey to mines (buried or off-route) for the same reason.
When you’re in a free-fire zone, Speed Is Life. Ask any combat pilot.
cheers
eon
Watch the movie again. Pay careful attention to all the leather clad bad guys around him, remembering what they did to the folks they caught. You see the first victims through binoculars and telescope. The next set of 2 are chained to the front of Lord Humongous’s vehicle, where they stay long past their expiration date.
Then tell me you wouldn’t drive fast too.
VDH can intellectually eviscerate any California Progressive in about 15 seconds. Normally I would avert my eyes at such an a-kicking, but it’s simply too much fun to watch the good Doctor in action!
This was a bit of a tough read. We are heading down a path that has no recovery but we are at a point where we can make effective changes. This of course will take a large number of good leaders that are wiling to take on the brutes who call themselves progressives and are currently in charge.
California will go bankrupt shortly . They should sell their public lands to pay off their mishandeling of their finances . It is the most beautiful state in this country . It would really irk the tree huggers and progressives but they woud rather sell out than learn responsibility . I don’t want to pay for a state that is in self distruct mode and arrogant .
California is a textbook example of what happens when liberals are left in control for too long.
It used to be a vibrant, robust economy, the envy of the world.
Now look at it. People can’t move out fast enough, and the great majority of them are solid wage-earners, leaving behind an ever-increasing percentage of freeloaders.
There’s a cautionary tale here for the rest of the country. I hope Mitt Romney hammers away at ir relentlessly between now and election day.
I’ve lived in CA. for 43 years and the trend is down, down, down.
IMO the radical idea of splitting the state is one that makes the most sense. There is NOTHING that ties SoCal to the other counties, VERY LITTLE that ties the Bay Area to the rest of the center/North. If CA didn’t exist there is no way the residents would draw the boundaries for just one state.
CA has failed so lets move on — three new new states (at least) and let each set their own priorities. Highly doubtful all three will screw it up as badly as the one has.
And create 4 more senators from that region? Not a chance. About as much likelihood as DC getting two Senators.
As a native Californian, who left that state of disaster in 1994 for greener pastures, and who saw this all coming decades ago, I have but one message for the State of California….”Go F Yourself”……I can’t wait for the soon to come implosion of that state. You deserve it you Liberal Swine!!
The light rail and natural gas buses are for Agenda21 “smart growth.” The farms are no longer in private hands and productive by design. They will be run by the government and we will live in “stack and pack” government apartments. We shall be their serfs if we let it happen. They are putting it all in place and Dr. Hansen’s copper will not be his to be stolen under the elite’s plan of reinstating serfdom.
As an old warrior I too know better days are ahead – but I believe in exterminating socialist leftist monsters and contribute to that cause. The selfish socialist antigod satanist is doomed.
What is being forgotten here is California has always had the best relief offered. Stienbecks “The Grapes of Wrath” the second wave of migration aftedr the gold rush faded. Too many residents of California feel owed a certain amount of respect just because they live in the state, andc posses a overdeveloped sense of self rightesness as well as a complete sense of knowing what is best for YOU, because you certainly don’t know how to mzke the right choices.
RANT OFF,
The descent into barbarism is only gradual for a while. Then one day barbarians you weren’t even aware of take the city, and the old life disappears in an instant. The new barbarians might be the lynch mob for George Zimmerman, or SEIU thugs who’ve had enough of all the unfairness, loosely organized rural immigrants, or more likely, people you never even imagined have been lusting over the pittance you consider subsistence living.
It’s happened thousands of times before. When it happens, we can take comfort in setting a new record for scale.
Usually when it has happened in the past, the obamas and pelosis were the first to go, but don’t worry. When it happens to us, our loving public servants will have their safe havens well protected.
Well if we are going for movie metaphors, who is the Lord Humongous? Who is the Road Warrior who is going to make that last stand so the others can get away? Who is the Gyro Captain and the Ferrel Kid who become the leaders of “the Great Northern Tribe”?
You see the real problem here; it is easy to identify the problems, and even to some extent the solutions, but where is the leadership needed to make things actually happen in a positive direction?
More specifically, are there any local TEA Party movement organizations out there attempting to win city halls across California? County seats (whatever terminology is used in CA, here in Ontario they would be the Reeves of the county). Taking State seats and even the State House in the downline elections would be nice, but even solid municipal blocks that work to undo the damage at the local level would buy some breathing room and train a generation of politicans who will become skilled at setting and following budgets, undoing bureaucracies and taking on media and special interest groups on behalf of the taxpayers.
It may be too late to raise a force this election cycle, but you have two years to prep for the mid terms and make a real effort. In the words of Mel Gibson (when his back was finally to the wall and he threw in with the good guys):
“If it’s all the same to you… I’ll drive that tanker”.
Yes, there are conservative forces in California, including Tea Parties. The political seats are mostly gerry-mandered. In my congressional district, whoever wins the Republican primary is virtually assured of the seat. Most districts are like this, only some are truly contested.
On the social front, The Capitol Resource Institute monitors Sacramento for any assault on families. For example, they noticed that the Assembly had slipped a provision into a bill, while in committee, that would allow any K-12 student to use any gender restroom or locker facility, based on what gender they felt to be “at that moment”. By reporting on this before it reached the floor, this particular provision to the bill was pulled.
They are a good outfit and deserve support. Even if you are not in California, you may wish to consider supporting them. California is the canary in the coal mine, and what happens here tends to get reported elsewhere. More to the point, progressive wins here tend to embolden progressives in other states.
http://capitolresource.org/
You need to move out to Southwest Missouri. I ride my bike daily in Greene County, it seems pretty safe although we’re still not totally safe from the metal scavengers.
Same here in NW Illinois (including the metal thieves). But just living in this state is quite depressing, of course. I may move back to rural Kansas. Still quite possible there to get yourself shot for bad manners.
Doug, I, too, live in Greene County and ride my bike daily, even to work. My personal challenge is in making a decent living-I fear my Missouri State University “education” hasn’t helped me at all in this regard, and wages/salaries seem awfully low hereabouts. What’s your experience in this regard?
You may wish to blame everything on the government, but, the funny thng about living in a democracy…that is us, all of us.
This wasn’t supposed to BE a democracy. The closer we get to pure democracy, the easier it is to see why that was. Most of the things we are “fixing” are not bugs: they are features.
To VDH:
As a serious question, why are you still in CA (or that part of it) given the amount of general disrepair it’s fallen into? It seems that the cost of living there (or potential costs of living there) are high enough that it’d be well worth moving out.
This is his family land and farm. I am still here because I am 5th generation. I will move when it seems right to do so. Most of the people he mentions would not survive 2 days without government aid and utilities. So, it is Mad Max-like (as another poster suggested – more like the original Mad Max than the Road Warrior). That was the one with the ultra post-apocalyptic town in the desert, the pilot, and the little boy.
A lower then lower then lower still standard of living . It’s the lefts dream come true. We are now all more equal.
VDH brilliant as always. I noticed the comments running 99 to 1 in favor of rational thinking. The 1% are of course the Marxist-Leninist. Wheich begs the question. Are the majority of Americans center right or are 99% of the liberals incapable of reading & writing cogent thoughts?
Left wing, right wing, that whole bird is socialist. Constitutional republic lovers should not allow their political identity to be pegged on that bird. The USSR epitomized the far left, the Union of Soviet SOCIALIST Republics. The far right was epitomized by the Nazis, the National SOCIALIST Workers Party. In the ‘center’ of that bird are all the people who can’t discern right from wrong, the wishy-washy ‘moderates’, who generally either have a political identity based on ignorance, or one with an aire of superiority, saying, “I’m and independent” which is bull manure, they are left of center and are liberal.
How is that $6 Billion dollars for Embryonic Stem Cell Research working out for ya?
Edward Luttwak. Defense in depth.
We haven’t brought it up in this discussion but perhaps the most egregious theft we will be forced to suffer now will be due to health care. As the productive support the slackers … now the healthy will pay the medical costs of the fat, sugar and alcohol addicted, smokers and white bread eaters. I’d rather go without health care altogether. If I have some ailment less critical than a $100k operation I’ll make a cash deal with my doctor. Anything requiring a transplant or a chest cutter and I’d rather die anyway thank you.
Even in the best-case scenario, it will take a miracle to turn things around anytime soon. If at all.
yes, the cancer is deeply imbedded.
Keep fighting, but also prepare your descendents. It isn’t going to be pretty, and the strategies that worked for the last 200 years are going to be useless in the future.
I share your analysis of the decline of our state. But please, instead of just pointing out problems, you also need to provide leadership and offer alternatives. For example, I am a government employee. We try to get the best that we can under the system as it exists – a system that was created long before any of us started our careers. Everyone tries to get the best that they can under the system – do you pay one more penny in taxes than you have to? Of course you take every deduction that you can. If the system has produced excessive compensation and pensions, then don’t just complain, OFFER AN ALTERNATIVE. Let’s get rid of this collective bargaining by unions and replace it with something better. For example, Colorado has a law that says that government employees must be paid the same as their private-sector counterparts. We could have such law here, get rid of the unions and collective bargaining, and have a non-partisan commission that researches and sets salaries and benefits. It’s not difficult to figure out what an employee should be paid, companies do it all the time. We would then have a properly, but not overly-compensated, public sector. One that is non-partisan and respected by all segments of our society, not one that is used as an ATM by one party through union dues, and despised by the other. How about an initiative to do this?
You need to understand that the majority of public workers would get rid of the unions in a heart-beat if we could (look at Wisconsin). QUIT DENIGRATING US. LEAD US- WE WILL FOLLOW.
Robert.
Good on ya for thinking that way, but, as a member of your union, it is YOUR union, meaning that any changes that need to be made, get to be done by the membership.
If at this time, you (and enough others like you) feel that you no longer need the union to represent you, make that fact known. I realize that’s like spitting into the wind at times, but if you feel that strongly about it, make sure the public is aware of the fact that there is not one monolithic block of greedy civil servants out there.
You’ll be pleasantly surprised at the level of support you get.
Robert, keep at it. We have the diagnosis, now we need the treatment plan. I plan to ask for the same thing, each and every time from now on.
Movies that have become more prophetic as time passes on:
Road Warrior(based on your estute observations from your article)
Brazil (Starts out with cops busting down the door and arresting the wrong man, sound familiar lately?)
Wag the Dog
Clockwork Orange (reflective of police brutality, prison system and society)
Americathon (Frightningly accurate, especially since it was filmed in 1979)
Minority Report (as they are now talking about hauling people away for exhibiting physical signs of possible violence as analyized by computer models before they commit it)
Idiocracy (Never seen it, but recommended as very close to the truth)
They Live (which I say might be actually true, except they aren’t aliens, just politicans)
What you don’t see in PaloAltoVille is a hollowing out so we are all in the same boat. What is a shock to me is that California is the closest we have in the US to Democratic Party nirvana.
All statewide offices are held by them and have been for 20 years (Arnold was not a Republican). Only 4 GOPers are between more taxes and sanity so if we were totally Democratic Partiers all we would have is higher taxes and more of the same problems.
And those problems are the worse economics in the US despite being the breadbasket of the US, having the best in natural resources, having maybe 80% of the world’s leading edge technology, having in place the best educational institutions, etc. In other words we are not Mississippi. Yet we are in the toliet. Yet the Democrats keep getting good press as if their policies will ever work.
Kafka lives.
I can’t wait until California goes bankrupt and a judge voids ALL retirement pensions that democrats and unions used to buy votes of their members.
All the teachers, and police, and firemen, and government employees – all their retirement pensions are declared void and fights break out in the street.
Will the rest of America learn a lesson? Of course not and the same scenario will play out in all 50 (or is it 57?) states.
This is going to be fun to watch……….
Thank you, Mr. Hanson. I’ve found your writing to be interesting and timely. I just hope that you’re not prophetic.
However, if the flip from civilization to anarchy happens, when the police melt away to protect their own families, when our politicians abdicate their responsibilities and run for it, when the power goes out, I’m glad that you and people there like you will be well-equipped to be a center of light in the coming darkness. May your “Canticle for Hanson” survive.
It is very important to remember that as bad as big government is and the support for same by the democrats who are currently running our government the republicans led by the tea party have shown their true colors as traitorous dogs “Country First” and has failed as the loyal opposition. How could we possibly support them and their policies if they want to take us down if we don’t see things their way!
Mr Hanson,
Do you believe in the Blank Slate Theory?
Life is too short. Prof. Hanson, why stay? I know that your knowledge and wisdom can be projected to many eager minds from any sort of remote location, but why not find a college/ university system which has higher standards than the Cal State system? If things are better somewhere else, why not go there and help promote the better future you are optimistic about?
The more recent movie this made me think about is “No Country for Old Men.” I kept thinking about the older uncle saying, “This country is hard on people” and “It ain’t waitin’ for you. That’s vanity.” I just wonder how different any of what VDH is describing is from any time you could name in the past.
Or, if things really tip over, try “The Road” based on the book titled the same by author Cormac McCarthy, who also wrote “No Country For Old Men”.
It amazes me that you don’t consider yourself part of the parasites that infest this country. Don’t you work for the publicly funded university system in the People’s state of California? Do you not get a nice tax write off for vineyards? But that’s beside the point you want to talk about the world of Mad Max 2 wand its relation to the contemporary world wouldn’t the best case be found I don’t know, in Africa? oh yea California is so similar to the first Md Max movie then right? No not close. You know if you’re gonna do the analogy with movies, PICK THE RIGHT GODDAMN MOVIES. Like the one that would be most fitting would be Blade Runner. But of course I know WHY YOU DID NOT PICK THAT ONE!
Modern liberalism ≠ the flower power movement.
One can be a modern liberal – i.e. support gay marriage, regulations on credit-default swaps and the collusion of LIBOR and its ilk, campaign for people to conserve water by turning off the faucet when they’re brushing their teeth, etc., – without supporting the crumbling of strong communities, the ethos of hard work, and the value of a solid education. I would say the current decline in California is not due to liberal influences per sé, as Massachusetts, equally liberal, has one of the lowest unemployment figures in the nation, but due to an influx of hippies, druggies, stoners, and as you say, an uneducated, poor, immigrant population from Mexico, which has created a sheep-like voting public and an incompetent public work force. As you say, much of the decline has to do with the retreat of good jobs, and the failure of public education, two things which have not occurred very much (relatively, at least) in the liberal Northeast of the country. So to attribute these problems to Obama, Clinton, etc. is tenuous at best.
California is dying because it gradually became the place where all the “lost souls” and welfare leeches have drifted to, and as many ants follow the first, it gained a reputation as a nice place to go when you have no determination and no direction. Other southern states, with very conservative legislatures and cabinets, are faring equally poorly, if not worse, in the realm of public education. So clearly “liberalism” cannot be to blame there. I would place the blame on the general national decline of the 60s-80s, when sex and drugs became all-important, and perhaps some blame rests also with the malaise of the Vietnam War and the erosion of confidence in government after Nixon. Suddenly, most people became totally concerned with themselves, and not with the quality of their community OR their government, either because they were hippie do-nothings who spent their time reading Foucalt and smoking pot, or because they holed themselves up in a house with a bunch of guns and did nothing but concern themselves with their jobs. Certainly it helped the economy boom, but led to a decline of the surrounding infrastructure, both education-wise and not, which has now infected the economy too.
That is my reckoning of the events. So to reiterate, liberalism is not to blame – not the particular beliefs about climate change and gay marriage and affirmative action. Rather, the decline is due to the hippie movement in general, and the complete erosion of community and hard work, as well as the rather uncontrollable process of deindustrialization that has come with the internet (and its effects on actual physical storefronts), the automation of assembly lines by robots, and the offshoring of jobs that Americans could once count on to support a family. As such, many of these problems can be attributed to the progress of science, and the progress of the rest of the world. In a way, we have a poor economy now because of the iPhone, and because of all the new inventions that made the common human assembly line worker completely useless. We see it even at the supermarket. Where there were once 100 jobs, there are now 30, because half the lanes are computer-automated, and there are machines for doing a myriad of other things at supermarkets and at other places. Even on Wall Street, computer programs now dominate trade, and sometimes national economic crises are produced because of faults with the programming, as Facebook’s IPO debut recently showed.
I am sad for America… but I don’t place the blame on Obama. However, I have a hard time seeing how Obama, Romney, or ANYONE, can pull us out of the mess we are in. To do that, we need a national consciousness change. And it’s hard to see that happening any time soon.
I think your analysis is closer to the mark, than most of the others here. Internet commerce and globalization have created a significant net loss of jobs, and the ripples, or tsunamis are everywhere in our economy. The Government is filling the gap with all the social assistance at the moment, but it is a shaky patch job, at best, and one fears that the center will not be able to hold. People here reflexively b*tch about government workers (who do need some Scott Walkerization) but don’t seem to realize that the smart thing to do in these times may be to GET one of those jobs.
I think that Romney can balance the books of the patch job at least a little better than Obama can or would be permitted to by his base.
“…the smart thing to do…”
119. middleC and D-White. Go to NYC, San Francisco, Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, Boston, Washington DC, and try to start up a small business. I know D-White would have his pockets emptied in a millisecond, and middleC, who might be in the know, he could be the next coming of Gates/Jobs, and last less than a second. Modern Liberals love the smell and feel of other people’s $$$$. Small business? Mmm, mmm, mmm. Tasty mor$els. Heard them into larger GM vats.
The non-recognition that the Modern Liberals have had a disproportionate influence on government intervention in all walks of life is like saying Mr. President agrees with the ideas of Ayn Rand, Or even has read any of her works. Maybe he has. President… Thom…?
And the Pick It Fence But gets into the action with some kind of “smart thing to do advice” proving once again that a Pick It with But Slavery is better than having choices that allow yourself to choose freely. What, they gave you pine instead of redwood? And for middleC, is there room up there D-white?
Dwight
“…but don’t seem to realize that the smart thing to do in these times may be to GET one of those jobs.
July 31, 2012 – 5:58 am
Everything inside my pockets
Your Uncle steals…
Dear Mr Unlucky
Play us a tune,
something to make us all…
unhappy.
Do not be sad
if it was a free choice you had,
you should have known better all these years.
Then you can mix in a little “Hey Jude” riff a la Mike Bloomfield & C
and we’ll all pay a small cover to come listen.
And then, we’ll all go down…together.
Here D-White, cheer up.
“And then, we’ll all go down…together”.
Yes, D-White, some still have a fascination with part of Mr. President’s anatomy, as a sot of coming of age ritual, but (in this case I will use this conjunction) I will not be among those to sign his registry.
And, sometimes – from – the mouths of a government teacher comes a bit of reality -
Dwight
As a teacher, I read plenty of bad poetry back in the day. Seriously, stick to prose, where you are clear and occasionally coherent. ;-) You have fallen in love with weak rhyming/repetition and your meter is all over the place. I will grant you that I only skimmed it, but it is not working.
July 30, 2012 – 2:33 pm
Must be some good Pagan Pink Ripple and Valium in the East section of the East/West area…
Well, you CAN teach Kipling in a government school. It doesn’t suit your agenda to acknowledge it, but a many teachers (at least my contemporaries) happen to appreciate great literature from Shakespeare to Dostoyevsky to Yeats, Kipling etc. I’m not sure that Kipling quite makes it to “great,” but great literature transcends politics, especially in someone like Shakespeare, Dostoyevsky, or Faulkner.
Ever read All the King’s Men? It’s not Faulkner, but it is a reasonable, if sobering take on American politics.
Does the lack of constitutionality have anything to do with this? The federal government has, in fact, become Californized. Or maybe it is the other way around?
It is not the job of our federal government to provide for a transfer of wealth and the federal government, unlike state governments, is specifically directed with limited, very restricted authority to spend what they collect in taxes within those parameters.
We know that the recent ploy by Warren, Obama and Dean is not about what government is empowered to do but about what they would like it to do, that, unfortunately, it has already been doing for a very long time. The fact of the matter is that what they want is more of what they have already gotten which is why we are in this economic morass in the first place. Furthermore, the process has damaged American individualism and the entrepreneurial spirt as well as creating generations of dependents that have never learned how to participate in the American Dream.
This process may have been preventable at one time. Now it may very well be incurable.
Truly great article by Professor Hanson. It’s a shame that the major media refuse to report reality as our state and country devolve and that the only way I can learn of today’s reality is to read an article such as this one. Things are worse, way worse, than I had suspected.
There’s, of course, no way that any society can long survive mismanagement on the scale we see everyday in California and Washington, DC. Things will get much worse – and then stay worse – for a very long time to come.
I see no realistic chance the state/country might get things turned around. I wonder if Obama/Brown are even vaguely aware that there’s a problem.
But, it is interesting that the same state that has produced a “Road Warrior” reality is, at the very same time, about to land another probe on Mars, courtesy of JPL. JPL represents what this state might have been. Professor Hanson’s Central Valley is, sadly, the reality.
Dude! Am I getting the vibe that you feel a little out of place here in Cali? Nobody’s making you stay, you know. If you want to stick around and chill, that’s cool. But if you feel more at home in a state that’s a little more, shall we say, RED, then that’s cool too. We’ll help you pack. And don’t get your hair all gray by worrying about us when you’re gone. We’ll be fine, we promise! Have fun doing whatever you red state folks like to do, and we won’t worry about you, either.
Best wishes either way,
T
Actually, you all should read Edward Gibbon’s “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”. The comparisons will fill you with utter fear and this post had my brain snapped back into the mindset of my scholarly pursuits as history major. It is quite obvious that the porous borders allowed the unwashed barbarians to filter slowly and steadily into the outer regions of the Roman Empire that gradually replaced the imperial armies with drafted local auxilia that were stronger than the citizen but weaker than the legions. As such, as the central law, government, and Roman Constitution weakened at the periphery, the local governors became the forerunners of the feudal lords as they were replaced or interbred with the migrating goths and visigoths. This was noticeable most of all in Gaul or modern day France wherein the replication of this event for them is the Muslim immigration from Algeria. When the legions left Britain and eventually northern Gaul, the local lords began to pilfer the populace with their auxilia armies, but when the Huns finally poured through from the East after having been bribed by the Eastern Emperor in Constantinople (modern day Istanbul), the auxilia were of no match and were destroyed not only by Atilla and his peoples but also of the wave of humanity that was driven before them. In Mexico, the narco-terrorists and Zeta’s are the Huns and the poor and illiterate Mexican citizens fleeing north are the wave of humanity being driven before the barbarism of their violence. However,the decay of Californian government and the Anti-American and Anti-Human drivel that utterly and completely prevents any one immigrant or native born American, from believing that they have been raised in an evil country. American is font of all hatreds and evils and only the elitists in their Church of Anti-Americanism can provide absolution. There is no knowledge, only self-loathing and to an immigrant a provision of anger and resentment. In fact, the fall of American education and culture is not that we prevent assimilation because we believe ourselves to be so superior like the Romans did, but rather the opposite. Our elitists believe other cultures to be superior and ours to be not only inferior but actually twisted and evil. That we are wrong and everyone else is right. They refuse to assimilate the immigrants because they believe that they have a culture that should take precedent over ours. This leads only to anger which then leads to hate, which then leads to final state of suffering that exists now. American local law enforcement in SoCal is disintegrating with unimaginable rapidity. Lawless is abound in the now emptier quarters of once verdant and prosperous regions. Whole cities are economical collapsing and the very social fabric is being unwoven and their are now weavers to stitch it back. It has become the Cradle of Chaos. San Diego is a bright spot that may hold back the tide and could, if properly dispersed into the interior with orders to restore law with lethal force if necessary, bring back those dangerous places to a condition of relative stability.
Without the Law to punish, Man becomes an animal. When Man becomes an animal, the sword is the only arbiter of justice. What Progressives do not understand is that society rehabilitates, the Law is meant to punish. Society forgives, the Law must condemn. The Law CANNOT have heart. It must be impartial and to be impartial is to be without the bias of compassion or culturally induced sympathies. The Law is to punish the offender and protect the innocent. The sole power of the state is to carry out the letter of the Law which is the wishes and desires of the people. In Singapore, there is remarkably low amounts of petty crime for such a high density city-state with a population of slightly more than five million in a space around 3.5 times larger than the District of Columbia. This astoundingly low crime rate is due in large part to the punishments doled out to any such criminals. For anyone that can remember this punishment was to be given to an American teenager named Michael Fay living in Singapore in 1994 with his mother and stepfather. For the offense of vandalism, which was severe considering the cleanliness and pride Singaporeans in their neighborhoods, property, and communities, was then sentenced to be struck six times with a rattan cane. These wooden rods are soaked and are quite flexible to maximize skin contact and the pain of the abrasions that they cause. A second culprit who was caught plead not guilty was sentenced to twelve strokes of the cane. When the abysmally stupid and hypocritical American media and government of Bill Clinton attempted to interfere, the Singaporeans aptly and correctly reminded both him and our press that American stood for the Rule of Law and that they professed to defend the rights of other nations to rule their own territories and jurisdictions as they saw fit. Nevertheless, the Singaporean justice system extended the grace of leniency by reducing the canning sentence from six strokes to . . . four. The purpose of the Law is not to be merciful, not to be kind, not to forgive, and not to rehabilitate. Criminal Law serves one purpose and one purpose only: to punish the criminal and protect the innocent. If it is prevented from doing so, then the Law is of no use to either Man or Beast and will never be able to dispense justice. In fact, any attempt to turn the Law to any other endeavour will only spread injustice which will lead to a sharp and inexorably breakdown of trust in the judicial system. Criminals will become victims and victims will become criminals. Prisons in our country have become palaces while our neighborhoods and inner cities have become war zones riven by racial hatred and unending violence of gang conflict.
If there is anyone to blame then those decrying the heavens for not only a scapegoat but the truest and most despicable villain of this sad and sordid tale need only look deeply into the reflection of the nearest mirror and give greetings to the harbinger of their own destruction.
Hear, hear!
We may not hit a Road Warrior social breakdown in our lifetime.
We are, however, on the verge of a Mad Max society, with roving bands of looters, hooligans, knock-out-game thugs, flash-robbers, and violent gangs terrorizing decent people with impunity.
Oh, bloody Hell!
One of the problems with the PJMedia sites is that there’s no convenient “contact the author” link, so I hope our esteemed author reads all the comments. ;)
Upstream I noted Mr. Hanson “finally inventoried” the guns on his estate, especially mentioning .22s, which drove me to this comment. Google “s&w m&p 15-22.” This will give you links to Smith & Wesson’s AR-15 equivalent in .22LR. It comes with a 25-round magazine (horrors!), uses the dirt-common .22LR round, and MSRPs at a whopping $499. I’ve seen several comments on the web from folks who got one mail-order from the right dealer for closer to $400. From the reviews I’ve read, it’s a very nice low-end rifle excellent for plinking and varmint control, not to mention a nearly perfect tool for “intro to handling firearms.”
What Dr. Hanson is experiencing is called “anarcho-tyranny.” If you’re not familiar with the term, look it up. The issues that are causing our problems could be solved, if we as a people were free to handle them properly. Make no mistake, that would involve bloodshed and people used as decorations on trees and lampposts.
What has happened, however, is that the government has taken the side of the criminals against the law-abiding. They also refuse to enforce the law against the criminals because the criminals will fight back with no holds barred, so the government makes up for that failure by enforcing it with extra rigor against those who still try to obey it.
Ask yourself this: if that was not true, why would Americans consistently provide pollsters with responses that show nearly four out of five do not think the government rules with the consent of the governed? Then ask yourself this: who, in government at any level, do you REALLY trust to do the right thing? Local cops? State officials? Feds? Anyone at all?
mac – imo you’ve provided (sadly) the best comment to this piece.
There’s another PJM piece regarding DoJ’s AAG Perez ‘possibly’ perjuring himself which I believe will bare no fruit (Napolitano, DoJ’s Gyamfi are but 2 of many who have perjured themselves as of recent, the latter doing this 3 TIMES and getting no type of punishment whatsoever) for the precise reasons you’d posted.
Again, sadly.
Mac,
I believe vigilantes are already taking the law into their own hands. So. Cal. is mostly a wasteland and when the undesirables trespass they are being “taken out.” Rural areas like Selma will begin to find among their ruins not just the skeletal remains of dogs but that of humans too.
When my children were growing up in Texas I would drive from Houston TO Fargo to visit relatives. What I noted was striking. There was decay everywhere south of the Kansas(or Missouri) border and growth everywhere north (Winnipeg is as far North as I would travel) with the further north the better the growth.
Since My children are grown I have encouraged them to move north and into the zone that is still growing. The growth in North Dakota is not just from Oil, but the whole economy. The Eastern part of the state has no Oil and has had good growth for the last 10 years, even as the rest of the economy stagnates.
This Corridor Omaha, Sioux City, Sioux Falls, Fargo and Winnipeg continues to grow.
Superb piece, Mr. Hanson. One really gets a sense of the enormous potential for collapse, and the subsequent roving gangs, each trying to scrape together a serfdom in which to preserve their favorite things: twinkies, television, football…then shelter, food, water…
If you ever find yourself wanting to burn through that pickup’s tank of liquid gold to escape the falling colossus, you are most definitely welcome to try your hand at the post-apocalyptic out here in midwestern flyover country…where a great many of us have managed to keep our forearms clean and our earlobes, tongues, and septums unmolested…where we begrudgingly keep our “racist” and “bigoted” observations about the collapsing world around us to ourselves…where we force our teenagers to learn the value of sweat equity…and where you’ll find a sizeable portion of silent majority waiting in the wings for their chance to step in and try to resuscitate the culture that built this country…perhaps after the dust settles, anyway.
Dr. Hanson, I like what you write, but I have one little thing that’s bothering me: Where do you get the idea that people with glaucoma don’t have to use eye drops nowadays? It’s true, there are eye implants (I have one), but they are only used after eye drops prove to be insufficient, and the implants aren’t always sufficient, either. Mine wasn’t, so I’m taking eye drops again, but not so many times a day as before.
Those high speed rail links are for transporting the troops one way and the masses the other way, back to the camps. All heil Caesar!
the sun will run out of fuel before the hsr is ever completed
About 50 years ago nearly moved to Cal. with my parents. Then Cal. was a dreamland, beautiful weather, abundant high paying work, excellent education…including free college in a great university system. An incredibly beautiful and rich land, California was without peer.
What happened?
Could it be that the Visigoths have sacked Rome? Is Obama, The Destroyer,
visiting his wrath upon the 50 states as was done in Sacramento years ago? Perhaps we’ve tired of freedom and ready to be serfs.
Those who want to be serfs, let them go elsewhere, like say, Europe.
It wasn’t just that I lost my standards, but that I lost my students who could read.
Antonio Gramsci’s ghost nods in warm approval.
Everything continues to get worse and worse. No matter how many times someone
writes an article or showss it on TV or writes a book or wins an election.
I remember way back in the 50′s and 60′s when life was pre-road warrior.
It was at that time the downfall began. Turning away from the God that blessed
our great country. We kicked God out of our schools then our Movies then our
Government. All our morals left our schools,civilization and Government and
we scratch our heads saying “What happened? “. Anyone who has a heart for God
knows this to be true. And it’s not going to get better, it is written very
clearly in the Word of God that this would happen, ending in the judgement
of God. You can’t make anyone understand (except very few) the reason for these
things. The one thought that frightens me is, have we gone so far that we cannot see enough to repent.
May God Have mercy.
Giorgio de Chirico
“Take the new high-speed rail project, “, please!
I moved to Fresno 2 1/2 years ago. As a psychiatrist, I am on the frontlines of the MH wars and it is absolutely chilling to observe the amount of methamphetmine use here in the valley. On a given day the police drop off 20-30 ragingly psychotic and paranoid people–all under the influence of meth. These individual are mostly young (between the ages of 17-35). They are uninterested in getting help and there is not only not enough room for them in the jails, there is no room in the psychiatric hospitals–the latter now being the preferred societal disposition. Invariably, they get treated with antipsychotics, get a few free meals, get referred to a drug program, and get discharged. Most go immediately back to the streets for more drugs. They never pay a penny for their care; they use SSI to buy drugs; and they could care less about getting help.
I’ve been in several other states, but California is definitely the worse. Everything about the system here (from county to state to federal institutions –and I have worked in them all) reinforces bad (and criminal) behavior and enables not only drug use; but abuse of the system to get as much free stuff as possible without any motivation or incentive to stop using.
Every once in a while I see a real psychiatric patient (i.e., one with a psychiatrici diagnosis not contaminated with drugs like meth or cocaine or heroin; or alcohol) and can actually do something to help them.
I am glad I am near retirement as I am fast approaching the day when practicing psychiatry will be too painful for me to be able to continue.
And what would your suggestions be?
I read Mr. Hanson everyday because he parrots my experience to a tee. He looks at the real world, not the fictional make-believe one Obama and Brown describe. Yet, I am less hopeful for a good outcome than him. The selfishness, the all-about-me mentality that embraces entitlements will be the death of CA and this nation. Well said, sir.
VDH asks, re the dumped dead fighting dogs, “Where is PETA when you need them?” No one needs PETA, ever. “Ethical Treatment” to them means “Kill as many as possible. Animals are better off dead than being used by humans for any purpose, including companionship.” *Spit* in their general direction, and shame on VDH for invoking them.
Lucid, well-written piece as always, but too pessimistic, I think. Dr. Hanson seems to be living in one of the more desolate, impoverished zones of inland California, and extrapolating from that one area to the whole state, the whole country, the whole of western civilization. It’s a bridge too far.
There are still many prosperous, low-crime areas in the US, places where people are friendly and where antisocial acts are uncommon. I live in a quiet stretch of the Jersey shore where violent crime is virtually unheard of. It’s a nice area but hardly unique.
In any era there are going to be places on the rise and places on the decline. It sounds like Dr. Hanson’s locale is on the decline. The solution is to find someplace better and move there. As the Bible puts it, “It is better to light one candle than to curse the darkness.” After a certain point, bewailing one’s fate while doing nothing to change it becomes an exercise in self-pity.
Excellent point, which I suppose means, I feel much the same myself. But obviously VDH NEEDS the desolate meme of the world falling down around his ears. You can’t be a respectable righty and say “all (or enough) is well.” Once Obama is kicked out, then we will hear it endlessly; lefties will howl, righties will say, “this ain’t so bad.” and so it goes.
I really do sympathize with the plight of experiencing the family farm going to the dogs, but Americans are supposed to move on.
Thanks for your comment, Dwight. Yes, I get the impression that Dr. Hanson actually relishes his role as Horace among the Goths, or Euripides among the Macedonians. (I think I got those references right …)
I lived in California for more than a decade and moved out when I saw that things were sliding downhill. It wasn’t the easiest thing I’ve done, but it wasn’t the hardest, either. Every year millions of Americans relocate in search of a better life. If Dr. Hanson’s corner of the world has gone to hell, and it sounds like it has, then he does have the option of moving on.
Or he can continue to write eloquently about it, striking a chord with others who are unhappy with their circumstances but reluctant to make a change.
Secession NOW. Give California and Oregon to Mexico, and keep Arizona and Nevada. Cut the gangrene off before it infects the rest of the US
Mr. Hanson good luck with your hope for a return to the way things were. What you had before was just an illusion anyway. Mankind’s way of doing things is fraying around the edges precisely because it is not based on a solid foundation that can last. Unfortunately things will get much darker before the light comes. Pumping your own well water and taking stock of your weapons will not help you in the long run. A new top down government from Heaven will (Daniel 2:44). A God fearing man should know this.
Wow!!! … that was pretty heavy … is it cocktail time yet?
Mad Max,
Out
America has been looted, and like a slaughter steer, everything of value taken; all that remains is to sweep up the blood caught by the sawdust, grind the bones and render the offal.
Educators going back to Dewey are at the core (corps?) of the problem, but without monetary integrity and implicit fiduciary duty owed The Nation by those elected & appointed to serve the public at every level, it was only a matter of time before those who could print money from nothing found bribery and blackmail the most effective tools to enable their continued looting.
The Financial Collapse is upon US. Problem is The Nation like some monster Redwood is taking forever to fall so few can accept The Nation our ancestors and grandparents invested in and gave blood to build has been Betrayed by those entrusted to serve at every professional and business leadership level.
The betrayal and resultant ruin are not accidental or happenstance. Every component of the engine that built America has been intentionally sabotaged. Not really much reason to discuss social-expectations and descent into the chaos which will ensue when there aren’t enough property-tax payors to meet county payrolls.
Point is: You’re either aware enough to have already begun working toward self-sufficiency like Victor fitting his handpump to the old well, or you’ll find yourself without…
The chaos and ruin are the goal. Internalize that, understand its ramifications and you’ll realize all the time you have to work with to assure some degree of self-sufficiency must be considered with triage-like seriousness.
Check out a similar perspective. This is a metaphor reflecting on the H.G. Well’s novella the “Time Machine”.
http://jenkuznicki.com/2012/07/a-tale-of-two-americas/
A Tale of Two Americas
In 1895, long before the Great Society, long before the New Deal and over a decade before the 16th Amendment established the progressive income tax H.G. Wells wrote the science fiction novella, the “Time Machine” that portrayed a futuristic society where the human race had evolved into two species, where one still resembled the humans we know and the other survived because they preyed upon them. Most people who read the novella were entranced over the concept of time travel and since that year countless stories, films and scientific articles have embraced and embellished on the theory.
From the moment I read the story I recognized elements that bore a striking resemblance to the reality of our times. Before Medicare and Medicaid existed, when SS was a relatively benign economic liability, before the fatherless matriarchal family became institutionalized, before home relief, food stamps, unemployment, public housing and a myriad menu of other entitlements had been conceived to become ubiquitous America was showing symptoms of an internal threat as significant as any conceivable military scenario. America was clearly advancing into two economic fractions as divergent in their beliefs as two countries speaking two different languages and who share completely different values. It is not the Capulet’s vs. the Montague’s, the Hatfield’s vs. the McCoy’s, or the Jets vs. the Sharks. It is the Capitalists vs. the Socialists and this President is the leader of the latter camp.
Despite the best political philosophers from Aristotle thru Locke, upon which we have based our Founding Principles, our civilization, our concepts of capitalism and free markets, our individual rights to own and use property has arisen a new slavery where a democracy allows millions to applaud the transfer of property from those who morally earned it though earnest effort to those who legally get to steal it.
Obama is not just about sharing the wealth; he is not even about compassion for those that really could use charity; he is not about fairness; he is not about equality under the law. He is about a passionate dislike for those that achieve success and therefore will never be about creating wealth. At a time when we need Reaganesque leadership anew, a fast and furious return to economic principles that are based upon the Laws of Nature that define how humans as a species best survive, the country is driven at an unbelievable velocity in exactly the same direction as southern Europe under the grandiose idea that more of what is wrong for them is actually what will be good for us.
H.G. Wells wrote a fictional story that also depicts a reality. Therefore the story does not have to be fictional. All you have to do is remove the time machine and reconnoiter through the last century, top it off with three and a half years of the Obama Administration plus an additional four more years of the same policies to realize that liberty can be lost in less than the span of one lifetime. Ask yourself; In Obama’s fundamentally changed America what part of H.G. Well’s novella best represents the life that your children will experience? You only have two choices.
CATDOC, there aren’t two choices. Romney is as liberal as Obama.
Two words: Mexicans and Hippies.
Round up wetbacks and deport them. 2nd time, execution on the spot. Start to clean up Mexico by dropping a nuclear bomb in Mexico City!
Your ideas intrigue me, and I’d like to subscribe to your newsletter …
Paul, I am with you on the former but against using nuclear weapons to solve a relatively simple problem. I believe summary executions after the second offense on illegal immigration, will make illegal immigration rather unpopular. Hence, no need for nukes.
Cheers!
Dr. Hanson -
I applaud your hopeful note at the end of your essay. I share all of your concerns, and echo your analyses, but, I have determined that there is no hope, and am in the process of leaving.
I see only two possibilities for saving California –
1) The Legislature stops illegal immigration and eliminates sanctuary cities, eliminates the business-strangling regulations, shuts down the monumental social spending, reforms the environmental regulations to something more realistic, and eliminates the profusion of unaccountable agencies who continually expand their reach into people’s private lives.
This is highly unlikely in the state which regularly returns Democrat majorities to the Legislature, and Democrats to the Governor’s chair.
2) Armed revolution by the citizens.
This is also unlikely, because, by the time the problem has reached the point where enough citizens will participate in a rebellion, there will not be enough people with firearms left in the state to be an effective force.
Thus, I believe that California’s path to the future has been set, and cannot be changed at this point. As businesses and citizens such as myself continue to leave, there will gradually appear an Hispanic majority in the society, followed by Hispanic majority in the Legislature. At some point, California will come under de-facto, if not direct Mexican control.
The return to Mexico will have been accomplished – because too many liberals could not see the possibilities before it was too late.
If Texas is added to the equation you could take out the whole nation.
Mr. Hanson, I have often wondered why you continue to live in California. Why not just call it quits?
Anyhow, thanks for staying and continuing to issure reports about the increasing dilapidation and chaos back in my home state, where I was born and grew up, and which (thankfully) I left back in the 1990s.
Your reports serve to presage the future of the rest of the country.
Well, actually it was Texas Conservativism that caused the problems in both states. Texas is for cheap labor so California copied that model by importing illegal immigrants in the 1970′s. Orange County Ca which was only 10 percent latino in 1970 started to use the cheap labor model of El Paso. So, both Santa Ana and Anaheim now looked like El Paso because Republican busineesmen hired them to do service jobs and low skilled factory work. Conservatisim that is aimed at low taxes but low labor costs at any costs, the Texas model and Orange County model will get you into trouble. Texas is second to California in total illegal immigration. People think of California with high taxes but prop 13 limt property taxes and that’s when the Hispanic illegal immigrant invasion occurred
Great article Mr. Hanson and as your neighbor I’m hoping it’s winter when everyone wants to escape California and Donner pass is snowed in!
Seriously, none of this is going to matter much if the speculation is true about Fukushima and radiation headed for West coast waters. What a sad state of affairs all around.
SACRED SMELT
In around 2007 another lawsuit expanding the Mesothelioma victim class came staggering out of the Tort Empire, seeking court approval to eath more moneybags of the corporations. Expert witnesses testified as to the victimness of the proposed classmembers. A Federal Circuit judge struck the lawsuit down, saying any Federal Court decision based on the science relayed by expert witnesses must be science which is peer-reviewed, destruction tested, accepted, repeatable science, and not hypotheses based on deductive reasoning.
Junk science is the best friend of governance. The EPA was built on a foundation of junk science conclusions (thimblerigging) about DDT.
Someone could contemplate filing a lawsuit in Federal Court over the Sacred Smelt, citing damage caused by Regulations based on junk science and citing the Federal Circuit Court decision (in Ohio?) to impeach the junk science.
I read about the Federal Circuit decision in the “Wall St. Journal” years ago in connection with the Mesothelioma lawsuits and their mix of sense and nonsense and nutty juries. I did not save the article as a clipping and did not realize the importance of the decision until the issue came to the top of the stack of papers and was used in the litter box. Someday I will look it up on something. I thought it would pop up in lawsuits but I don’t thing anyone has noticed it outside of the Tort industry, which thinks concrete, inductive reasoning science is all a threat to their livelihood.
I remember California in the 60′s and 70′s. It was a really nice place to be. Sometime in the 80′s things began to go seriously downhill. At sometime, the people are going to have to take control of the situation and fix matters at the local level.
One has to question the mental state of the people to elected Jerry Brown to a second gig as governor.
Interesting to do a Google search on: california “central Valley” shanty towns
… and view the returns that come back …
Should you be overwhelmed by the decadence, decay and ignorance around you, Dr. Hanson, Kansas will welcome you; openly, graciously.
It’s a veritable Frodo’s Shire; far removed from the Orcs and Goblins which gnaw and infest a beleaguered nation. And contrary to some opinion, there’s Nothing the Matter here.
I was raised in California from the early 60s till now. I was brought up to be polite and had a credo. Work for what you want. Now I see children with drugs and guns and no education to speak of, and I remember when this state had the highest standards of education in the country. I see politicians get into office who have no idea what they’re doing. We had the Govornator and Grey, Brown and others of their ilk who used Cal. as a stepping stone to higher offices. 6 or 7 million illegal immigrants live here and more are coming. People have no jobs and others don’t want to work. It’s true that the voters in California helped to hold the doors open to the present apocolyptic state we now face, but who will stand up and say, “Enough?” When will the few of similar mindset will stop the state from utter ruin?
Some have already started planning for the future by organizing “Transition Towns”. Read 2052 by J. Randers.
Dr. Hanson,
After reading your article it suddenly occurred to me why Governor Brown is so obsessive about getting the Bakersfield-Fresno leg of the “high-speed” rail started ASAP. At first I thought he was either (a) anxious to grab the federal handout for the construction, (b) building his “monument” like demi-gods before him have down, or (c) all of the above. A quick look at a map of California and voila!: the track will run right through the heart of the area you describe – perhaps near your front door. What a splendid solution to the shanty town problem – an endless source of cheap labor right in the neighborhood where the track will be. Don’t even have to import them like the nasty Republican capitalists did in Orange County & south Texas. Oops, did I say Brown was acting like a Republican?
Sorry sir. There is no reason at all for any sort of optimism.
What comes next is blood. A sea of spilled blood as all this comes crashing down. There is simply no way this entitlement society can continue. Jobs are disappearing nationwide at an alarming rate. When fewer and fewer are paying in to support more and more being paid it simply will not continue.
While you are right to begin “survivalist” activities, sheltering in place will only get you killed. California has some of the strictest gun laws in the nation. That translates into your adversaries being better armed than you are. That translates into you and your family being dead.
A storm is coming, probably nationwide, centered on urban population points with large entitlement groups. When their income stream dries up, it will be game on. Vast numbers will be killed as this group begins a search for sustenance. It will be ugly.
Heaven forbid an outside foreign power take advantage of this teetering house of cards. Multiply many times over what I have described should that come to be so. A couple of large EMP detonations would permanently wipe clean the monthly electronic funding stream the entitlement classes depend on. Survival would become an all encompassing game.
Don’t believe me? You will.
So it seems to me that the issue is not socialism or “liberalism” so much as race and culture. Sweden and Germany seem like pretty well run places to me despite being socialist or social welfare states. California has replaced mostly Northern Europeans with mestizos from Latin America and has therefore become more like Latin America. I am reminded of Milton Friedman’s response when told that there was no poverty in Scandinavia, that there was no poverty among Scandinavian-Americans either.
I want to read (and explain) this to my 10-year old.
Sorry, but I just don’t care. I grew up in Oxnard, CA. I left when I was 18. You could see this coming 35 yeas ago. It was like the Titanic romancing the iceberg. People are going to have move with their feet or embrace the poorhouse. The “final curtain” is a long, excruciatingly painful way off. Those folks brought this on themselves and they are still in denial. They will get no tears from me. BTW, in the polls Obama is ahead by almost 60-40 (57-43 as of today). The big city “sophisticates” just don’t get it. Hasta la vista, baby!
She is in woeful shape. How to save this once golden beauty of a state? What about some first steps?
I’m so glad I’m not young anymore.
How sad, too, that we employ dream-factory celluloid metaphors to make our points. And then spend time discussing their comparative merits.
There’s no hope …
“There’s gold in them thar hills…” Once people flocked to California to look for gold or to profit from those who were there looking for gold, and sometimes finding it. The gold that became the dream since the sixties is the promise of education, health care, food, clothing and housing as well as a culture that expects nothing from its citizens. Naturally people flocked there. Add to that the farce of the farm subsidizes that corporations took advantage – all liberal in political circles. When the government promised water and monetary subsidizes to farms, smart business people bought land and took every penny they could from government even though they were already wealthy. Business will take money anywhere it can get it. And you can bet these business promote the liberal mantra; it is what keeps the gov’t cash coming in.
You could move to NW Florida…no Democrates even run for office. Only problem…we don’t like Californians.
NO! Don’t tell anyone about NW Florida, it’s the only good part of the state and the absolute last thing we need is more transplants! I fled from the DC area, which is a lot like CA. Used to be nice, but all the illegals and Yankees from NY/NJ moved in and turned the place into a nightmare. It’s wonderful here, but even in the last few years I’ve seen more “Destin-ization” of Panama City Beach and it’s headed east. There was nothing I could do to save Northern VA, nobody is actually from there and so nobody cares except the few natives, and we are outnumbered.
Every time I hear people talking about “growth” and “progress” and jobs, I warn them of the true cost of those things…but I don’t think they listen. I love being able to go to the beach without a bunch of idiots ruining it, go horseback riding on the beach, drive my car on it, have a bonfire, do whatever. More people means more regulations and rules so please, if you REALLY love it here, keep your mouth shut! Tell everyone that this place is full of evil redneck bigots and there’s nothing to do. This is one of the few nice places left in the country that isn’t freezing cold and I do NOT want to have to leave it for WV until absolutely necessary. Thanks, from a fellow NW Floridian!
Ya can’t have military bases in 130 countries, bomb and murder innocent people overseas and just go on your merry way acting as if YOU are the victims. YOU are the perps now. Either change, make ammends or continue to say bye bye to the middle class.
You had the best chance since the freaking revolution in the elections with a Texas congressman and doctor named Ron Paul who would have turned this place back around to the prosperous + free place it was. But you want more war/welfare. You got it
Meanwhile, here in Texas, we just keep building the fence that will someday become our border with the United States.
I remember a California professor of one of the big name schools writing articles about integration causing the loss of morality and the descent of the schools and our youth. He was run out of his school. When will acknowledge that that is the problem?
My parents moved out of Denver to Missouri, with one of the main reasons being bussing. The next school year, 6th for me, I’d have been riding a bus an hour to north Denver, and my brother would be going to a school miles north, too, in 3rd grade. Our elementary school we were going to was less than a mile away. Bussing of kids from north Denver to our school began when I was in 2nd grade. I was only 7 but I remember how the atmosphere changed from peace and pleasantness to tension and insecurity. Insecurity because there was always some smart-mouthed bussed in kid abusing his neighbors, and he in most cases would call in his equally troublesome bigger older brother to help if opposed. School went from a peaceful environment where I don’t remember anyone picking on anyone else, to one where a kid walked in an environment of constant threat. I think educational quality did begin to decline, too, due to bussing. When my brother was in 2nd grade, class size was big, his teacher was very young and not very effective, and for one thing he did not learn to read very well at all.
VDH has once again eloquently described many of the ailments of today’s modern society. While I don’t agree with him about all of the causes he’s stated (I need to think further about a few), I agree with him about most of them and I agree with him about the symptoms. While he’s optimistic about the future, for a more pessimistic view, read my new political satire novel Good Intentions (http://tinyurl.com/bp7b47d).
I’m dissappointed with most of you. I’m in California, from a family with deep roots here. We are as American as you NW Floridians who “hate” californians. That was uncalled for. We are NOT any different from you, just happen to be on the battlefront. The saga you see described in this blog is no different from that you will all experience, unless it is stopped. Stop it here! Don’t allow the Fed to ruin any part of our great country. It is true that we are overrun by Mexicans. NOT BY CHOICE!!! The distant DC folks have decided for us and Arizona that we can’t remove this infestation. We have entertained splitting the state along the LA county line, Southern CA being truly Conservative.
We will not be driven out. Many may die, indeed. Entitlement people are definitely a problem, but we are preparing for the interruption of their lifelines. We have resources, skill sets and setermination.
Yet, I see in here that many of you decry the loss of CA as if it has already happened, and “hope CA doesn’t ask us for help”… Not an American ideal, I must say.
Ben Franklin…” Stand together or hang separately”… The enemy is closer to you folks East than it is to us out West… You’ll be needing our help.. don’t alienate us just yet…
PETA’s willing to help, but we need the location and you’re not returning our messages!
Well Mr. Hanson, since you have always kept silent (probably for selfish reasons) about the identity of builders of the “kingdom of lies”, it is hard to judge your article as more as irrelevant self-pity of an old professor.
The jewish domination of politics, the media, academia and the justice system in the US is the root cause of all problems you mentioned (yes, it is a long and complicated story, but it can be told). But you prefer not to talk about this root cause of all the Californian ills which are the ills of the whole White world.
Don’t get me wrong. I can understand this reluctance. The repressions for someone who speaks the truth are often terrible. But I can’t see you as “conservative” as you want us to believe.
With kind regards.
I akways enjoy VDH’s thoughts. In fact I remainded a member of Free Republic.com as his articles were freqeuntly posted there.
however, when I finished my investigation into 9-11, I WAS KICKED OFF!
I keep reading in the comments “why stay there”?
And go where? What VDH describes is anywhere and everywhere in the US now.
youth-vines: grow with us
Hanson writes:On occasion, I think the people silently seethe and resent their kingdom of lies, and so may prove their anger at the polls, perhaps this November.
Are you kidding? Ya can’t have military bases in 130 countries, bomb and murder innocent people overseas and just go on your merry way acting as if YOU are the victims. YOU are the perps now. Either change, make ammends or continue to say bye bye to the middle class.
You had the best chance since the freaking revolution in the elections with a Texas congressman and doctor named Ron Paul who would have turned this place back around to the prosperous + free place it was. But you want more war/welfare. You got it
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