Posted on 06/20/2024 5:05:55 AM PDT by MtnClimber
How and why did California end up as a warning to Western civilization of what might be in store for anyone who followed its nihilism?
California has become a test case of the suicide of the West. Never before has such a state, so rich in natural resources and endowed with such a bountiful human inheritance, self-destructed so rapidly.
How and why did California so utterly consume its unmatched natural and ancestral inheritance and end up as a warning to Western civilization of what might be in store for anyone who followed its nihilism?
The symptoms of the state’s suicide are indisputable.
Governor Gavin Newsom enjoyed a recent $98 billion budget surplus—gifted from multibillion-dollar federal COVID-19 subsidies, the highest income and gas taxes in the nation, and among the country’s steepest sales and property taxes.
Yet in a year, he turned it into a growing $45 billion budget deficit.
At a time of an over-regulated, overtaxed, and sputtering economy, Newsom spent lavishly on new entitlements, illegal immigrants, and untried and inefficient green projects.
Newsom was endowed with two of the wettest years in recent California history. Yet he and radical environmentalists squandered the water bounty—as snowmelts and runoff long designated for agricultural irrigation were drained from aqueducts and reservoirs to flow out to sea.
Newsom transferred millions of dollars designated by a voter referendum to build dams and aqueducts for water storage and instead blew up four historic dams on the Klamath River. For decades, these now-destroyed scenic lakes provided clean, green hydroelectric power, irrigation storage, flood control, and recreation.
California hosts one-third of the nation’s welfare recipients. Over a fifth of the population lives below the property line. Nearly half the nation’s homeless sleep on the streets of its major cities.
The state’s downtowns are dirty, dangerous, and...
(Excerpt) Read more at amgreatness.com ...
And as a reward Newsom is mentioned as a possible presidential candidate by the left.
VDH ping
You could NOT PAY ME to live in CALIFORNIA!!
VDH in a lot of words aptly describes how CA fell.
I only have to use one word: DEMOCRATS
Parts of it are great places to visit, but I sure wouldn’t live there.
I am not a California resident, and never have been. I see them moving into ‘conservative states’ now like locusts. They will swarm and destroy the next area as they flee the destruction they created. They do not learn. They do not fix what they have broken. They move to a new area and destroy again. This will be the end of Western Civilization and its roots are really few major areas. California, New York City, Chicago, and the North East. The pattern appears to be to destroy voter integrity by illegal ballots, then increase the number of government dependents, followed by divisions and promises of ‘tax the rich’ will fix everything. The result is ALWAYS the same. The rich get richer, and the poor dependent of the whims of government.
These activities have moved the entire nation from a Constitutional Republic, to a fascist state as the Government usurps more power and answers to no one.
Ordinary Americans throughout the USA financed Hollywood and Disney, two huge leftist breeding grounds in that state. Leftist high tech contributed to the rot.
Your exclamation of dislike for California is very, very sad and may, indeed, be justified. I do know a lot about CA and would not live in the valley or very south of Marin County no matter what. I often yearn to be very close to or in very northern Calif. I do not like what I read of it as far as how it describes its current situation and describes the “rulers”.
Both my parents were born and raised in California until they went to the PI where they were married. My dad was a gold mining engineer
I am an old woman of 84 and after being in two concentration camps developed and run by the Japanese in the Philippine Islands for 3 years, we were set free by the American army. We were scheduled, actually, to be shot and killed by the Japanese guards when we were rescued by American Army men who parachuted in to our camps.
My brother who was born the week or so before we were incarcerated has little memory of this, but I do remember much as I was almost 7 yo when we were rescued.
My family and I ended up in California where my parents came from before they went to the PI. They were both very withdrawn and non-interactive with the local population in Mill Valley and they both had a horrible time with me in terms of my schooling. (I was a very complicated child for all kinds of reasons.) But regardless of the problems of living in California, they loved “their” state and never left until my Dad passed away.
I have been back to CA and I, too, have no interest in staying unless I live in Northern CA.
No place else has been half as interesting as CA in the ultimate analysis. And very few places have seen what has happened to CA. It is a shameful situation as I see it.
Sigh.
The libtards who are the primary problem are simply swapping which chairs they prefer to sit in on the deck of the Titanic.
I've gotten to see this first hand. The libtards fleeing San Francisco, thanks in part to remote working from home, have moved into lower cost portions of California, bringing along with them their high wages and ultra liberal nonsense. They drove up costs in my area and are generally repulsive people from my point of view.
Eventually, that pestilence may move out of California to infest the rest of the country, so your scenario likely may occur in the future, but for now, the infestation is staying here.
I get chills every time VDH uses the word “nihilism”. He’s 100% correct. The destroying of all values leaves us with no foundation to stand on.
One of my brothers lives in Orange County. I wish he’d move out of there, but his children and grandchildren live in the area, so he won’t.
“They call it paradise
I don’t know why
You call someplace paradise
Kiss it goodbye”
“The Last Resort” by the Eagles
“And as a reward Newsom is mentioned as a possible presidential candidate by the left.”
And it’s been mentioned that Kamala Harris might run for Cali governor someday.
I call them DemoN-Rats.
I also thought of that song.
This is what Democrat/Communist Party politicians do ... and fully half of America loves it — and craves more — as many of those who flee California, like the “progressive” disease of cancer, metasticizing into and killing off healthy areas of our country .... and fully half of American voters want more of this.
The were complaining about the wrong people. Now the people they prefer are in power, and made it a bigger mess than anyone could imagine in the ‘70s.
I have very good memories of that time. California still seemed to be booming (this was early in the Reagan era) and a great place to raise a family. The areas I lived in were fairly conservative. However, even then, periodic trips to the Los Angeles area showed me the sleazier side of SoCal. Even at that time, there were thousands of Mexicans crossing the border illegally every day. I have memories of seeing them walking up the railroad tracks from my barracks window at Camp Pendleton, alongside I-5. Nobody even back then seemed interested in stopping them.
I've been back out there for pleasure and business several times since. Most recently October 2022, for a Blue Angels golf tournament in Carlsbad. I spent a day out on Oceanside Beach, which used to be a gem, and I remember seeing hundreds of homeless people camped out, many living out of old cars and vans. The stink was pretty bad if you got too close to them.
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