Will California Crack?

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California has been the jewel in the crown of the United States for over a hundred years.  Throughout the Great Depression Dust Bowl Okies travelled across country looking for salvation in the Golden State.  And afterwards throughout the second half of the twentieth century California was the capitol of modernity, innovation, affluence and optimism.  It grew at an astonishing pace both in wealth and in population for what seemed like forever.  And it reaped the rewards of this growth when Silicon Valley become the engine that powered not only California’s economy but the whole country through stock ownership in companies like Apple, Google and Microsoft.

But in the last decade that has all changed.  California’s policies on almost every aspect of life in the Golden State have conspired to put an end to that growth.  The cost of everything from groceries to gasoline have skyrocketed and the cost of owning a home is preposterously out of the reach of everyone but the truly wealthy.  For that reason alone, the exodus of Californians to red states like Tennessee and Texas has been large.  So much so that for the first time ever the state has lost representation in Congress.

But that is just the tip of the iceberg.  Even the enclaves of the absurdly rich around Los Angeles and San Francisco are beginning to suffer from violent crime to an extent they’ve never experienced before.  And the lower income areas are becoming no-go zones for vulnerable older people and women.  The effect of all this is to begin unravelling the fabric of normal life in the state.  Shoplifting of less than a thousand dollars of merchandise has essentially been decriminalized and so drug stores and other retail businesses are moving out of the urban areas.  District attorneys and prosecutors refuse to prosecute property crime and even some violent offenders.  And so, the police have essentially stopped arresting them.

Encampments of homeless drug addicts and illegal aliens have mushroomed across the cities and with them has come crime, violence, filth and disease.  Taken along with all of the other dysfunctional policies of the state like the elimination of gasoline powered cars and the dependence on “renewable sources” of energy and the resulting brown-outs and black-outs this causes, it seems to me that California is ripe to be the first bright-blue state to wake from their woke fever dream and admit defeat.  Now maybe I’m off base and the trillions of dollars of revenue that Silicon Valley currently pumps into the California state coffers is enough to fend off reality for Sacramento law makers forever.

But even if insolvency isn’t on the immediate horizon, how about the common people.  You know, even if I were a Mexican-American working as a teacher or some other stalwart dues-paying client of the Democrat party I think I might be tired of having to put my kids in the bathtub to protect them from gangland gunfire in the crime riddled hellscape that their neighborhoods have become.  And that goes for having to pay five bucks a gallon for gas and $1,000 a month for an apartment that’s ten square feet!

But maybe I’m wrong.  Maybe this can go on forever.  Of course, if the profits in Silicon Valley ever dip it might really cause a problem.  Or suppose more of these companies decide to head to a low tax state like Florida or Nevada?  Well, that could be the straw that breaks the camel’s back.  The question I have is what happens then?  Can even Washington’s infinite currency printing machines make California work without Google and Apple?  They might be finding out sooner than they think.

Guest Contributor – War Pig – 09SEP2024 – Finding Significance Redux

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One of my favorites is Ahab’s soliloquy spoken by Gregoey Peck on the bridge of the Pequod.

I do not have the funds to make great changes. No political power, no influence except among family who respect my opinions. I believe there is too much money In politics already, so I do not contribute to political parties or candidates except for a cousin of mine who is a county trustee.

Instead, I offer the party or candidate something totally above price. My vote. It cannot be bought as I would not sell it for millions, therefore it is beyond value. I earned my franchise through blood, sweat and pain. It is priceless to me.

As for social media, I eschew it. My private life is mine and I do not care to share it with strangers. I also do not care about their lives so no reason to join social media. I don’t want to see pictures of their restaurant meals, etc. I find no attraction in trying to gain approval from strangers by amassing likes. There are a few for whom I care about their opinions. Mostly my close relatives and a very few brothers in arms.

We really need to lower our population back down to about 150 million. We’re beginning to act like an experimental overcrowded rat colony.

Finding Significance

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Regular readers know that I admire, perhaps excessively, a small number of well-known literary works.  Shakespeare has several of my favorites.  But there are gems scattered throughout western literature from the Iliad on.  And of course, there’s the Bible.

I’ve always admired this speech from Macbeth:

“Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,

Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,

To the last syllable of recorded time;

And all our yesterdays have lighted fools

The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!

Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player,

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,

And then is heard no more. It is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing.”

 

These are the words of a man who has come to believe that life is meaningless.  But it’s really a rationalization for the results of murdering his own conscience.  He was describing the hell he had created and that soon would engulf him permanently.

And I find this idea instructive.  I think if you keep in mind that there is a moral order, then it gives you a sense of perspective.  You can be surrounded by evil and forced to deal with the worst of humanity.  But if you can work to preserve the things that are good then you can have some peace in knowing you are giving meaning to human life.  And that’s not nothing.

Despair is a godless pleasure that we’re not allowed to imbibe.  You have to work to make this crazy world of ours better.  Certainly, we are currently seeing a diminution in the state of our world.  The morals, the morale, the wisdom of our society is draining away in a shocking way.

And that’s alarming.  But it’s far from the first time and it’s probably not the worst example on record.  It’s important to keep things in perspective and act reasonably.  We will be surrounded for the foreseeable future by people who have bought into the current narrative.  This includes all kinds of very harmful ideas and practices.  The results of this are the excesses of our culture; confusion over things like the roles of men and women and the importance of traditional practices in living our lives and raising our children.

We can instill meaning and purpose into our actions and interactions with each other by choosing carefully to perform the actions that improve our surroundings and make us better people.  And this is especially important in our relations with the young.  They are growing up in a world that has been stripped of reason and dignity.  They spend their every waking minute immersed in a world of TikTok influencers and other phony celebrities telling them what they should think and what they should value.  It’s a wonder they haven’t all been degraded down to the status of sub-human idiots.  I feel it’s especially important to enrich the lives of the young people in my life with things that nourish and expand their minds and souls.  There is the meaning that we can find; keeping this world from falling into a new dark age.

Life is brief but it is a tale told by whatever truth you have in your heart.  If it signifies nothing then that is what is in your soul.

Leave That to the Dreamers

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I could be wrong but I believe that this election represents an end point for a lot of people.  My viewpoint on politics and our society has changed to such an extent that many of the things I thought were real I no longer do.  And one of those things is the outcomes of elections.  2020 proved to me that election outcomes were one of those things that can be fabricated.  So, worrying about them is a foolish preoccupation.  And that goes even if Trump is allowed to win.  To convince me that elections are legitimate again I would first have to see all of those who rigged 2020 indicted, convicted and imprisoned for their crimes.  And we all know that has a snowball’s chance in hell of ever occurring.

And so, when the inevitable 2026 banter begins about saving the House or the Senate from the midterm slump or the even more inevitable panic about preventing Gavin Newsom in 2028, I think I’ll just concentrate on preventing the government from stealing my stuff and harming my grandkids.  We all have plenty to do in our real lives and ranting and raving about imaginary battles that we could win is a serious waste of time and stomach lining.

And honestly, I’m not feeling particularly bitter about all this.  Knowledge is strength.  I blame myself for being as gullible and lazy as to not see how things really were.  As the song says, “I was blind but now I see.”  And that’s not a trivial thing.  I can avoid all kinds of trouble by virtue of not believing in fairy tales.  George Bush and the rest of the establishment Republicans are not on my side and they are not my friends.  They’re just the flipside of the managerial elite who run this country and make sure they always will.  If anyone emerges who claims he wants to change that, he’ll have to do a lot more than make noises about it.  He’ll have to prove he’s stronger than the gang running things now and he’ll have to spell out what’s in it for me.  And that’s a pretty tall order.

So as the next two months play out, I expect all kinds of entertaining hijinks.  This week’s debate has the possibility of being highly entertaining theater.  It’s not guaranteed.  ABC could rig it for Kamala so that Trump doesn’t get to say anything at all.  But it’s just as likely to be a fitting sequel to the Biden meltdown with Kamala screeching and running off stage.  So, there could be all kinds of fun coming up.  But I’m under no illusions about how the extra week of ballot manipulation will end up in Pennsylvania and Arizona.  And I won’t be upset about it either.  It’s as predictable as sunshine in the Sahara.

And come November, I have the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays coming up and every reason to look forward to get-togethers with family and friends.  So, life will go on and new projects will present themselves but worrying about President Harris won’t be among them.  I’ll leave that to the dreamers.