Last time I was in LA, had to teach a class at a major defense contractor installation near the airport.....I literally did not recognize it as my country.
I did 8+ years in the military, seven of them overseas, so I know foreign, and I know third world.
Mexicans, Hungarians, Russians, FSU country nationals, you name it. Not one what I’d call a traditional American that I heard or saw outside of that Defense Contractor’s Campus. Essentially, I was a foreigner in my own country.
I also remember visiting Phoenix and Atlanta in the early 70s, thinking how nice they were, then 5 million or so folks moved into each one making them look a lot like Chicago with a warmer climate.
Your three state map is one of the betters I’ve seen, but I wouldn’t put Kern County in with the southern “state.” It has more in common with the Sacramento Valley than LA. Trinity County as “coastal” doesn’t sit well with me either but not to as great a degree. Methinks the map should be more topographical and less political.
“I literally did not recognize it as my country.”
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I thought the same when I moved to Pasadena and worked in downtown LA in the 90s. I felt like I had moved to the whole world. The food was great, but the stress of living around people who do not have the same understanding of life, and can’t communicate well, was really draining. In any transaction, you cannot assume the business owner knows that “the customer is always right”, and on the freeway you cannot assume that the other people will “drive defensively” or use “common” courtesy. Public restrooms will not be used in the manner intended and left in the same shape as when the user arrived. And in school, your kid may be shunned by the ones who only speak Chinese, or Spanish, or whatever.
On the other hand, we now live in Torrance and our family is finding that we have more in common with the aspiring immigrants than some of the other families. They are pro-family and faith, have high expectations of conduct for their children, and always show up to help. Liberal white families let their children mouth off and worry about whether teachers have treated their kids special enough. The non-aspiring families, I don’t know, so I think we are doing a good job of avoiding them, except when one of them calls my kid a name on the playground.
I live in a beautiful place. Now, if we could encourage the rude people to leave...