Posted on 06/09/2025 8:46:23 AM PDT by DFG
I left California in 2018 after having lived there since 1968. Many were doing the same then.
I have written about this move many times in books, articles, blogs and on this Substack. The subject has started to bore me. I didn’t want to hear about California. I barely commented about the fires that were so mishandled by the state and city’s incompetent leadership.
But with the demonstrations of the last few days, the protestors blocking the 101 as I type, burning cars and pelting police, I cannot hold back.
President Trump has done the right thing calling in the National Guard. Otherwise we could have a situation much like Minneapolis during the George Floyd riots, which was and is a national disgrace with decent men going to jail and that once-great Minnesota city turned into an open air sewer .
In much bigger California the results would likely be worse. The state is on the verge, or over the verge, of being the world’s biggest asylum for the criminally insane and arguably irredeemable.
What else can one say about escalating demonstrations in favor of keeping in our country (and their state) rapists, murderers, human traffickers, sexual predators, pederasts, batterers, violent gang members and drug cartels (to name a few)?
The Democrat Party, by defending these people, is continuing to implode at warp speed. James Carville must be on the edge of heart failure. Bill Maher may have to bite the bullet and switch parties with Karin Jean-Pierre. (He’ll probably just blame Trump to save his audience.)
The leadership of California is a litany of some of the most immoral politicians in the country, every one of them a hypocritical fake: Governor Gavin Newsom, Mayor Karen Bass, Reps. Adam Schiff, Maxine Waters, and former VP Kamala Harris, among a raft of malignant narcissists in a one-party state.
As I type this, the old Fidel Castro-lover Mayor Bass is giving a press conference, predictably blaming Trump for the violence occurring in her city. The vice governor speaking after her was more honest. She bemoaned what was happening because it would provide video Trump could use endlessly to his advantage. Why wouldn’t he?
When I describe these people as “hypocritical fakes” I am joined by the redoubtable Michael Shellenberger on his Substack in The Reason the Left Loves Riots is Because It Hates Civilization:
“In wealthy neighborhoods, the law is still enforced. In poor and working-class neighborhoods, it is not. If you torch a car in Beverly Hills, you’re arrested. If you do it in East LA while shouting political slogans, you’re ‘engaging in protest.’ This two-tiered enforcement is not progressive. It is segregation by another name. It creates one set of expectations for the politically connected and another for the disposable. And in that framework, working people, especially immigrants, families, and hourly wage earners, are abandoned. They are the ones who walk their kids past open-air drug markets. They are the ones whose shops are looted and whose cars are stolen. They are the ones who call 911 and wait, and wait, and wait.”
I will go one step further, in the plainest English. I don’t think these Democrat politicians give a shit about black and brown people (even though some of them are black and brown). They only care about their own power and money.
As evidence, I submit the obvious. In all the 50 or so years I lived in LA and the few thereafter, almost all of which the Democrats were in control of the executive and the legislature, nothing changed in those communities. Compton remained Compton. East LA, East LA. Only the rhetoric got more shrill. Oh, and Maxine Waters got to live in a fancy house while her constituents suffered.
All this is again so obvious it’s almost not worth mentioning.
California is the capital of the moral narcissism that I wrote about in my 2016 book, “I Know Best.” By “moral narcissism” I meant the often large disconnect between what people claim to believe “idealistically” and the results of those beliefs. (And how they wave off those uncomfortable results and move on to the next pronouncement.)
Meanwhile these leaders got to feel good about themselves while the plebes they pretend to be helping were left to deal, basically unaided, with the real problems of life. These same leaders simultaneously fanned up what Shellenberger calls the “disposables” to their own advantage.
And you thought exploitation by the Bolsheviks and the Maoists was bad.
That is, more or less, what you are watching— taken to destructive extremes— in these new demonstrations. Today’s issue attracting the most disable of the disposables is immigration, yesterday’s George Floyd, before that BLM. What will be next? Is Antifa in the house? Who’s paying? Where’s George?
Or will the masses finally get bored with Trump and impatient with their “liberal” masters and turn on Beverly Hills and Brentwood as was feared years ago?
Glancing at the TV to my right, I see the flags of Mexico and “Free Palestine” unfurled over the 101.
As I said, thank God I left California.
California was circling the drain when I left.
Thank God I left California.
I moved to California in the mid 80s for college and stayed there until the early 00s. I’m glad I left when I did.
Well...bye.
I don’t believe the Democrat leaders feel good about themselves from a standpoint of moral superiority. I think they feel good in the way that all Thugs and Bullies feel good about their actions so long as they get away with them.
California is pretty much the same physically except the commercial districts of LA itself. Years of tents, tarps and trash have damaged the districts badly.
The population appears in LA and San Diego to be majority Hispanic. It’s not like the audience of the Carol Burnett show.
The politicians of California see the reality that they face.
I spoke to a man in Monterey Park. He knew the price of gasoline was much less in Arizona and Texas. He said he was tired of the high taxes and green nonsense. He also said that he would leave the state if he didn’t have children there.
I don't miss California at all.
To fix it will require a new industry to care for every inch of land. Where better to locate multidisciplinary startups than California?
13 months I spent in CA was enough. It is by far the worst state I have lived in, even worse than Illinois, which was actually a good state during my time there from 1962-1999. Chicago had amazing restaurants of every ethnic type. I was in Iowa for degree at University and liked Iowa because of friendly people. Washington State was awesome especially where we lived on Oregon border. No income tax in WA and no sales tax in Oregon across the river Columbia. Now living in Florida which has the cheapest cost of living and easy access to cruise ports.
We moved to the north state when I retired. The area is beautiful. It is still California but the people up here are not crazy.
Quite familiar with it. From Philo, to Gazelle, to Little River, to Seiad Valley, I love those small communities.
About the same, 1988-2016, half my adult life, would have left sooner but the housing market was sweet and wanted to stay for that, wanted to stay 4 more years but wifey wanted out.
Good luck getting out when the civil war starts. The highways will be BLOCKED and the fires will consume everything.
Left Cali after graduating from Cal Poly in 78 and never looked back. I took my wife the in 2020 for a brief trip to LA and the familiy home in Santa Ana. So glad I left.
Got the annual mailer to contribute to the volunteer fire dept. up north (Seiad) a while back. The letter indicated that for the first time anyone on the board could remember, the #1 problem was not money. Seems CalTrans and CalFire contractors bought water from the department for a Hwy 96 bridge and decommissioning fire roads. They’re desperate for anyone that can drive a water tender or roll out hose. Few of the kids stick around after high school. There’s no work for the reasons you know about.
This reminds me of a line from the the Paul Newman movie The Verdict, spoken by the plaintiff's husband (the plaintiff is alive but brain dead in the hospital):
"You guys -- you guys are all the same. The doctors at the hospital, you -- it's always what I'm going to do for you. And then you screw up, and it's, "Ah, we did the best that we could, I'm dreadfully sorry." And people like us live with your mistakes the rest of our lives."
I moved away just in the nick of time.
-PJ
I was born and raised in LA in 1958. I met a girl from Utah in 1975 and in 1982 moved to Utah. I’ve never been happier. Eff California. My riot repellant is in my car and handy by my front door.
The majority of Angelinos hate the illegal beans, otherwise why are we only seeing a thousand protestors?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.