Consistent with Robert Malone’s experience of growing up in California and finding it a different and less-open place now, my childhood memories of the state are mostly memories of freedom, discovery, and opportunity.
I can relate so strongly to this, and I wish I couldn't. I've got the same feelings about Canada - in my humble opinion, the landscapes of the Great White North are unparalleled in their majesty and beauty, and there's nothing more restorative to my soul than going back there and spending time in nature. Yet the regulatory miasma hangs over everything like an invisible cloud made of permits and No signs, carrying with it the hallucinatory nightmare demons of post-modern ideology.
Canada might not have ever been an especially exciting place, but it was at least well governed, clean, safe, and the ethos of politeness meant that people generally agreed to live and let live - the deal was, don't be a violent jerk, pick up after yourself, and you can do basically as you please. Now that ethos has been perverted in all the expected ways: obey and agree, for if you don't, you're a rude, racist, climate-denying antivaxxer, etc etc.
There's nothing more painful than watching powerlessly as your homeland descends into madness and tyranny so deeply that the madness eclipses everything you love about it. It's like seeing a family member turn into a drug addict. There are flashes of the person you love, but they become rarer and shorter as the drug takes control, and deep down you don't need anyone to tell you how it ends.
Your first paragraph - in the national park campground near me, there were signs on the dishwashing stations (with room for one person, mind you, and open to the air) that said unvaccinated patrons had to wear masks inside. Three feet away on the bathrooms, a sign said that all patrons, regardless of vaccination status, had to wear masks inside. They displayed the revolting blank, eyeless circle graphic with the mask across the lower half of the "face." Any that I encountered are now in the trash where they belong. The more strongly they're taped up, the more satisfying it is to rip them down.
I spent a week in June rolling through campgrounds in the Rocky Mountains in Colorado, ending at Rocky Mountain National Park, and they all had those signs everywhere. Literally never saw a single person actually wearing a mask.
I saw a man in a mask hiking at the very top of the Sandia Mountains here in Albuquerque. That creeping feeling of being imprisoned by statism managed to attack me in the remote wilderness. Park Rangers are also aggressively using drones to monitor where people hike and the state is becoming more draconian with closures due to fire dangers. The freedom is paplably slipping. You captured it well in the essay.
I actually hate camping in national parks. Part of the attraction is getting away from rules. But the rules follow you - no drinking, no smoking, no noise, masks mandatory, etc etc.
Yeah, the juxtaposition between the Covid warnings and the actual dangers you can face in the wilderness makes it even more ludicrous. We were backcountry camping but cut through the campground on the way back. At the height of this horror we stuck to National Forests, where in the US you can pretty much do what you want, thank God. But even there there were stupid signs at some trailheads. I won't put up with that mental abuse.
Been here in los angeles since 1997. It has gone from a great time with mostly good people to a mostly terrible city with almost exclusively awful people. Just found out tonight our catholic school is going to be lock step with LAUSD yet again.. so bring back the testing and the masks if there are positives. I hate it here so much now.
I never loved Los Angeles, but there were always a lot of good things in it. There are no longer a lot of good things in it. Although I did go to a Dodgers game again recently and felt good to be there again. That's about it. I sometimes drive through a neighborhood and remember that I used to not hate it.
HA! Fair enough.. I do love other parts of CA. Los Angeles has always just been a way to enjoy other places working in tv but now it is like being in prison and not one of those cool ones you see on tv.
I moved here the same year as you. I agree. Do you mind telling me which school? We just transferred our kid out of public school to a Cath school to get out of the insanity….
The truth is they are all doing it. They are all walking in lock step with LAUSD. We were supposed to get guidance weeks ago. Then it was last friday. Now it's maybe this week. We start school in less than 2 weeks. The Los Angeles Arch Diocese is pushing masks and shots. So from Culver City to El Segundo... and the two Los Angeles/Westchester schools too. You need to leave LA County to have a chance at normalcy.
CA will survive these morons. And ironically, it will probably be the immigrants that finally throw these bums out. Immigrants generally don’t leave their countries, face danger and poverty, just to settle in a place that offers the same sort of corrupt government they fled. They are by and large, courageous and faithful people, far better than the average college-educated American these days. Perhaps this is why the Ds are quietly starting to build the wall.
I have similar hope given the immigrants I know. Most are working to feed their family. I worked at a steel foundry and rough guess a quarter were from south of the border. I'd see a car full of them catching some Zs before shift, all coming from the same rented house to save money. A few bad apples but usually dealt with before management had to act. Super proud when a few guys I worked with got their citizenship. That citizenship was critical when Obama cracked down with the I9 audits and that quarter of our workforce left overnight. Pretty rough on a business that requires specific and rare skill sets. I debated the flawed history my friend was taught in Mexico, but his patriotism was admirable, and I was always presented a shot of tequila at his house.
The obvious problem is that with an unsecured border the bad actors sneak in hidden amongst the good ones. A system to vet immigrants is simply obvious. High walls with wide gates. The Ds opened the border and assumed the allegiance of immigrants because the Twitter cognoscenti know absolutely nothing about them.
I doubt it. I'm not a Cali native but I lived there for about a decade. The hard working immigrants you speak of are increasingly leaving. (A few are our neighbors here in South Carolina.) Part of the flight out of Cali consists of those immigrants. The ones that remain are increasingly dependent on state benefits. They will continue to vote for these crazy policies as long as the money keeps flowing.
Not entirely true. So far they haven’t tossed the bums out in your state. Most of those immigrants are now illegals and made up of folks supporting the deep state in CA and the country. Legal immigrants are frightened because they HAVE been through this before and couldn’t stop it where they came from and know they can’t stop it here. And ther is no place to go. We need to stop this god awful complacency coupled with the “someone will save us” nonsense and realize we must do it ourselves. CA will survive. You might not.
Complacency is a problem agreed. Same time, CA is too good to cede to this crow. I don’t see any ordinary people, legal or illegal, supporting the deep state. It has no natural constituency among the people. The deep state, including members of both parties, succeed by dividing the people, making us hate and distrust each other. We should definitely control immigration. Just don’t let the deep state actors on both sides teach you to believe that some group ordinary people is the source of our problems. Focus on the deep state (unelected bureaucrats, magistrate judges, faithless politicians, and the elite that control them), not on illegal immigrants, not on unwed mothers, not on China, not on Russia, not on weird weather, not on race, not on oil, etc.
By getting involved in your local politics. We have started at the school board in our tiny community. The politics within school boards are horrendous and the kids are the victims. Work with your local sherrif. Speak up locally. Provide data within the community. Don’t comply with illegal mandates. Get the community behind blocking the surveillance cameras being deployed everywhere with facial recognition which will be tied to a social credit system and passports. Volunteer to work the polls on voting day so that your area of influence is safe. Put books that educate on all of this in the little reading libraries. Lots of things you can do. It beats sitting back and giving in to the bad guys.
Don’t think moving from CA is going to free you. We moved to MT from CO which has become a mini CA. MT is heading rapidly to the left in an alarming fashion. Even in the sticks - of which there is a lot of in this state. We need to stay in our homes and fight the fight everywhere. No one is immune. And there is no safety or sanity anywhere anymore. Work on your local politics and build bridges between differing views and create common goals and hash it out as to how to achieve those. It’s hard work but that is the ONLY way we will protect and defend our Constituion and American way of life. Running away is no longer possible.
born at cedars sinai, raised in unincorporated la county, college in the bay area, career in biotech afterwards. married someone from santa barbara. A FUCKING CALIFORNIA CLICHE.
when we first started talking about leaving, i put on a brave face. i hadn’t realized how much i’d thought of the state as ‘home’. by the time we signed a new lease in a new state i cried tears of relief.
We're staying in my hometown San Diego, fighting back and taking back territory. Memories of CA almost brought tears to my eyes. It's worth fighting for.
It feels weird to read the name Jerry Brown in a positive or neutral way. 😅I am “only” in my mid 30s so my impression of him is based on his governorship during 2011-2018(?) that coincided with my conservative turn and also my dads super dislike of his first 27 terms. 😂
San Bernardino is cool because we don’t have enough money to allow ourselves to be told what to do. I used to HATE breaking any rules so you can imagine how odd it was to find myself and my 4 kids among the delinquents at the playground when the city I live in tried to yellow tape it off.
The one thing I'll say about Jerry Brown is that he wasn't personally a giant douchebag, whatever you think of his politics. Ahhnold used to travel in a giant motorcade, like he was the POTUS: CHP cars and motorcycles, with sirens and flashing lights, then some SUVs with tinted windows, then a bunch of CHP cars and motorcycles again. When Jerry Brown was governor – all seventy times – people in line to board a Southwest Airlines flight would find their governor in line with them, bitching about getting a B-group boarding pass. He'd jump in the car to drive over to a meeting. He acted like a person.
This piece hits home for me pretty hard - I spent so much of my childhood on these same roads. I learned what it meant to love my country at the annual Fourth of July parade in Bridgeport CA where my family has been vacationing for the past 50 years. I developed a deep love of history in the haunted streets of Bodie and overgrown fields of Aurora. We’ve hiked and driven untold numbers of miles on back roads and Jeep trails. Then I’d return home after this trip each year to So. Cal and go to school in what felt like such an open, diverse melting pot of individuals and ideas. We had annual passes to Disneyland where most nights we’d go just to have a hot chocolate and watch the fireworks. I drove PCH in my first car (a 65’ VW Beetle) several times a week as a form of behind-the-wheel-meditation. We left CA for good to head to greener pastures approaching seven years ago and watching the decline of a place that shaped me has been deeply sad. It has felt eerily similar to mourning a lost loved one.
Bridgeport is about as good as it gets. Almost crashed into another car once because I was staring at the mountains.
I have verrrrry weird feelings about Disneyland. Spent SO MUCH time there as a child, and respond to it in unconscious and immediate ways. Walking up Main Street, or passing the Golden Horseshoe and heading into New Orleans Square, feels like revisiting my childhood -- it couldn't feel more familiar. And also, I haven't gone for years, and have no plans to ever go again. And that's before we even get to the fact that they closed Bear Country Jamboree.
The corruption of Disney was/is staggering to witness. That in particular felt like several deaths all at once, having also grown up a die hard sci-fi nut.....over the past few years not only has Disneyland been poisoned for me, but Star Wars and Marvel as well. I’m eagerly awaiting (no I’m not) the final blow of Amazon Prime’s butchering of the Lord of the Rings series and the utter destruction of everything I held dear will be complete 😆. Betcha we passed each other in a long line at Erick Schat’s Bakery in Bishop at some point in time. I feel like all special souls who share a love for that area of the Sierras converged there at some point in time :)
I hear you. Not all is lost. California is a lesson to learn. I’m in Texas and we are getting a lot of refugees from mismanaged states. We welcome them all but we have a deep fear of their failed state’s politics being imported here. What can we do to prevent the “metastasization of regulatory chickenshit” in Texas. If you could go back 50 years in California what could have been done? Please pray for Texas and our freedoms. I often think about and pray for my fellow Americans in California. Especially the F 250 types that enjoy the wide open spaces.
If you could go back fifty years in California to warn people, no one would believe your depiction of the future. But what could have been done differently that would have mattered? I'll think about this one, because it would have been a war on so many fronts that I don't know where to start.
Thank you for praying for us in CA. That just brought tears to my eyes. And as the joke goes about the guy in the phone booth tryin to remember God’s area code, calling God from Texas is a local call. I’ll still pray for Texas too.
California's staggering natural gifts make up for a lot of governmental and cultural malarkey. Yet there comes a limit...
In a place like Detroit, sane people would have given up long before and moved elsewhere. Which is what happened long ago. California is seeing this only now.
There is no Law of Nature saying that the pendulum must swing back during anyone's lifetime. South Africa and Mexico are full of stunningly beautiful and bountiful places, yet they grind along under generations of hopeless misgovernment. I don't have automatic faith that California can be saved. It will be a fight, and the Forces of Good could easily lose.
What's interesting to me is that some of the most beautiful places, like Santa Barbara and Marin County, are full of the most miserable and rage-choked people, driving around Mill Valley with their old RESIST bumperstickers. We live in a fascist Rethuglikkkan dictatorship, they scream, sitting on the patio at Peet's. Bizarre.
I too grew up in CA. I lived in Anaheim, 2 miles from the “Magic Kingdom “. Life there in the 60’s/70’s was almost Mayberry like. Orange groves in abundance. Farm fields stretching all the way to Huntington Beach. We were free range kids who were basically kicked out of our homes on summer mornings and told not to return until dinner. I left for a job in 1987 and haven’t looked back. Southern Cal feels third world to me now. My wife and I still have family there and in Northern Cal, but I will not return. Each visit reminds me of the degrading, crowded, arrogant liberal takeover which has occurred. Everywhere I go there are millions of people crowding ahead of me. I’ve told my wife that I will return to California under one of two conditions: in a box, or in an urn. I grieve for my lost state. It was once beautiful and vibrant.
Almost exactly my experience. I grew up within walking distance of Knott's Berry Farm and I remember when they were building the Matterhorn at Disneyland. I have no desire to go back.
Then spent 42 years in Jackson Hole. Thought I would never leave until it got too crowded; I bailed about six years ago. Too damn many people everywhere. Where are all these people coming from?
Very often rated as the richest county in the country. And then there were us little people who held down three jobs so that we could share a house trailer or a condo with five other people. The skiing was good, though.
This old farmer says: Yeah to all of that, but move it back to the 40's, and imagine!! I grew from bean, through teen and into young adulthood, with a wife and family in that wonderful world. But the 70's brought a huge change. No more groves and groves. No more little pocket neighborhoods, separate but almost equal, and getting closer week by week. Not PCH but 99. On a Greyhound. With miles and miles of open opportunity. Yeah! You grew up in a GREAT place, - just 30 years after the prime. I have returned many times over the last 40+ years, and each time I did, I died a little more. It has turned from and Eden into a cesspool. The folks who live there are generally so entrenched that they smell the rot but they can't figure out where it is coming from. Oh well - - - this too shall change. However I fear it won't be for the better. A nasty, infected sore won't heal until you clean the debris out and treat it with TLC.
This explains a lot in about 1/2 hour. The voiceover/production is a little dramatic at first but it’s a solid take on how it all got destroyed. https://youtu.be/L6l0JL6loXc
I have been visiting California since I was 18 years old in 1978 and have seen the changes happen with the eye of the observer and I must say it leaves me disillusioned. The west has been in my heart since I was a child and it is the openness and the sense that you are out on a limb that has kept me in thrall. When I was a young Deadhead and to be in San Francisco was a feeling that was thrilling, visiting with friends and drinking a six pack catching up at Twin Peaks and looking at this most amazing city roll down at your feet, you knew this world was for you. Now when I go to SF it has become a city of wealthy people, homeless and the crazed and it makes me sad beyond belief. SF was always a city that was little rough around the edges but it had room for everyone and it worked. Unfortunately, they have broken the city I love most in the world and I don't think they can put it back together. I knew the city I loved was gone when they gentrified the Mission District and they turned China Basin in to a baseball Disneyland. They can have it now, it's theirs and they have ruined it.
I still get excited when I head to Cali for my three week road trip each spring but when I retire next year it will be to the Black Hills in South Dakota. When I look at the rolling prairie in South Dakota in the spring when the grass is green it moves my heart the way a woman did when I was young.
I'm British, but I used to visit the US often in the late 1980s (as a late teenager then) to mid 2010s.
I collect old soul records (what we call 'northern soul' over here), and you could find £1,000 gems for 50¢ in thrift stores, or piled up in dusty boxes in the backs or attics or basements of record shops.
Occasionally I would track down old artists, or producers, or record company execs, and get records straight from the horse's mouth.
Where that happened, I'd pay them in dollars close to the nominal Sterling amount - fine when it was $2 to the pound - because they were usually broke and I felt they deserved finally to earn some cash from records they'd made thirty, forty years before.
Record store owners I ripped off mercilessly - if they couldn't do the work to find out the value, and it didn't occur to them to wonder why these crazy British collectors were paying for flights to come and find this shit, that was on them.
Then eBay and the rest of the internet took off and ruined everything.
Anyway, I digress.
I loved California, came often, and my wife and I had a memorable two weeks there in the 90s, before we were married, driving up the coast, stopping in a log cabin in Sequoia and the Wawona Hotel in Yosemite, and generally having a blast.
Coming from a relatively small country - albeit that we were not strangers to the States or other expansive places - I remember seeing a 'next gas 100 miles' sign somewhere and thinking, I'd better fill up.
At the time, I had an inkling I might move to the States, possibly to Cali - we're both keen skiers, and Heavenly looked great - but I'm glad I didn't. The UK is now completely fucking mad, too, but it's *our* mad, if you know what I mean. Plus we have cricket.
Sadly, as unvaccinated heathens, we may never even visit again.
Funnily enough, one of our daughters is dating a Californian guy she met in Germany (he's in the USAF, and still posted in Europe). She's not vaccinated, either, so I can see trouble ahead.
Imagine staying somewhere better than Wawona. But they drained the pool, in 2020, because you'll get Covid if you go swimming. And the last time I passed through they still hadn't refilled it.
It's far more than a Lost Coast. We lived in a perfect house with an avocado tree on Newport Avenue, two blocks straight up from the Ocean Beach Pier in San Diego.
I walked to school every day at Ocean Beach Elementary and lined up outside our classroom to say the Pledge of Allegiance and sing America the Beautiful every day with the entire school, from 1965 to 1968.
We seemed to have wonderful teachers and a diverse student body. Many of the kids were extremely poor, living in what were essentially beach shacks.
But my father sensed danger in the neighborhood, with the head shops taking over the little stores and stoners in the alley behind our house.
We moved away to the Pacific Northwest when I was 9.
Every summer I go back to visit. Our old house is now worth $2 million and we can barely afford to visit.
Ocean Beach's little downtown zone is decidedly scuzzy now. But I still dream of living there again.
California is a coloring book example of what happens when the entire left edge of a state drives everything, and the values are NOT centered in local control and personal freedoms.
Washington state is a mirror for your memoir. We've inherited so many CA runners for 30 years- now we suffer from the same burden, a populace constantly working from a "what can the govt do for me?" mindset. There is no winning, even survival is questionable.
I can relate so strongly to this, and I wish I couldn't. I've got the same feelings about Canada - in my humble opinion, the landscapes of the Great White North are unparalleled in their majesty and beauty, and there's nothing more restorative to my soul than going back there and spending time in nature. Yet the regulatory miasma hangs over everything like an invisible cloud made of permits and No signs, carrying with it the hallucinatory nightmare demons of post-modern ideology.
Canada might not have ever been an especially exciting place, but it was at least well governed, clean, safe, and the ethos of politeness meant that people generally agreed to live and let live - the deal was, don't be a violent jerk, pick up after yourself, and you can do basically as you please. Now that ethos has been perverted in all the expected ways: obey and agree, for if you don't, you're a rude, racist, climate-denying antivaxxer, etc etc.
There's nothing more painful than watching powerlessly as your homeland descends into madness and tyranny so deeply that the madness eclipses everything you love about it. It's like seeing a family member turn into a drug addict. There are flashes of the person you love, but they become rarer and shorter as the drug takes control, and deep down you don't need anyone to tell you how it ends.
Your first paragraph - in the national park campground near me, there were signs on the dishwashing stations (with room for one person, mind you, and open to the air) that said unvaccinated patrons had to wear masks inside. Three feet away on the bathrooms, a sign said that all patrons, regardless of vaccination status, had to wear masks inside. They displayed the revolting blank, eyeless circle graphic with the mask across the lower half of the "face." Any that I encountered are now in the trash where they belong. The more strongly they're taped up, the more satisfying it is to rip them down.
I spent a week in June rolling through campgrounds in the Rocky Mountains in Colorado, ending at Rocky Mountain National Park, and they all had those signs everywhere. Literally never saw a single person actually wearing a mask.
Those signs don't serve to enforce any actual laws. They're more like terroritorial markers, gang signs reminding you whose turf you're on.
I saw a man in a mask hiking at the very top of the Sandia Mountains here in Albuquerque. That creeping feeling of being imprisoned by statism managed to attack me in the remote wilderness. Park Rangers are also aggressively using drones to monitor where people hike and the state is becoming more draconian with closures due to fire dangers. The freedom is paplably slipping. You captured it well in the essay.
It's just nuts, isn't it?
I actually hate camping in national parks. Part of the attraction is getting away from rules. But the rules follow you - no drinking, no smoking, no noise, masks mandatory, etc etc.
All 'for your safety' of course.
As if that was the only thing that mattered.
Yeah, the juxtaposition between the Covid warnings and the actual dangers you can face in the wilderness makes it even more ludicrous. We were backcountry camping but cut through the campground on the way back. At the height of this horror we stuck to National Forests, where in the US you can pretty much do what you want, thank God. But even there there were stupid signs at some trailheads. I won't put up with that mental abuse.
Been here in los angeles since 1997. It has gone from a great time with mostly good people to a mostly terrible city with almost exclusively awful people. Just found out tonight our catholic school is going to be lock step with LAUSD yet again.. so bring back the testing and the masks if there are positives. I hate it here so much now.
I never loved Los Angeles, but there were always a lot of good things in it. There are no longer a lot of good things in it. Although I did go to a Dodgers game again recently and felt good to be there again. That's about it. I sometimes drive through a neighborhood and remember that I used to not hate it.
HA! Fair enough.. I do love other parts of CA. Los Angeles has always just been a way to enjoy other places working in tv but now it is like being in prison and not one of those cool ones you see on tv.
So very sad. I've decided an alternate universe of film / tv folks will create itself out of sheer necessity. Who can be creative in prison???
I moved here the same year as you. I agree. Do you mind telling me which school? We just transferred our kid out of public school to a Cath school to get out of the insanity….
The truth is they are all doing it. They are all walking in lock step with LAUSD. We were supposed to get guidance weeks ago. Then it was last friday. Now it's maybe this week. We start school in less than 2 weeks. The Los Angeles Arch Diocese is pushing masks and shots. So from Culver City to El Segundo... and the two Los Angeles/Westchester schools too. You need to leave LA County to have a chance at normalcy.
CA will survive these morons. And ironically, it will probably be the immigrants that finally throw these bums out. Immigrants generally don’t leave their countries, face danger and poverty, just to settle in a place that offers the same sort of corrupt government they fled. They are by and large, courageous and faithful people, far better than the average college-educated American these days. Perhaps this is why the Ds are quietly starting to build the wall.
Hope so. It's hard to believe, at this moment, but I'd like to see it.
I have similar hope given the immigrants I know. Most are working to feed their family. I worked at a steel foundry and rough guess a quarter were from south of the border. I'd see a car full of them catching some Zs before shift, all coming from the same rented house to save money. A few bad apples but usually dealt with before management had to act. Super proud when a few guys I worked with got their citizenship. That citizenship was critical when Obama cracked down with the I9 audits and that quarter of our workforce left overnight. Pretty rough on a business that requires specific and rare skill sets. I debated the flawed history my friend was taught in Mexico, but his patriotism was admirable, and I was always presented a shot of tequila at his house.
The obvious problem is that with an unsecured border the bad actors sneak in hidden amongst the good ones. A system to vet immigrants is simply obvious. High walls with wide gates. The Ds opened the border and assumed the allegiance of immigrants because the Twitter cognoscenti know absolutely nothing about them.
I doubt it. I'm not a Cali native but I lived there for about a decade. The hard working immigrants you speak of are increasingly leaving. (A few are our neighbors here in South Carolina.) Part of the flight out of Cali consists of those immigrants. The ones that remain are increasingly dependent on state benefits. They will continue to vote for these crazy policies as long as the money keeps flowing.
“The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money.”
― Alexis de Tocqueville
The Dems are "quietly starting to build the wall" because Mark Kelly asked Biden to do it. He is going down in flames in Arizona.
Not entirely true. So far they haven’t tossed the bums out in your state. Most of those immigrants are now illegals and made up of folks supporting the deep state in CA and the country. Legal immigrants are frightened because they HAVE been through this before and couldn’t stop it where they came from and know they can’t stop it here. And ther is no place to go. We need to stop this god awful complacency coupled with the “someone will save us” nonsense and realize we must do it ourselves. CA will survive. You might not.
Complacency is a problem agreed. Same time, CA is too good to cede to this crow. I don’t see any ordinary people, legal or illegal, supporting the deep state. It has no natural constituency among the people. The deep state, including members of both parties, succeed by dividing the people, making us hate and distrust each other. We should definitely control immigration. Just don’t let the deep state actors on both sides teach you to believe that some group ordinary people is the source of our problems. Focus on the deep state (unelected bureaucrats, magistrate judges, faithless politicians, and the elite that control them), not on illegal immigrants, not on unwed mothers, not on China, not on Russia, not on weird weather, not on race, not on oil, etc.
How?
By getting involved in your local politics. We have started at the school board in our tiny community. The politics within school boards are horrendous and the kids are the victims. Work with your local sherrif. Speak up locally. Provide data within the community. Don’t comply with illegal mandates. Get the community behind blocking the surveillance cameras being deployed everywhere with facial recognition which will be tied to a social credit system and passports. Volunteer to work the polls on voting day so that your area of influence is safe. Put books that educate on all of this in the little reading libraries. Lots of things you can do. It beats sitting back and giving in to the bad guys.
Thank you. Excellent suggestions. Doing many of them.
The Cubans invigorated and regenerated South Florida.
I do too.
Beautifully said. CA is in my rear view mirror for more open and truly diverse and free places. So sad.
Don’t think moving from CA is going to free you. We moved to MT from CO which has become a mini CA. MT is heading rapidly to the left in an alarming fashion. Even in the sticks - of which there is a lot of in this state. We need to stay in our homes and fight the fight everywhere. No one is immune. And there is no safety or sanity anywhere anymore. Work on your local politics and build bridges between differing views and create common goals and hash it out as to how to achieve those. It’s hard work but that is the ONLY way we will protect and defend our Constituion and American way of life. Running away is no longer possible.
www.precinctstrategy.com
Change is possible, even in the swampiest of places. Look at Kari Lake's victory in the primary!
Have hope and glad to hear you are continuing to fight the good fight!
Eye opener of a comment!
Agreed!
born at cedars sinai, raised in unincorporated la county, college in the bay area, career in biotech afterwards. married someone from santa barbara. A FUCKING CALIFORNIA CLICHE.
when we first started talking about leaving, i put on a brave face. i hadn’t realized how much i’d thought of the state as ‘home’. by the time we signed a new lease in a new state i cried tears of relief.
we feel lucky, as if we have escaped.
Where did you escape to if I may ask? We fled Chicago for Florida a year and a half ago. Tears of relief indeed.
we didn’t go far- we are in Nevada, for now…Reno is starting to look and politic like Sacramento.
congratulations on getting out of Chicago- hope you and yours are flourishing.
We're staying in my hometown San Diego, fighting back and taking back territory. Memories of CA almost brought tears to my eyes. It's worth fighting for.
San Diego is great. I wish you success.
It feels weird to read the name Jerry Brown in a positive or neutral way. 😅I am “only” in my mid 30s so my impression of him is based on his governorship during 2011-2018(?) that coincided with my conservative turn and also my dads super dislike of his first 27 terms. 😂
San Bernardino is cool because we don’t have enough money to allow ourselves to be told what to do. I used to HATE breaking any rules so you can imagine how odd it was to find myself and my 4 kids among the delinquents at the playground when the city I live in tried to yellow tape it off.
The one thing I'll say about Jerry Brown is that he wasn't personally a giant douchebag, whatever you think of his politics. Ahhnold used to travel in a giant motorcade, like he was the POTUS: CHP cars and motorcycles, with sirens and flashing lights, then some SUVs with tinted windows, then a bunch of CHP cars and motorcycles again. When Jerry Brown was governor – all seventy times – people in line to board a Southwest Airlines flight would find their governor in line with them, bitching about getting a B-group boarding pass. He'd jump in the car to drive over to a meeting. He acted like a person.
This piece hits home for me pretty hard - I spent so much of my childhood on these same roads. I learned what it meant to love my country at the annual Fourth of July parade in Bridgeport CA where my family has been vacationing for the past 50 years. I developed a deep love of history in the haunted streets of Bodie and overgrown fields of Aurora. We’ve hiked and driven untold numbers of miles on back roads and Jeep trails. Then I’d return home after this trip each year to So. Cal and go to school in what felt like such an open, diverse melting pot of individuals and ideas. We had annual passes to Disneyland where most nights we’d go just to have a hot chocolate and watch the fireworks. I drove PCH in my first car (a 65’ VW Beetle) several times a week as a form of behind-the-wheel-meditation. We left CA for good to head to greener pastures approaching seven years ago and watching the decline of a place that shaped me has been deeply sad. It has felt eerily similar to mourning a lost loved one.
Bridgeport is about as good as it gets. Almost crashed into another car once because I was staring at the mountains.
I have verrrrry weird feelings about Disneyland. Spent SO MUCH time there as a child, and respond to it in unconscious and immediate ways. Walking up Main Street, or passing the Golden Horseshoe and heading into New Orleans Square, feels like revisiting my childhood -- it couldn't feel more familiar. And also, I haven't gone for years, and have no plans to ever go again. And that's before we even get to the fact that they closed Bear Country Jamboree.
I think we had the same childhood!
The corruption of Disney was/is staggering to witness. That in particular felt like several deaths all at once, having also grown up a die hard sci-fi nut.....over the past few years not only has Disneyland been poisoned for me, but Star Wars and Marvel as well. I’m eagerly awaiting (no I’m not) the final blow of Amazon Prime’s butchering of the Lord of the Rings series and the utter destruction of everything I held dear will be complete 😆. Betcha we passed each other in a long line at Erick Schat’s Bakery in Bishop at some point in time. I feel like all special souls who share a love for that area of the Sierras converged there at some point in time :)
I hear you. Not all is lost. California is a lesson to learn. I’m in Texas and we are getting a lot of refugees from mismanaged states. We welcome them all but we have a deep fear of their failed state’s politics being imported here. What can we do to prevent the “metastasization of regulatory chickenshit” in Texas. If you could go back 50 years in California what could have been done? Please pray for Texas and our freedoms. I often think about and pray for my fellow Americans in California. Especially the F 250 types that enjoy the wide open spaces.
“Did I say that, or just think it?”
If you could go back fifty years in California to warn people, no one would believe your depiction of the future. But what could have been done differently that would have mattered? I'll think about this one, because it would have been a war on so many fronts that I don't know where to start.
Thank you for praying for us in CA. That just brought tears to my eyes. And as the joke goes about the guy in the phone booth tryin to remember God’s area code, calling God from Texas is a local call. I’ll still pray for Texas too.
"If you could go back 50 years in California what could have been done?"
Maybe stop the population from rising?
California's staggering natural gifts make up for a lot of governmental and cultural malarkey. Yet there comes a limit...
In a place like Detroit, sane people would have given up long before and moved elsewhere. Which is what happened long ago. California is seeing this only now.
There is no Law of Nature saying that the pendulum must swing back during anyone's lifetime. South Africa and Mexico are full of stunningly beautiful and bountiful places, yet they grind along under generations of hopeless misgovernment. I don't have automatic faith that California can be saved. It will be a fight, and the Forces of Good could easily lose.
What's interesting to me is that some of the most beautiful places, like Santa Barbara and Marin County, are full of the most miserable and rage-choked people, driving around Mill Valley with their old RESIST bumperstickers. We live in a fascist Rethuglikkkan dictatorship, they scream, sitting on the patio at Peet's. Bizarre.
I too grew up in CA. I lived in Anaheim, 2 miles from the “Magic Kingdom “. Life there in the 60’s/70’s was almost Mayberry like. Orange groves in abundance. Farm fields stretching all the way to Huntington Beach. We were free range kids who were basically kicked out of our homes on summer mornings and told not to return until dinner. I left for a job in 1987 and haven’t looked back. Southern Cal feels third world to me now. My wife and I still have family there and in Northern Cal, but I will not return. Each visit reminds me of the degrading, crowded, arrogant liberal takeover which has occurred. Everywhere I go there are millions of people crowding ahead of me. I’ve told my wife that I will return to California under one of two conditions: in a box, or in an urn. I grieve for my lost state. It was once beautiful and vibrant.
Almost exactly my experience. I grew up within walking distance of Knott's Berry Farm and I remember when they were building the Matterhorn at Disneyland. I have no desire to go back.
Then spent 42 years in Jackson Hole. Thought I would never leave until it got too crowded; I bailed about six years ago. Too damn many people everywhere. Where are all these people coming from?
Jackson Hole is stunning, and you can easily buy a really nice house for $15 million. It's like it was conquered.
Very often rated as the richest county in the country. And then there were us little people who held down three jobs so that we could share a house trailer or a condo with five other people. The skiing was good, though.
This old farmer says: Yeah to all of that, but move it back to the 40's, and imagine!! I grew from bean, through teen and into young adulthood, with a wife and family in that wonderful world. But the 70's brought a huge change. No more groves and groves. No more little pocket neighborhoods, separate but almost equal, and getting closer week by week. Not PCH but 99. On a Greyhound. With miles and miles of open opportunity. Yeah! You grew up in a GREAT place, - just 30 years after the prime. I have returned many times over the last 40+ years, and each time I did, I died a little more. It has turned from and Eden into a cesspool. The folks who live there are generally so entrenched that they smell the rot but they can't figure out where it is coming from. Oh well - - - this too shall change. However I fear it won't be for the better. A nasty, infected sore won't heal until you clean the debris out and treat it with TLC.
This explains a lot in about 1/2 hour. The voiceover/production is a little dramatic at first but it’s a solid take on how it all got destroyed. https://youtu.be/L6l0JL6loXc
I have been visiting California since I was 18 years old in 1978 and have seen the changes happen with the eye of the observer and I must say it leaves me disillusioned. The west has been in my heart since I was a child and it is the openness and the sense that you are out on a limb that has kept me in thrall. When I was a young Deadhead and to be in San Francisco was a feeling that was thrilling, visiting with friends and drinking a six pack catching up at Twin Peaks and looking at this most amazing city roll down at your feet, you knew this world was for you. Now when I go to SF it has become a city of wealthy people, homeless and the crazed and it makes me sad beyond belief. SF was always a city that was little rough around the edges but it had room for everyone and it worked. Unfortunately, they have broken the city I love most in the world and I don't think they can put it back together. I knew the city I loved was gone when they gentrified the Mission District and they turned China Basin in to a baseball Disneyland. They can have it now, it's theirs and they have ruined it.
I still get excited when I head to Cali for my three week road trip each spring but when I retire next year it will be to the Black Hills in South Dakota. When I look at the rolling prairie in South Dakota in the spring when the grass is green it moves my heart the way a woman did when I was young.
Would love to be in South Dakota -- a very wise choice.
I'm British, but I used to visit the US often in the late 1980s (as a late teenager then) to mid 2010s.
I collect old soul records (what we call 'northern soul' over here), and you could find £1,000 gems for 50¢ in thrift stores, or piled up in dusty boxes in the backs or attics or basements of record shops.
Occasionally I would track down old artists, or producers, or record company execs, and get records straight from the horse's mouth.
Where that happened, I'd pay them in dollars close to the nominal Sterling amount - fine when it was $2 to the pound - because they were usually broke and I felt they deserved finally to earn some cash from records they'd made thirty, forty years before.
Record store owners I ripped off mercilessly - if they couldn't do the work to find out the value, and it didn't occur to them to wonder why these crazy British collectors were paying for flights to come and find this shit, that was on them.
Then eBay and the rest of the internet took off and ruined everything.
Anyway, I digress.
I loved California, came often, and my wife and I had a memorable two weeks there in the 90s, before we were married, driving up the coast, stopping in a log cabin in Sequoia and the Wawona Hotel in Yosemite, and generally having a blast.
Coming from a relatively small country - albeit that we were not strangers to the States or other expansive places - I remember seeing a 'next gas 100 miles' sign somewhere and thinking, I'd better fill up.
At the time, I had an inkling I might move to the States, possibly to Cali - we're both keen skiers, and Heavenly looked great - but I'm glad I didn't. The UK is now completely fucking mad, too, but it's *our* mad, if you know what I mean. Plus we have cricket.
Sadly, as unvaccinated heathens, we may never even visit again.
Funnily enough, one of our daughters is dating a Californian guy she met in Germany (he's in the USAF, and still posted in Europe). She's not vaccinated, either, so I can see trouble ahead.
Another great piece, Chris. Keep them coming.
Imagine staying somewhere better than Wawona. But they drained the pool, in 2020, because you'll get Covid if you go swimming. And the last time I passed through they still hadn't refilled it.
It's far more than a Lost Coast. We lived in a perfect house with an avocado tree on Newport Avenue, two blocks straight up from the Ocean Beach Pier in San Diego.
I walked to school every day at Ocean Beach Elementary and lined up outside our classroom to say the Pledge of Allegiance and sing America the Beautiful every day with the entire school, from 1965 to 1968.
We seemed to have wonderful teachers and a diverse student body. Many of the kids were extremely poor, living in what were essentially beach shacks.
But my father sensed danger in the neighborhood, with the head shops taking over the little stores and stoners in the alley behind our house.
We moved away to the Pacific Northwest when I was 9.
Every summer I go back to visit. Our old house is now worth $2 million and we can barely afford to visit.
Ocean Beach's little downtown zone is decidedly scuzzy now. But I still dream of living there again.
California is a coloring book example of what happens when the entire left edge of a state drives everything, and the values are NOT centered in local control and personal freedoms.
Washington state is a mirror for your memoir. We've inherited so many CA runners for 30 years- now we suffer from the same burden, a populace constantly working from a "what can the govt do for me?" mindset. There is no winning, even survival is questionable.