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The State of Dreams (Requiem for California)
Sultan Knish ^ | 08 Oct 2022 | Daniel Greenfield

Posted on 10/09/2022 3:58:50 AM PDT by Chad C. Mulligan

The great westward drive that began with Lewis and Clark has been steadily rolling backward. Southern California is filled with moving trucks headed to Arizona, Texas and Nevada. Those who can afford it, fly to Florida. The Russians were here once and then the Spanish. The American presence in California was more comprehensive and lasted longer, but may one day leave sagging Wells Fargo banks and decrepit mini malls filled with sushi places and nail salons the way the Spanish left their missions.

It's a beautiful country, but so is Afghanistan and any number of otherwise unlivable places. Every other visit to a store seems to end with a shoplifter boldly walking out with a few items in hand. Sometimes a cashier, usually young and male, shouts futilely, "Hey, sir" into the wind. A few older women, cashiers and customers, mutter about how it's hurting everyone. A manager says this is the new normal. No one connects it to the coming elections. The media tells them that the madness is a social phenomenon, a response to inequality, the pandemic, and climate change, and they never bother to argue.

We think of Third World countries as poor, but they're not. Visit Karachi, Cairo and Jakarta, or even Baghdad, Gaza, or even Kabul, and you'll see great riches and even greater poverty. The problem with income inequality isn't that CEOs make two million times what their employees do, it's that there's nothing in the middle. The middle class makes a society, sane and livable. It gives people something to reach for rather than beating their wives or knifing their neighbors in the dark. The bourgeois is civilization. Without the middle class, there's barbarism, a crude hierarchy and the rule of force.

RTWT

(Excerpt) Read more at madmimi.com ...


TOPICS:
KEYWORDS: california; culture; danielgreenfield; decay; greenfield; middleclass; suicide; sultanknish
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California is committing cultural suicide. Don't copy them.
1 posted on 10/09/2022 3:58:50 AM PDT by Chad C. Mulligan
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To: Chad C. Mulligan

Pretty brilliant. As a former resident of CA, I can relate.

A beautiful land once full of potential, now being run and ruined by perpetual children.


2 posted on 10/09/2022 4:13:54 AM PDT by DarrellZero
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To: Chad C. Mulligan
The USSR....East Germany...North Korea...Venezuela...Kalifornia. I wonder if I can see a pattern here.
3 posted on 10/09/2022 4:23:53 AM PDT by Gay State Conservative (I Miss Jimmy Carter)
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To: DarrellZero

No,worse than children. Maoists.


4 posted on 10/09/2022 4:24:33 AM PDT by Gay State Conservative (I Miss Jimmy Carter)
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To: Chad C. Mulligan

“Southern California is filled with moving trucks headed to Arizona, Texas and Nevada.”

Yes they are “committing cultural suicide”, but they are also bringing it to us’


5 posted on 10/09/2022 4:26:58 AM PDT by Tupelo (Don't under estimate the Republicans ability to f*** things up)
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To: DarrellZero

I traveled to California numerous times in my career; I couldn’t imagine a more beautiful place with perfect year-round weather. San Francisco, despite the plethora of weirdos, was an amazing setting. But the last time I went there was four years ago; took BART in from the airport, the stench of urine in the downtown station was overpowering, rows of young men seated in the tunnels, doing nothing productive, you had to be careful not to trip over their feet. Even San Diego and coastal Orange County, places of astounding beauty, seem to be falling - the aggressive homeless are so out of control in SD that even the formerly radical NBA player Bill Walton wrote an angry letter to the mayor after being accosted by one. The liberals have ruined the State that President Reagan governed.


6 posted on 10/09/2022 4:29:29 AM PDT by laconic
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To: DarrellZero

History has a pattern of correcting the ways of an unserious people. Either via the hard life lesson, or by elimination.


7 posted on 10/09/2022 4:29:32 AM PDT by Sirius Lee (They intend to murder us. Prep if you want to live and live like you are prepping for eternal life)
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To: Chad C. Mulligan

Excerpt...

“Delusions, like all viruses, kill the host. The Left and its culture wars are a grand delusion.”


8 posted on 10/09/2022 4:55:06 AM PDT by newfreep ("There is no race problem...just a problem race")
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To: newfreep

9 posted on 10/09/2022 5:07:40 AM PDT by newfreep ("There is no race problem...just a problem race")
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To: Chad C. Mulligan

Sorry but running away from California won’t help. You stay and fight. The Democrats win only because they cheat there. Will you escape and run away from every state until the Democrats have cheated and rule all 50 states? And the author here is laughable, I bet they said the same thing about Virginia a few years ago too and look what happened in the last election


10 posted on 10/09/2022 5:31:57 AM PDT by brandberenstein
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To: Chad C. Mulligan

Also the writer of this article is retarded:

“California, like most major cities”

Ignore this nonsense article


11 posted on 10/09/2022 5:31:57 AM PDT by brandberenstein
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To: DarrellZero

“All the gold in California,
Is in a bank in the middle of Beverly Hills,
In somebody else’s name.
So if you’re dreaming about California,
It don’t matter at all where you’ve played before
California’s a brand new game.

Tryin’ to be a hero, winding up a zero
Can scar a man forever right down to your soul
Living on the spotlight can kill a man outright
Cause everything that glitters is not gold.”

Larry Gaitlin and the Gaitlin Brothers Band


12 posted on 10/09/2022 5:34:41 AM PDT by alloysteel (A born skeptic is now living in a target-rich environment. SO many beliefs to challenge...)
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To: Chad C. Mulligan

Great article, thank u for posting it


13 posted on 10/09/2022 6:00:30 AM PDT by NFHale (The Second Amendment - By Any Means Necessary.She was, indeed, a hottieā€¦ Rest in peace, Joanne.)
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To: DarrellZero
I grew up in the Bay Area, Castro Valley to be exact. It was a great place to grow up in the 60s, with great schools to boot.

I went to Castro Valley HS, Rachel Maddow would follow me by about a dozen years...lol. That school was woke before woke was invented.

I was a pariah on campus my last two months in HS (1972), guilty of accepting an Army ROTC scholarship. I've had a problem with authority figures since then...lol, a couple of teachers said to my face how "disappointed" they were with me.

These are the people running the state and the country now. As you said it, they're children. Our 50th reunion is this month, but decided not to go. Why spend the money to travel 2000 miles for a six hour event? It would have been a nice FU moment for me, but I've spoken to one schoolmate since graduating.

There's probably two dozen alums from college I still correspond with, and that's where my focus lies.

14 posted on 10/09/2022 6:21:30 AM PDT by Night Hides Not (Remember the Alamo! Remember Goliad! Remember Gonzales! Come and Take It!)
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To: Chad C. Mulligan

Btt


15 posted on 10/09/2022 7:08:55 AM PDT by AuntB (Trump is our Ben Franklin - Brilliant, Boisterous, Brave and ALL AMERICAN!)
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To: Chad C. Mulligan

My dad came to California in 1948.

He spent his life raving about it, the wonder, the raw beauty, the redwood trees, rugged coastlines, unique deserts and high mountains, California has it all.

I’m only glad he is no longer around to see what the politicians have done to this once paradise.


16 posted on 10/09/2022 7:24:30 AM PDT by Bon of Babble (Rigged Elections have Consequences)
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To: Chad C. Mulligan; 100American; 21twelve; 2nd amendment mama; A Conservative Thinker; ...
Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, is a New York writer focusing on radical Islam and leftism.

We think of Third World countries as poor, but they're not. Visit Karachi, Cairo and Jakarta, or even Baghdad, Gaza, or even Kabul, and you'll see great riches and even greater poverty. The problem with income inequality isn't that CEOs make two million times what their employees do, it's that there's nothing in the middle.

The middle class makes a society, sane and livable. It gives people something to reach for rather than beating their wives or knifing their neighbors in the dark. The bourgeois is civilization. Without the middle class, there's barbarism, a crude hierarchy and the rule of force. ...

"We will get out energy from the sun," they declare. "Houses for the unhoused," they clamor. "Money is just an idea," they insist. "Crime is a social construct invented by white supremacy." And so on.

What happens when people lose their sense of meaning and purpose? They sit on the beach, look out into the ocean, blind themselves with gorgeous sunsets and go out of their minds. Sanity is a function of responsibility. We are only sane as the tasks we set ourselves. Sanity means getting up in the morning and knowing what you have to do and why you have to do it. It's also reality, maturity and adulthood.

True words and a true article. Worth your reading.

Link to the original article (also on The Front Page): The State of Dreams

Ping out to the Daniel Greenfield Ping! List.

As always, please FReepmail me if you want on or off the esteemed Daniel Greenfield ping list.

Daniel Greenfield's website: The Sultan Knish blog

17 posted on 10/09/2022 8:05:45 AM PDT by texas booster (Join FreeRepublic's Folding@Home team (Team # 36120) Cure Alzheimer's!)
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To: brandberenstein
Read the unexcerpted article.

Full Article - The State of Dreams

(The state of) California, like most major cities, is run by these people.

"These people" refers back to:

"One sometimes gets the impression that the mere words 'Socialism' and 'Communism' draw towards them with magnetic force every fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal-wearer, sex-maniac, Quaker, 'Nature Cure' quack, pacifist, and feminist in England," George Orwell complained in The Road to Wigan Pier.

Read slower, and ignore at your own peril.

"The State of Dreams" is not meant to be a compliment.

18 posted on 10/09/2022 8:11:50 AM PDT by texas booster (Join FreeRepublic's Folding@Home team (Team # 36120) Cure Alzheimer's!)
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To: Chad C. Mulligan

https://www.danielgreenfield.org/2022/10/the-state-of-dreams.html


19 posted on 10/09/2022 8:24:43 AM PDT by GOPJ (Trump EARNED his money. Money dems have, they steal from taxpayers. It's why they hate Trump.)
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To: Chad C. Mulligan
https://www.danielgreenfield.org/2022/10/the-state-of-dreams.html

What happens when people lose their sense of meaning and purpose? They sit on the beach, look out into the ocean, blind themselves with gorgeous sunsets and go out of their minds. Sanity is a function of responsibility. We are only sane as the tasks we set ourselves. Sanity means getting up in the morning and knowing what you have to do and why you have to do it. It's also reality, maturity and adulthood.

There's still time for one more walk, one more breath and one more sunset. And tomorrow? Just follow the moving trucks and the great migration from the land of dreams back to the real world.

Back in the real world, DeSantis fixed an island bridge so residents and truckers could get back to the process of rebuilding and living their lives. Three days. Now DeSantis is rebuilding the bridge to Sanibel. My neighborhood? We've picked up Hurricane yard debris and stacked it up by the street. City trucks will be picking it up (what's been missed) by Wednesday...and NO, WE DO NOT glorify 'the homeless' or enable criminals. It's the real world our 'middle class' is doing just fine.

20 posted on 10/09/2022 8:33:36 AM PDT by GOPJ (Trump EARNED his money. Money dems have, they steal from taxpayers. It's why they hate Trump.)
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