CHIRLA seems less like an “immigrant rights” organization and more like a PAC committing FEC violations for the sake of foreigners and their domestic collaborators.
Of course! Caught the reruns after school (or maybe it was just on weekends?), would make appointments with the TV for. Then made appointments for Baa Baa Black Sheep on nighttime TV when it came out. Became fascinated with the Corsair, got the model airplane kits, aircraft carrier model kits.
It really is quite something how that talking picture box that lies to us all the time now has always had an impact that goes off in so many different directions. Good and bad. Today, mostly bad. Mostly awful. No more talking picture box appeal.
Are you sure you are not my older brother? We basically had to watch whatever he was watching because he would lay on the floor in front of the console, he would throw his leg up if we attempted to reach the channel changer! lol.
Too bad our current crop of confidant criminals shatter every mirror they pass and singe the souls of every decent person they encounter. Evil has its own toxic aura. You can’t hate these grifters enough.
Given the demographics involved, more like a cartel, and I don't mean of the old-school Monopoly Man railroad type.
You are seeing the South Africanization of California before your own eyes: naked ethnic patronage and corruption and looting that puts the skinsuit of "politics" on while it slowly destroys civic society.
Many regions of South Africa are also pretty and the weather is good. Johannesburg in 1965 was spotless and worked.
Seems to me that, yes, that's precisely what you have and without concerted pushback that's what you're going to get more of— although "mafia" may wear a very different mask over a very different face at different points in the future. I hope you stay and help keep California from falling into the ocean, as it were. But I wouldn't blame you if you moved inland.
The CS Lewis, "...It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated;..."
Think of how many people enthusiastically have welcomed surveillance tools into their homes--and their children's rooms.
Apparently while imagining (if my local experience is any guide) that Big Brother is Santa Claus on a good day (he only sees you when you've been GOOD, and then he'll bring you PREZINTS!).
And then we hear people saying, "Gee, why do the infogarchs want to build all those big-glute data centers!?"
Why are so many worried about Data Centers? this feels like more scare tactics about technology, but most of the scare is because Democrats aren't in charge of the Data, nor are they in on the Grift!
What I see is whining by those who can no longer control the flow of information and hide money.
Sorry to jump in up top, but this was my conclusion as well.
> Teams of paid/volunteer canvassers…ranging in status from undocumented to legal permanent residents, work to build a constant culture of…and impress upon them that…
"Sending illegal immigrants door to door" is literal organized crime/cartel behavior. The door-to-door part isn't the payload, it's the theatre. The payload is the information matrix in which your existence, your home, your family is just a nexus for applying pressure.
"We know who you are, we know where you live, and we're dispatching political operatives to bring our agendas to your home. We have your phone number, your address, your name, and with that information as an entry point, we have by now entire algo-skimmed and AI-analyzed data sets. We know when you are home and when you are away. We know what you do for a living and where you work, and when. We know what car you drive, and where you drive it, and when."
This is the new, data-center-based system of force and violence. Well, not new, just much more powerful now than ever before. I mean, poor old Morrie Dees had to hire actual humans to conduct his SPLC direct mail malarkey in the '80s and '90s. Today's infogarchs can do it from a laptop in a limo.
Well, that is California Machine Politics in a Nut Shell! The late appearance of votes for the Socialist Candidate and the burning of Spencer Pratt's business is the proof! The Homeless are just pieces in a Shell Game, useful for collecting money and when extra voters are needed!
The libs control the beautiful states and then ruin them with their politics and corruption. Until the pandemic, I thought it was still worth it to live in a beautiful place. However, during the pandemic, it became clear how draconian and merciless the left can be so now I'm not so sure.
I have lived in Plano Texas and although the people were great, it was SO BURNING HOT everyday. When it's over 100 degrees, the heat is just awful. Also, it was flat and ugly. However, Texas is a huge state and I'm sure it has many lovely spots... just not where I was living in Plano in August, lol.
I wasn’t referring to the hot weather in the middle of the summer. Death Valley, CA is hot too. Not was I comparing the scenery of CA especially coastline and mountains to Texas. But Bakersfield isn’t exactly beautiful either. I’m saying that there are also many physical aspects of Texas that are visually striking -like Austin and the Hill Country, the coastline along the Gulf in South Texas, the Davis Mountains and Big Bend National Park. The government and economic system also isn’t destroying the state as it is in CA. That’s all.
Bakersfield, son? You're on the fighting side of me!!! (In fairness, some of Bakersfield is surrounded by industrial wastelands. Oil production does that.)
Death Valley is nice from October 15 to April 30. There are some highlands around Wildrose and the Beehives that are delightful in the cooler months.
My darling had multiple job offers there after having done multiple big contracts (electrical design/engineering) in that area. What you said fits 130%. Blazing heat, hideous landscape. Great stars at night if you got well out of town though.
But all that damn lightning. I don't like lightning. It has a tendency to get way too personal. With me personally.
Yes ! San Francisco is still a beautiful city but is it fun anymore? Not so much. Definitely the best place to go for drug tourists. Let’s say I’m a degenerate from Louisiana and I’m tired of working on the barges, oil rigs or whatever. I’m going to San Francisco! The “nonprofits,” employing directors, managers and CEOs pulling down salaries in the mid six figures, will set me up with foil, straws and glass pipes to smoke my drugs from. Also needles if I want to inject. Narcan is also provided. Sometimes the fentanyl is TOO GOOD knowm sayin G? The city will also give me a stipend of $700+ month just for showing up and being indigent. It’s called general assistance and afaik it’s unique to the city by the bay. Housing is more problematic; there’s not enough and subsidized housing has a very long waiting list. Hey no problem! The nonprofit will give me a tent and the weather is mild. Off I go to set up my new home. Keep in mind that the events I describe take place in a very densely populated neighborhood close to downtown, not in Golden Gate Park, so my tent site is likely to be in an alley, a parking lot, a freeway median or even on the sidewalk. This means that some sidewalks are virtually inaccessible. Not much is done about these things. Occasionally some do gooder or busybodies from the city or the aforementioned nonprofits may come around to check up on me. I’m advised to tell them that I’m a local - part of the gaslighting these politicians do - because even very liberal voters get upset about their taxes going to drug tourism. I could go on and on and on… but y’all got the picture.
The positives are: great weather and natural beauty, great architecture, a wonderful food culture and friendly people. Tech employment is still well compensated and you could live on the peninsula or east bay if that’s more your speed. And the city itself has great neighborhoods - the tenderloin ain’t one of them though. And druggies tend to wander around seeking out a quiet place to fix or something to steal. Homeowners find bums sleeping in their backyard occasionally.
Night life and the restaurant scene are pretty moribund even five years after covid. CRE is still f—d. The mayor, Daniel Lurie, might have good intentions but he is weak as water! He won’t challenge the sanctuary city ordinance, for example. So every night the Hondos come out to sling fetty, and the doom loop continues. We have a long row to hoe, that is for sure.
Homeless tents! I have a friend who works as a church secretary in Lincoln City, Oregon. Part of her job is to give away tents to the homeless.
The homeless have no 'investment' in these dome tents. If the tent tears or leaks or the 'occupant' decides to change campsites, the tent is abandoned in situ. The woods of Lincoln City are full of discarded church tents.
She hands out tents to the same people over and over again. The church is proud of this 'community' program.
No offense, JT, but I'm sitting here wondering --- again --- why non-residents of California are pushing residents of California to leave their homes. Also why does it annoy me so much? It probably shouldn't, I know.
'Legendary Oakland football coach and Laney College Athletic Director John Beam was shot and killed in a targeted attack on campus on November 13, 2025. A 27-year-old suspect, Cedric Irving Jr., was arrested and charged with murder. In April 2026, a judge deemed the suspect mentally incompetent to stand trial.'
I remember that! We thought we would get justice when we recalled the Soros DA, but that doesn't solve the Liberal, DEI Judges and the entire cast of the class of 2013 DEI hires that run Alameda County! At least we have seen a bit less crime since we got rid of the revolving door and the incentives to steal up to $950.00 with no repercussions. At least we think we got rid of it.
If you are a Seattle dweller - or know the area - you’re probably aware of the ‘housing’ program for the 'unhoused' the new commie mayor, Katie Wilson, has devised. Unimaginably ugly minuscule cubes all in neat rows. This has gulag written all over it except the people she’ll jam in there are incapable of labor. If she thinks this will give dignity to the disenfranchised, she’s more ignorant of reality than I already thought. There must be common plumbed facilities in the zone somewhere but that’s unclear. All kinds of expensive services will be provided to the people there with no real and actual requirement that they get or stay clean. 'Sustain the problem' is the mantra of these enablers.
These cribs certainly provide privacy for the fix or any number of other unsavory activities one might want to engage in. And let’s take a guess on how long it will be before one or more of them burns down or is purposefully destroyed.
These bat-shit crazy moron politicians tell us housing is the problem with these lost souls and taxing the ultra rich will fix it. Except the rich jump ship when they get overtaxed and whatever remains of the middle class taxpayer base will be called upon to fill the gap. It’s inevitable. Rinse and repeat.
If these clowns would redirect that funding into the development of facilities to house and treat the indigent addicts and mentally ill self medicated (yes, incarcerate them) we might actually help people - at least a few - but no. Our cynical blue city mafia politicians know that the long term success rate for addiction treatment is in the single digits so they are exploiting them instead as a source of funding and for vote padding.
The DSA won’t be satisfied until we’re all reduced to tent-life and fighting over squirrels for dinner.
Okay. That’s my rant for the day. Thank you for your time.
I’m not in Seattle anymore but I’m familiar with the situation. Similar to Portland. And yeah it’s the drugs! The drugs are doing it to people, with some mental illness and alcohol mixed in there, but mostly it’s just the drugs. We’ve always had drugs but not like this. Doing fentanyl looks hellish, not fun at all. They do it only to avoid withdrawals. Some of the most beautiful cities in America, its western cities, have been turned into apocalyptic zombie nightmares
Good piece on the FP this week on how the drugs aren't drugs anymore, the meth literally makes them insane, the fentanyl kills them. The drug NGO landscape is still operating as tho these people are smoking pot or taking heroin and they just aren't "ready for treatment" when in reality a meth head will never be ready because their brain is destroyed.
So all the policies we have today were conceived in a different time for different drugs and so the policies make it all worse by enabling more of it.
Once the brain is destroyed you can't fix these people.
We first have to stop creating more of them if the problem is ever to be solved.
The only thing that currently decreases the issue is the fentanyl killing them off.
My bitterness toward the machine that perpetuates this problem knows no bounds.
Once I realized that the people who had been elected to support the functioning of our metropolis were actually prioritizing the demands of the part that was dysfunctional, I was astounded. They ignored the needs of working people and business owners but coddled and infantilized addicts and violent criminals. I fought for a while but finally had to give up and leave.
Progressives are narcissists who have to pretend they look ‘good’ no matter what and at anyone else's expense. It’s hard not to hate them.
There is of course absolute corruption in this entire process, but progressives vote for more of this on the assumption they are the good compassionate people doing the right ting but they are in effect fighting the last war.
With Meth destroying the brain there is no way back.
So the machine is the machine, you cannot change the machine you can only cut off funding and starve it to death.
The average progressive voter has to be made to understand that their compassionate policies cannot fix this and are actually making it worse.
They aren't all unable to learn, this is the message they need to hear.
> the people who had been elected to support the functioning of our metropolis were actually prioritizing the demands of the part that was dysfunctional,
Beautifully put.
But it's not just "progressives" (which they aren't, but that's another issue) doing this.
It's also the Professional Altruists in the churches, for instance, many/most of them supposedly "conservative," who, if you suggest that a much stronger response is needed will dress you down and socially reject you for Not Being Loving Like Jesus. Turn the other cheek! Least of these my brethren! Give them your coat! Etc.
But never deal with the problem.
Which--oh dear--would include things like, I dunno, capturing and flaying drug traffickers--and those who launder the money--and making them into community art exhibits. Overpass wind chimes, e.g.
The victims of the poison become a sort of societal Sham-Wow for absorbing all sorts of spills.
The dark genius of the Sassoon Formula of making war on populations via poison is that it creats subpopulations that absolutely nobody wants to have around or deal with. It's like a game of sandpit volleyball where everybody's popping the ball up for someone else to pop...but nobody ever spikes.
Personally, I think the LEFT should put their love of Choice to the test. Allow then to choose to end their lives rather than killing the unborn. These people all had a chance and a choice. If the Dem's are not willing to make the hard decisions that actually might save a life, then no tax money for Narcan!
Linda, I think you're crediting Scary Amount Of Forehead Acreage Wilson with too much forethought.
The question I have is what companies are profiting from building those cubes etc.
The Homeless Industrial Complex is lucrative. I've posted this in the past, but here you go again: one example of market research on how to take advantage of this wonderful --> GROWTH INDUSTRY <--
> The Homeless and Temporary Shelters segment has sustained steady 6.2% annual growth over the past three years, expanding to $9.8 billion in 2025....
> Key growth drivers include housing affordability crises in major cities, mental health and substance abuse challenges affecting housing stability, and economic vulnerability creating housing insecurity. The industry benefits from dedicated public funding, philanthropic support, and essential emergency service positioning.
This is just one of many available similar studies. This one drills down in great detail into the many different rice bowls being filled on keeping a robust portion of the population disabled with poison.
I just drove thru San Francisco coming back from Sonoma/Napa and a significant portion of the city is straight out of Dante’s Inferno. Downright appalling the level of decay, all the more sad watching locals walk thru the devastation like nothings wrong.
Back when dinosaurs roamed the earth in the late '80s/early '90s I got sent to Silicon Valley regularly from my middle west Land Grant university town. I'd build in a couple days to pop up to SF/East Bay to get with friends from my then-home city who had moved there (community media friends mostly, and a couple business associates) and also to meet up with local geeks I knew in the same line of work as I who were constructing places on the then-new internet as community new media.
My first tour around the Oakland Hills in probably '90 was breathtaking. It was a wildflower peak time, and a hortie friend took me around, naming everything, telling all the chloroplastic stories. Than a writer friend took me around to see features of the local geology (like how the UC-Berkeley football stadium has the Hayward Fault running its length, passing thru the goalposts).
I asked local friends if there were any possibility of camping up there for a night--I had my primitive camping rig with me, having spent four nights at Big Sur. Just a night, I noted, to be with the incredible air that poured in through the Golden Gate, and that finger of fog that crossed the bay and went uphill and created very localized and specific plant communities in North Berkeley, and the stars over toward Claremont Canyon/Orinda/San Remote...etc.
OH NO, they said, camping is most certainly not allowed in the parks! It was one of the things that the local police watched out for most especially!!
Yet multiple times I'd seen campers all over the place. I asked about that. The reply was that, well, the park district, EBMUD, and police turned a blind eye to The Homeless because, you know, they don't have a choice!
I won't detail the subsequent discussion, which recoiled from common sense as though it were a viper. The compartmentalization of thinking (orderly responsible people can't camp here, that would be bad; only skeezoids, but that's good) was already well in place...and clearly could only lead to disaster. Whattaya whattaya.
When my not-yet-darling moved circa 1995 to what was called the Silicon Bodega (tech-bubble-fashionista flats/houses in the approx Mission District, though darling worked for AT&T and was looked down upon), cleaning human feces off the front entry foyer was already a regular occurrence. Trash cans couldn't be set out more than minutes before the trucks came, or the streeties would upend them and paw through.
Getting mugged was a regular occurrence. We experienced it ourselves but walked away OK owing to a combination of street smarts and the ability to instantly go more psycho than the attacker. Which is all law-abiding disarmed people in California have at their disposal. And too risky to want to live with on an extended basis.
I don't know what "great neighborhoods" you're referring to. I cannot think of any that didn't have these issues back to and through the '90s and into the '00s when darling's work dispatched us to America's Fjord. Maybe not TomKat's swanky 'hood in Pacific Heights...but we can't all afford Blackwater mercenaries to protect our houses. Even if we could/did, in case of a disaster the "law" would go harder on us than we could afford to dig out from.
From what I hear from those still there, the issues continue, but they ignore it to sustain the fantasy of how very very special SF is. CA utopian thinking.
By the way, your rhetorical characterization of oil rig and marine logistics workers as degenerate is pretty effin obnoxious. And a key part of the bigger problems that plague us all.
California is special. Oh but these people most certainly are not degenerates. Unless they're in from Louisiana, I guess:
Chill out bro, I’m not insulting oil derrick or barge workers, far from it. It’s an example, of someone from another part of the country moving to San Francisco for the drugs. Would it make you feel better if I used a Wall Street investment banker as an example? Fine - Bob the banker is the degenerate. Happy? Good. As to your contention about no good neighborhood in the city, you’re simply wrong. The Sunset and Richmond districts are both still solidly middle class neighborhoods. So is Stonestown, and Balboa Park , and Parkmerced. Noe is more upscale but nobody has black water security because the crime is very low. Maybe I got spoiled by living on the peninsula for twenty years but I know the city and the Bay Area very well. Perhaps Oakland always had the problems you mentioned but certainly not Walnut Creek, Pleasanton, Dublin, Danville, Livermore, Palo Alto, Santa Clara, San Bruno, Millbrae … I could go on but you get the idea. You guys wanted to be Mission district hipsters so you had to deal with crazy homeless guys who flung shit at you. I’m not dismissing your experience but you had other options! Deal with the Mission hipster lifestyle. Peace out ✌️
We began seeing it in the 80s up north in sweet little Olympia, WA. The lovely little state capitol that just couldn’t be bothered to put on big boy pants anymore after The Evergreen State College (now ‘University,’ whatever that means) opened (’72) and the lib arts social justice cohort began colonizing what had been a pretty high functioning town. It began as a weekend wide open retreat for wild west loggers in the late 19th century, but I digress.
Can’t blame the school (loose use of the term), of course, but it didn’t help. Downtown banks now board up their windows whenever some kind of protest is expected and the indigent addict encampments began popping up around the time the free needle enablement program began, blocking sidewalks and giving the dealers easy access to their clients. Cleaning up spent needles was a daily chore along with human waste.
The city council denial was, and probably remains, epic. Some business owners began pushing back by gating off or walling up access to their alcoves (private property) and the city tried to prevent them (fire exit compromise). The brave ones refused to comply.
If you drive through Olympia today, it looks fabulous because a number of gorgeous new high rise apt and condo buildings (Chinese money) have gone up since the aughts, but the real issues persist on the ground.
No longer live there. Loved it once but don’t miss it now.
Spot on! Our daughter lived in the City right out of Uni, so Mid-Covid era. The drug dealers, catalytic converter thieves and homeless, finally found the hilly neighborhood in 2024. We were thrilled when she was laid off and finally moved out of the city!
Florida is still beautiful in many places. I love that it is green all year round where I live. I do miss the lush, dark green grass of Wisconsin, but I never miss the snow, ice, and below zero cold. I never worry about falling on ice here. Everyone I meet here is friendly.
Instead of handing out needles to homeless druggies, they give out Narcan to anyone who will take it to try to help the overdosed people. In my county there are laws against "tent cities and panhandling." There are laws protecting animals here. No state income taxes here, but the state has a surplus, not a deficit. (That is beautiful to me.) We'll be voting on gradually getting rid of homeowner's taxes soon. We'll actually own our home that we paid for with our hard earned money. Need I say more?
Yes! When your Democrat voting Neighbor's scold you for gardening without a mask! And litter the neighborhood with yard signs to signal to the criminals and their hired help that the are supporters of illegal immigration and letting criminals roam the streets!
When your State Politicians Mandate their phony health laws, yet continually break them for their own convenience. When they tax and fee you to death, yet fail to provide basic services!
And when they are so blatant about their corruption machine that they make laws to jail anyone who dares to expose them!
I feel your pain. You should have seen California in the 1950s and 60s when it was a moderately Republican, low tax state. It truly was heaven on earth. The state where I currently reside is beautiful, but I'm leaving because I have absolutely no say in how I'm governed and taxed and the politicians don't even try to represent me because they hate my guts. The place is a One Party state that's going ultra Blue DSA socialist.
Sometimes I think this country is undergoing a kind of cell division with people moving and clustering with those of like mind. Are you willing to stay where you are and continue to take your lumps? Are California's charms worth it? Or would you rather be around people who are more like you?
As an aside, I read this morning that the chances of the "Big One" have increased dramatically because the San Andreas fault is at the highest stress levels in a thousand years...so there is that. LOL.
You said what I was going to say. I've decided that peaceful separation is the least-worst option going forward, and I believe it's already well underway in a cultural sense. It may take a while for like-minded people to cluster geographically so that separate autonomous regions can be formed, politically, but I think it will happen.
Interesting you use the cell-division metaphor. For a couple of years now, I've been recalling a couple of pages in my high school biology textbook that described rather dramatically in words and pictures, how a cell divides, and one thing that struck me as a parallel was the fact that long before you see the nucleus split and the cell wall actually divide, there are lots of subtle things going on inside. I think we're at that "subtle things" stage in the U.S. now.
As for Chris leaving California, or at least the coast, I suppose this has to be a tough decision for a native Californian. It's such a beautiful place.
> You should have seen California in the 1950s and 60s when it was a moderately Republican, low tax state. It truly was heaven on earth.
Was it though?
You're overlooking the matrix of often criminal interests that, e.g., built Hetch Hetchy, or Eaton and Mulholland stealing the Owens Valley's water, or the literal organized crime behind CA's ports, or don't even get me started on the power grid and the railroads.
And howabout Pincus Rothberg using the sea off LA as a dumping ground for his massive DDT manufacturing facility, Montrose Chemical--never mind all the Superfund sites he created?
California is ALWAYS "heaven on earth" to people who can look past any period's particular horrors.
A little kid like me knew nothing of that that which you speak. None of it affected me. Up until the time I left California to go into the military it was a great place to live. When I came back, it wasn't.
YMMV and you can speak for yourself, but my opinion is based on my personal experience.
We live in VERY CONSERVATIVE NE California, where it has all 4 seasons, yes, even snow! BUT, we are feeling the pain of the horrible legislation even in our small community (i.e. hidden gas taxes raising our prices by almost $2 a gallon, etc.). It's absolutely beautiful here right now, so that would be tough to leave. We've talked about moving to a red state, but all of our kids and grands live here so far. Things may change in the next 5 years or so (at least one is seriously talking about leaving), so we may follow. I do not blame anyone who leaves. I'm a lifelong Californian and it was once a wonderful state to live in. It is so discouraging.
Watch out for red states, Cindi! There are blue bubbles out there.
We moved to AZ a short while ago and I was ready to be relieved after many years in the beautiful but ulta-progressive NW. I expected common sense but, no. We’re in a pocket of rock-ribbed Dems. TDS is rampant, ICE is despised (even though border patrol is essential over here) and old ladies keep themselves relevant via no-kings rallies.
The Left went off the rails for me about seven years ago. I tried to remain centrist, but these delusional crazies have driven me to the other side.
I guess it can be traced back to the 70s when the mine closed, everybody left, real estate tanked and CA hippies could buy nice old houses on the cheap. So the downstream 50 years on is lib, artsy and alternative. That would be fine, but these days a whole lot of crazy has come into the mix via the permissive vibe.
Only been here about three years. People are nice if you stick to safe topics. The sticker shock is wearing off but the PTSD from the progressive excesses of the NW isn’t and finding the same delusions here is depressing.
Sounds like the classical problems of introducing democracy, in some form or other, to African nations back in the day.
Every tribe that could, would cheat, lie and steal (and worse!) to "win" the elections, in order to put their own tribe -clan-family into as many positions of power as possible, and then milk & bilk the system for as much as they could, for as long as they could (inc. using legislature, military, police and mercenary death squads against opponents).
Our professors gave three possible avenues of "solving this problem":
A) Keep pouring money into it, hoping and trying to uplift the natives into modern civilised people, imposing on them the value-systems necessary for any kind of democracy to function
B) Leave, and leave the natives to do native stuff in their native ways, only safeguarding the investments done in resource extraction/production via military in some shape
C) Roll in with a full-scale occupation force and impose a colonial military rule pro tem/indefinitely
...
I'm still looking for the D)-solution that doesn't offend, isn't racist, respects different cultures and makes people better themselves voluntary. I'll tell you if I ever find oine.
Democracy only works in the context of shared cultural values. In the West, that culture is (or was) the Judeo-Christian ethic. The reason why America has been so successful over 250 years is that the ideals in the founding documents, including Federalism, but mainly the idea of equal rights and equal justice have allowed prosperity to thrive. In that environment, democracy is tweaking the dials on the concert sound mixer - turn up the violins a little. It's not setting fire to the auditorium.
You don't need democracy at first. You need a constitution with equal justice regardless of skin color. Basic laws like innocent until proven guilty, habeas corpus, but also, and fundamentally closing the door on the past. That's the hardest part. Peace only comes when ancient feuds are set aside, voluntarily, as children of warring factions vow not to resume the prejudices that their forefathers had. Acts 17. Paul in Athens states that we are all of one blood. It begins there,
I don't believe you can arrive at this organically without prolonged wars, which is what happened over 1500 years in Europe to produce some measure of democracy.
So that's not the answer.
Maybe a better colonialism is the answer, except without the slavery, racism and theft that the Europeans brought. A kind of benign overlordship? Not democracy, but a fair judicial system.
Until about fifteen minute ago, we thought we had that.
We became lazy after WWII and stopped paying attention. Education, as in a demand for proficiency in basic intellectual survival skills, and Decency, as in demanding that we behave as functioning members of a healthy society, became obsolete, outmoded and demeaned. Individual freedom is supreme. This permissive and lax malaise allowed destructive forces implemented by cynical and self-serving people to break what was working, and generate chaos to serve their purposes.
We are left with the wreckage and an assortment of hostile interest groups clawing at each other for power over this or that scrap. We continue to function as a national entity only because there is still money to be made.
250 years is a very short time in the history of civilizations. Cultures that had survived for thousands of years and were then overrun by conquering hordes have been long forgotten.
What is strange about us is that we seem to have been convinced that we must surrender our enterprise to the barbarians and even fund their triumph.
> Sounds like the classical problems of introducing democracy, in some form or other, to African nations back in the day.
Absolutely
But good luck discussing that with "progs" and evangelicals.
You can't have a "non-racist" solution where racial demographics is a key part of the problem. People are not identical, fungible, hot-swappable entities. They're different because of stuff that happened among their ancestors long before they were born.
The only D) I see is the one involving nuking it from space to be sure, but I can't say I want to live downstream from that. I like birds.
But it seems noteworthy that in the middle of your intelligent and thoughtful perspective you felt you had to signal about being "not racist." "Racist" is a brainworm engineered to inculcate doubt, hesitation, guilt, and acceptance of self destruction. It has been deployed my entire life and has ripped through society like nothing else I've witnessed. There is nothing "negative" about functional people wanting to live among each other and keep the nonfunctional out. But that idea has been so demonized, so systematically, that the only option people have is to lie about what they're doing when they quietly do whatever it takes not to have to live around, and be destroyed/parasitized by, "diversity."
To clarify, I mean the classical definition/usage of racism, not the post-WW2 political one. The modern meaning is simply a postmodern semantic power-play, nothing else.
The barbarians at the gate, in the citadel, occupying the institutions, on the governing boards, running the tables, controlling the money flows, managing the borders, administrating the schools, presiding over the religions, inhabiting the judiciary. The invasion is near complete, it's just not been announced. Time is running out.
That's exactly the problem. My husband says, when I point out a particular injustice, "they should put X in jail!" Well sure. But X's are all over the place in every bureaucratic and institutional role. US & State gov is what % of the entire GDP? Who is going to put them ALL in jail? Who is going to prosecute ALL of them? Who is going to arrest them?
CHIRLA is an unabashed, unashamed cabal using the features of our immigration system to actively undermine our government and society. It’s an evil operation that is openly intent on dismantling and destroying our existing government. It’s like an autoimmune disorder that destroys its host.
We’ve faced our own dilemma over the past year or two. It’s been quite interesting as we’ve looked at different places to live in about a dozen states.
We are getting ready to move off of our sailboat this fall after 15 years of living aboard and being full time nomads.
We could go and live anywhere really. But after much reflection and exploration, we have decided to return to our roots, at least for now. Plus doing so will allow us to keep our boat for a few more years, just in case we need or want to escape again.
So we are headed back to Michigan. To a rural county, with one decent size city and no other city over 1000 people. It’s a mostly red county in a purple state. We managed to find a condo to rent, 2BR 2BA with a huge garage. Its located 8 miles outside the city, in the middle of farm country. Our view out the back is a cornfield and a barn.
It’s $1800 per month. Snow removal, lawn care, trash pickup, and water included.
Try that in CA.
It’s just 13 miles from the place we have called our ‘home port’ for 40 years, so we can still use our boat in the summer and put it in a heated building in the winter.
And yeah, we aren’t looking forward to winter. But we survived it for 55 years before we left, so I’m sure it will be fine.
We won’t move in until September. But we are already working on the place. The landlord is awesome.
And the local farmers market has 100 vendors and 75% of what we have consumed in the month we’ve been back in MI has come from there.
Our current view (subject to change after our first winter) is that there are some amazing and reasonably affordable bolt holes still available if you do your homework and have some flexibility.
🤬… remember The Witchmer outed herself…. Hot mic moment on data centers in Michigan. Here we go again , follow the money … cause Michigan is surrounded by water .
Yeah. We know that after living and working in MI for 55 years. But as I said, red rural county, center north, surrounded by farms, close to Lake Huron. And if it doesn’t work out we can leave.
On the positive side at lest California doesn't seem to have simply allowed at least one percent of its teen age girls to be raped every year for the last 35+.
I took similar stock of California four years ago after living there for more than 30 years. Was it worth it to stay? The kids were in college and grad school, and our formerly safe haven in Malibu was no longer safe or haven-esque (shout out to the tweakers in the Ralph’s parking lot and the homeless setting fires behind Bluffs Park!). The short answer? We moved. Fled, more like it. Our new state isn’t perfect, but it’s clean and beautiful and safe, and there’s no greasy, doubletalking governor scolding us about our wrongthink on the daily. The calculus was simple, really. Moving sucks, but staying sucks more. Best of luck with your deliberations.
TN, but people already found that out, so TN has seen massive number of families moving in. There is no job openings to support that .....
" Texas, Florida, North Carolina, Tennessee, South Carolina, and Georgia lead all states in attracting new residents through combinations of affordable housing, strong job markets, favorable tax structures, and quality of life factors..."
Agree, but I also think I detect a thread of optimism behind his unsparing analysis of what's happening. Chris: even if California (and America as a whole) is lost, I think it would be great if in your travels you'd chronicle the people and places where the better parts of our civilization seem to be enduring. It would be encouraging for us as we contemplate what is to come.
CHIRLA seems less like an “immigrant rights” organization and more like a PAC committing FEC violations for the sake of foreigners and their domestic collaborators.
It's just a straight-up mafia
I've likened the corrupt criminals in positions of power to the old Eveready commercial with Robert Conrad:
Eveready Battery 'I Dare Ya' Commercial (Robert Conrad, 1977)
https://youtu.be/0dD-Oekbmlo
As in, "What are you gonna doo about it, huh? What are you gonna doo? I dare ya to doo something about it. C'mon, I dare ya!"
Robert Conrad was the best. Remember Wild Wild West?
Of course! Caught the reruns after school (or maybe it was just on weekends?), would make appointments with the TV for. Then made appointments for Baa Baa Black Sheep on nighttime TV when it came out. Became fascinated with the Corsair, got the model airplane kits, aircraft carrier model kits.
It really is quite something how that talking picture box that lies to us all the time now has always had an impact that goes off in so many different directions. Good and bad. Today, mostly bad. Mostly awful. No more talking picture box appeal.
Are you sure you are not my older brother? We basically had to watch whatever he was watching because he would lay on the floor in front of the console, he would throw his leg up if we attempted to reach the channel changer! lol.
Both Wild Wild West and Baa Baa were good shows!
Did jiggling a set of house keys change the channel? Was always the work around when someone was hogging the changer!
Knock this battery off my shoulder….
Beautiful! Thank you, Freedom.
I had forgotten about those dimples.
Too bad our current crop of confidant criminals shatter every mirror they pass and singe the souls of every decent person they encounter. Evil has its own toxic aura. You can’t hate these grifters enough.
Given the demographics involved, more like a cartel, and I don't mean of the old-school Monopoly Man railroad type.
You are seeing the South Africanization of California before your own eyes: naked ethnic patronage and corruption and looting that puts the skinsuit of "politics" on while it slowly destroys civic society.
Many regions of South Africa are also pretty and the weather is good. Johannesburg in 1965 was spotless and worked.
My view as well. And they have data centers at their disposal now.
It’s all a sideshow to cover up the attempts by four tech trillionaire autists to screw humanity
Seems to me that, yes, that's precisely what you have and without concerted pushback that's what you're going to get more of— although "mafia" may wear a very different mask over a very different face at different points in the future. I hope you stay and help keep California from falling into the ocean, as it were. But I wouldn't blame you if you moved inland.
But at least the mafia didn't control their "clients " every waking moment of the day.
The CS Lewis, "...It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated;..."
Amen
Think of how many people enthusiastically have welcomed surveillance tools into their homes--and their children's rooms.
Apparently while imagining (if my local experience is any guide) that Big Brother is Santa Claus on a good day (he only sees you when you've been GOOD, and then he'll bring you PREZINTS!).
And then we hear people saying, "Gee, why do the infogarchs want to build all those big-glute data centers!?"
Why are so many worried about Data Centers? this feels like more scare tactics about technology, but most of the scare is because Democrats aren't in charge of the Data, nor are they in on the Grift!
What I see is whining by those who can no longer control the flow of information and hide money.
Sorry to jump in up top, but this was my conclusion as well.
> Teams of paid/volunteer canvassers…ranging in status from undocumented to legal permanent residents, work to build a constant culture of…and impress upon them that…
"Sending illegal immigrants door to door" is literal organized crime/cartel behavior. The door-to-door part isn't the payload, it's the theatre. The payload is the information matrix in which your existence, your home, your family is just a nexus for applying pressure.
"We know who you are, we know where you live, and we're dispatching political operatives to bring our agendas to your home. We have your phone number, your address, your name, and with that information as an entry point, we have by now entire algo-skimmed and AI-analyzed data sets. We know when you are home and when you are away. We know what you do for a living and where you work, and when. We know what car you drive, and where you drive it, and when."
This is the new, data-center-based system of force and violence. Well, not new, just much more powerful now than ever before. I mean, poor old Morrie Dees had to hire actual humans to conduct his SPLC direct mail malarkey in the '80s and '90s. Today's infogarchs can do it from a laptop in a limo.
Well, that is California Machine Politics in a Nut Shell! The late appearance of votes for the Socialist Candidate and the burning of Spencer Pratt's business is the proof! The Homeless are just pieces in a Shell Game, useful for collecting money and when extra voters are needed!
They need bullDOGEing.
stop being CHURLISH.
The libs control the beautiful states and then ruin them with their politics and corruption. Until the pandemic, I thought it was still worth it to live in a beautiful place. However, during the pandemic, it became clear how draconian and merciless the left can be so now I'm not so sure.
Texas is a pretty beautiful place - and thankfully has not yet been destroyed by blue state politicians.
I have lived in Plano Texas and although the people were great, it was SO BURNING HOT everyday. When it's over 100 degrees, the heat is just awful. Also, it was flat and ugly. However, Texas is a huge state and I'm sure it has many lovely spots... just not where I was living in Plano in August, lol.
I wasn’t referring to the hot weather in the middle of the summer. Death Valley, CA is hot too. Not was I comparing the scenery of CA especially coastline and mountains to Texas. But Bakersfield isn’t exactly beautiful either. I’m saying that there are also many physical aspects of Texas that are visually striking -like Austin and the Hill Country, the coastline along the Gulf in South Texas, the Davis Mountains and Big Bend National Park. The government and economic system also isn’t destroying the state as it is in CA. That’s all.
Bakersfield, son? You're on the fighting side of me!!! (In fairness, some of Bakersfield is surrounded by industrial wastelands. Oil production does that.)
Death Valley is nice from October 15 to April 30. There are some highlands around Wildrose and the Beehives that are delightful in the cooler months.
My darling had multiple job offers there after having done multiple big contracts (electrical design/engineering) in that area. What you said fits 130%. Blazing heat, hideous landscape. Great stars at night if you got well out of town though.
But all that damn lightning. I don't like lightning. It has a tendency to get way too personal. With me personally.
Nice people though, as you note.
...Austin?
Aside from Austin, parts of Dallas, and much of Houston…
Yes ! San Francisco is still a beautiful city but is it fun anymore? Not so much. Definitely the best place to go for drug tourists. Let’s say I’m a degenerate from Louisiana and I’m tired of working on the barges, oil rigs or whatever. I’m going to San Francisco! The “nonprofits,” employing directors, managers and CEOs pulling down salaries in the mid six figures, will set me up with foil, straws and glass pipes to smoke my drugs from. Also needles if I want to inject. Narcan is also provided. Sometimes the fentanyl is TOO GOOD knowm sayin G? The city will also give me a stipend of $700+ month just for showing up and being indigent. It’s called general assistance and afaik it’s unique to the city by the bay. Housing is more problematic; there’s not enough and subsidized housing has a very long waiting list. Hey no problem! The nonprofit will give me a tent and the weather is mild. Off I go to set up my new home. Keep in mind that the events I describe take place in a very densely populated neighborhood close to downtown, not in Golden Gate Park, so my tent site is likely to be in an alley, a parking lot, a freeway median or even on the sidewalk. This means that some sidewalks are virtually inaccessible. Not much is done about these things. Occasionally some do gooder or busybodies from the city or the aforementioned nonprofits may come around to check up on me. I’m advised to tell them that I’m a local - part of the gaslighting these politicians do - because even very liberal voters get upset about their taxes going to drug tourism. I could go on and on and on… but y’all got the picture.
The positives are: great weather and natural beauty, great architecture, a wonderful food culture and friendly people. Tech employment is still well compensated and you could live on the peninsula or east bay if that’s more your speed. And the city itself has great neighborhoods - the tenderloin ain’t one of them though. And druggies tend to wander around seeking out a quiet place to fix or something to steal. Homeowners find bums sleeping in their backyard occasionally.
Night life and the restaurant scene are pretty moribund even five years after covid. CRE is still f—d. The mayor, Daniel Lurie, might have good intentions but he is weak as water! He won’t challenge the sanctuary city ordinance, for example. So every night the Hondos come out to sling fetty, and the doom loop continues. We have a long row to hoe, that is for sure.
Homeless tents! I have a friend who works as a church secretary in Lincoln City, Oregon. Part of her job is to give away tents to the homeless.
The homeless have no 'investment' in these dome tents. If the tent tears or leaks or the 'occupant' decides to change campsites, the tent is abandoned in situ. The woods of Lincoln City are full of discarded church tents.
She hands out tents to the same people over and over again. The church is proud of this 'community' program.
That is just awful! That is not charity, that is enabling destructive behavior!
Agreed, but such a comment would be meet by blank stares
But it makes your friend FEEL!!! so good!
The homeless are her mascots.
Tru dat! I used to live in Alameda and work throughout the east bay…Oakland these days is downright scary!
Time for Chris to leave and find someplace sane!
No offense, JT, but I'm sitting here wondering --- again --- why non-residents of California are pushing residents of California to leave their homes. Also why does it annoy me so much? It probably shouldn't, I know.
One of the featured coaches from 'Last Chance U':
'Legendary Oakland football coach and Laney College Athletic Director John Beam was shot and killed in a targeted attack on campus on November 13, 2025. A 27-year-old suspect, Cedric Irving Jr., was arrested and charged with murder. In April 2026, a judge deemed the suspect mentally incompetent to stand trial.'
I remember that! We thought we would get justice when we recalled the Soros DA, but that doesn't solve the Liberal, DEI Judges and the entire cast of the class of 2013 DEI hires that run Alameda County! At least we have seen a bit less crime since we got rid of the revolving door and the incentives to steal up to $950.00 with no repercussions. At least we think we got rid of it.
Great piece, BigOinSeattle.
If you are a Seattle dweller - or know the area - you’re probably aware of the ‘housing’ program for the 'unhoused' the new commie mayor, Katie Wilson, has devised. Unimaginably ugly minuscule cubes all in neat rows. This has gulag written all over it except the people she’ll jam in there are incapable of labor. If she thinks this will give dignity to the disenfranchised, she’s more ignorant of reality than I already thought. There must be common plumbed facilities in the zone somewhere but that’s unclear. All kinds of expensive services will be provided to the people there with no real and actual requirement that they get or stay clean. 'Sustain the problem' is the mantra of these enablers.
These cribs certainly provide privacy for the fix or any number of other unsavory activities one might want to engage in. And let’s take a guess on how long it will be before one or more of them burns down or is purposefully destroyed.
These bat-shit crazy moron politicians tell us housing is the problem with these lost souls and taxing the ultra rich will fix it. Except the rich jump ship when they get overtaxed and whatever remains of the middle class taxpayer base will be called upon to fill the gap. It’s inevitable. Rinse and repeat.
If these clowns would redirect that funding into the development of facilities to house and treat the indigent addicts and mentally ill self medicated (yes, incarcerate them) we might actually help people - at least a few - but no. Our cynical blue city mafia politicians know that the long term success rate for addiction treatment is in the single digits so they are exploiting them instead as a source of funding and for vote padding.
The DSA won’t be satisfied until we’re all reduced to tent-life and fighting over squirrels for dinner.
Okay. That’s my rant for the day. Thank you for your time.
I’m not in Seattle anymore but I’m familiar with the situation. Similar to Portland. And yeah it’s the drugs! The drugs are doing it to people, with some mental illness and alcohol mixed in there, but mostly it’s just the drugs. We’ve always had drugs but not like this. Doing fentanyl looks hellish, not fun at all. They do it only to avoid withdrawals. Some of the most beautiful cities in America, its western cities, have been turned into apocalyptic zombie nightmares
Good piece on the FP this week on how the drugs aren't drugs anymore, the meth literally makes them insane, the fentanyl kills them. The drug NGO landscape is still operating as tho these people are smoking pot or taking heroin and they just aren't "ready for treatment" when in reality a meth head will never be ready because their brain is destroyed.
So all the policies we have today were conceived in a different time for different drugs and so the policies make it all worse by enabling more of it.
Once the brain is destroyed you can't fix these people.
We first have to stop creating more of them if the problem is ever to be solved.
The only thing that currently decreases the issue is the fentanyl killing them off.
All true, Pat.
My bitterness toward the machine that perpetuates this problem knows no bounds.
Once I realized that the people who had been elected to support the functioning of our metropolis were actually prioritizing the demands of the part that was dysfunctional, I was astounded. They ignored the needs of working people and business owners but coddled and infantilized addicts and violent criminals. I fought for a while but finally had to give up and leave.
Progressives are narcissists who have to pretend they look ‘good’ no matter what and at anyone else's expense. It’s hard not to hate them.
There is of course absolute corruption in this entire process, but progressives vote for more of this on the assumption they are the good compassionate people doing the right ting but they are in effect fighting the last war.
With Meth destroying the brain there is no way back.
So the machine is the machine, you cannot change the machine you can only cut off funding and starve it to death.
The average progressive voter has to be made to understand that their compassionate policies cannot fix this and are actually making it worse.
They aren't all unable to learn, this is the message they need to hear.
> the people who had been elected to support the functioning of our metropolis were actually prioritizing the demands of the part that was dysfunctional,
Beautifully put.
But it's not just "progressives" (which they aren't, but that's another issue) doing this.
It's also the Professional Altruists in the churches, for instance, many/most of them supposedly "conservative," who, if you suggest that a much stronger response is needed will dress you down and socially reject you for Not Being Loving Like Jesus. Turn the other cheek! Least of these my brethren! Give them your coat! Etc.
But never deal with the problem.
Which--oh dear--would include things like, I dunno, capturing and flaying drug traffickers--and those who launder the money--and making them into community art exhibits. Overpass wind chimes, e.g.
The victims of the poison become a sort of societal Sham-Wow for absorbing all sorts of spills.
The dark genius of the Sassoon Formula of making war on populations via poison is that it creats subpopulations that absolutely nobody wants to have around or deal with. It's like a game of sandpit volleyball where everybody's popping the ball up for someone else to pop...but nobody ever spikes.
Personally, I think the LEFT should put their love of Choice to the test. Allow then to choose to end their lives rather than killing the unborn. These people all had a chance and a choice. If the Dem's are not willing to make the hard decisions that actually might save a life, then no tax money for Narcan!
You are a woman after my own heart, LIsa.
Live long and prosper.
Linda, I think you're crediting Scary Amount Of Forehead Acreage Wilson with too much forethought.
The question I have is what companies are profiting from building those cubes etc.
The Homeless Industrial Complex is lucrative. I've posted this in the past, but here you go again: one example of market research on how to take advantage of this wonderful --> GROWTH INDUSTRY <--
https://www.kentleyinsights.com/homeless-and-temporary-shelters-industry-market-research-report/
> The Homeless and Temporary Shelters segment has sustained steady 6.2% annual growth over the past three years, expanding to $9.8 billion in 2025....
> Key growth drivers include housing affordability crises in major cities, mental health and substance abuse challenges affecting housing stability, and economic vulnerability creating housing insecurity. The industry benefits from dedicated public funding, philanthropic support, and essential emergency service positioning.
This is just one of many available similar studies. This one drills down in great detail into the many different rice bowls being filled on keeping a robust portion of the population disabled with poison.
Kinda like Big Med come to think of it.
Any recipes for the squirrels? Anyone?!
I just drove thru San Francisco coming back from Sonoma/Napa and a significant portion of the city is straight out of Dante’s Inferno. Downright appalling the level of decay, all the more sad watching locals walk thru the devastation like nothings wrong.
What a horrible end to a land of such promise.
Back when dinosaurs roamed the earth in the late '80s/early '90s I got sent to Silicon Valley regularly from my middle west Land Grant university town. I'd build in a couple days to pop up to SF/East Bay to get with friends from my then-home city who had moved there (community media friends mostly, and a couple business associates) and also to meet up with local geeks I knew in the same line of work as I who were constructing places on the then-new internet as community new media.
My first tour around the Oakland Hills in probably '90 was breathtaking. It was a wildflower peak time, and a hortie friend took me around, naming everything, telling all the chloroplastic stories. Than a writer friend took me around to see features of the local geology (like how the UC-Berkeley football stadium has the Hayward Fault running its length, passing thru the goalposts).
I asked local friends if there were any possibility of camping up there for a night--I had my primitive camping rig with me, having spent four nights at Big Sur. Just a night, I noted, to be with the incredible air that poured in through the Golden Gate, and that finger of fog that crossed the bay and went uphill and created very localized and specific plant communities in North Berkeley, and the stars over toward Claremont Canyon/Orinda/San Remote...etc.
OH NO, they said, camping is most certainly not allowed in the parks! It was one of the things that the local police watched out for most especially!!
Yet multiple times I'd seen campers all over the place. I asked about that. The reply was that, well, the park district, EBMUD, and police turned a blind eye to The Homeless because, you know, they don't have a choice!
I won't detail the subsequent discussion, which recoiled from common sense as though it were a viper. The compartmentalization of thinking (orderly responsible people can't camp here, that would be bad; only skeezoids, but that's good) was already well in place...and clearly could only lead to disaster. Whattaya whattaya.
When my not-yet-darling moved circa 1995 to what was called the Silicon Bodega (tech-bubble-fashionista flats/houses in the approx Mission District, though darling worked for AT&T and was looked down upon), cleaning human feces off the front entry foyer was already a regular occurrence. Trash cans couldn't be set out more than minutes before the trucks came, or the streeties would upend them and paw through.
Getting mugged was a regular occurrence. We experienced it ourselves but walked away OK owing to a combination of street smarts and the ability to instantly go more psycho than the attacker. Which is all law-abiding disarmed people in California have at their disposal. And too risky to want to live with on an extended basis.
I don't know what "great neighborhoods" you're referring to. I cannot think of any that didn't have these issues back to and through the '90s and into the '00s when darling's work dispatched us to America's Fjord. Maybe not TomKat's swanky 'hood in Pacific Heights...but we can't all afford Blackwater mercenaries to protect our houses. Even if we could/did, in case of a disaster the "law" would go harder on us than we could afford to dig out from.
From what I hear from those still there, the issues continue, but they ignore it to sustain the fantasy of how very very special SF is. CA utopian thinking.
By the way, your rhetorical characterization of oil rig and marine logistics workers as degenerate is pretty effin obnoxious. And a key part of the bigger problems that plague us all.
California is special. Oh but these people most certainly are not degenerates. Unless they're in from Louisiana, I guess:
https://www.zombietime.com/folsom_sf_2007_part_1/
Chill out bro, I’m not insulting oil derrick or barge workers, far from it. It’s an example, of someone from another part of the country moving to San Francisco for the drugs. Would it make you feel better if I used a Wall Street investment banker as an example? Fine - Bob the banker is the degenerate. Happy? Good. As to your contention about no good neighborhood in the city, you’re simply wrong. The Sunset and Richmond districts are both still solidly middle class neighborhoods. So is Stonestown, and Balboa Park , and Parkmerced. Noe is more upscale but nobody has black water security because the crime is very low. Maybe I got spoiled by living on the peninsula for twenty years but I know the city and the Bay Area very well. Perhaps Oakland always had the problems you mentioned but certainly not Walnut Creek, Pleasanton, Dublin, Danville, Livermore, Palo Alto, Santa Clara, San Bruno, Millbrae … I could go on but you get the idea. You guys wanted to be Mission district hipsters so you had to deal with crazy homeless guys who flung shit at you. I’m not dismissing your experience but you had other options! Deal with the Mission hipster lifestyle. Peace out ✌️
Brilliant coverage, Korp. Thank you.
We began seeing it in the 80s up north in sweet little Olympia, WA. The lovely little state capitol that just couldn’t be bothered to put on big boy pants anymore after The Evergreen State College (now ‘University,’ whatever that means) opened (’72) and the lib arts social justice cohort began colonizing what had been a pretty high functioning town. It began as a weekend wide open retreat for wild west loggers in the late 19th century, but I digress.
Can’t blame the school (loose use of the term), of course, but it didn’t help. Downtown banks now board up their windows whenever some kind of protest is expected and the indigent addict encampments began popping up around the time the free needle enablement program began, blocking sidewalks and giving the dealers easy access to their clients. Cleaning up spent needles was a daily chore along with human waste.
The city council denial was, and probably remains, epic. Some business owners began pushing back by gating off or walling up access to their alcoves (private property) and the city tried to prevent them (fire exit compromise). The brave ones refused to comply.
If you drive through Olympia today, it looks fabulous because a number of gorgeous new high rise apt and condo buildings (Chinese money) have gone up since the aughts, but the real issues persist on the ground.
No longer live there. Loved it once but don’t miss it now.
Spot on! Our daughter lived in the City right out of Uni, so Mid-Covid era. The drug dealers, catalytic converter thieves and homeless, finally found the hilly neighborhood in 2024. We were thrilled when she was laid off and finally moved out of the city!
I’m curious which neighborhood was that? It’s gotten better since mid covid but it’s still not as good as mayor Lurie would have us believe.
What is CRE?
Sorry for the acronym, commercial real estate.
Utah is the most beautiful state.
However, the urban sprawl of Utah is ugly and joyless. I remember what Utah used to be so seeing what it has become greatly saddens me.
Palm trees are especially beautiful when viewed from behind a respirator mask.
Florida is still beautiful in many places. I love that it is green all year round where I live. I do miss the lush, dark green grass of Wisconsin, but I never miss the snow, ice, and below zero cold. I never worry about falling on ice here. Everyone I meet here is friendly.
Instead of handing out needles to homeless druggies, they give out Narcan to anyone who will take it to try to help the overdosed people. In my county there are laws against "tent cities and panhandling." There are laws protecting animals here. No state income taxes here, but the state has a surplus, not a deficit. (That is beautiful to me.) We'll be voting on gradually getting rid of homeowner's taxes soon. We'll actually own our home that we paid for with our hard earned money. Need I say more?
That's all well and good until Hurricane Alley does its thing.
What I miss most about Wisconsin is lake skating at 20 below, and prairie walks in whiteout blizzard with a windchill of minus 80.
Of course I associate all that grass with WORK. :^>
Yes! When your Democrat voting Neighbor's scold you for gardening without a mask! And litter the neighborhood with yard signs to signal to the criminals and their hired help that the are supporters of illegal immigration and letting criminals roam the streets!
When your State Politicians Mandate their phony health laws, yet continually break them for their own convenience. When they tax and fee you to death, yet fail to provide basic services!
And when they are so blatant about their corruption machine that they make laws to jail anyone who dares to expose them!
I feel your pain. You should have seen California in the 1950s and 60s when it was a moderately Republican, low tax state. It truly was heaven on earth. The state where I currently reside is beautiful, but I'm leaving because I have absolutely no say in how I'm governed and taxed and the politicians don't even try to represent me because they hate my guts. The place is a One Party state that's going ultra Blue DSA socialist.
Sometimes I think this country is undergoing a kind of cell division with people moving and clustering with those of like mind. Are you willing to stay where you are and continue to take your lumps? Are California's charms worth it? Or would you rather be around people who are more like you?
As an aside, I read this morning that the chances of the "Big One" have increased dramatically because the San Andreas fault is at the highest stress levels in a thousand years...so there is that. LOL.
ANG Pilot,
You said what I was going to say. I've decided that peaceful separation is the least-worst option going forward, and I believe it's already well underway in a cultural sense. It may take a while for like-minded people to cluster geographically so that separate autonomous regions can be formed, politically, but I think it will happen.
Interesting you use the cell-division metaphor. For a couple of years now, I've been recalling a couple of pages in my high school biology textbook that described rather dramatically in words and pictures, how a cell divides, and one thing that struck me as a parallel was the fact that long before you see the nucleus split and the cell wall actually divide, there are lots of subtle things going on inside. I think we're at that "subtle things" stage in the U.S. now.
As for Chris leaving California, or at least the coast, I suppose this has to be a tough decision for a native Californian. It's such a beautiful place.
Mitosis now!
I like it as a political slogan
The probable result would be aneuploidy in the Blue state side of the division.
LOL.
Partion the US!
> You should have seen California in the 1950s and 60s when it was a moderately Republican, low tax state. It truly was heaven on earth.
Was it though?
You're overlooking the matrix of often criminal interests that, e.g., built Hetch Hetchy, or Eaton and Mulholland stealing the Owens Valley's water, or the literal organized crime behind CA's ports, or don't even get me started on the power grid and the railroads.
And howabout Pincus Rothberg using the sea off LA as a dumping ground for his massive DDT manufacturing facility, Montrose Chemical--never mind all the Superfund sites he created?
California is ALWAYS "heaven on earth" to people who can look past any period's particular horrors.
Why should today be any different?
A little kid like me knew nothing of that that which you speak. None of it affected me. Up until the time I left California to go into the military it was a great place to live. When I came back, it wasn't.
YMMV and you can speak for yourself, but my opinion is based on my personal experience.
We live in VERY CONSERVATIVE NE California, where it has all 4 seasons, yes, even snow! BUT, we are feeling the pain of the horrible legislation even in our small community (i.e. hidden gas taxes raising our prices by almost $2 a gallon, etc.). It's absolutely beautiful here right now, so that would be tough to leave. We've talked about moving to a red state, but all of our kids and grands live here so far. Things may change in the next 5 years or so (at least one is seriously talking about leaving), so we may follow. I do not blame anyone who leaves. I'm a lifelong Californian and it was once a wonderful state to live in. It is so discouraging.
Watch out for red states, Cindi! There are blue bubbles out there.
We moved to AZ a short while ago and I was ready to be relieved after many years in the beautiful but ulta-progressive NW. I expected common sense but, no. We’re in a pocket of rock-ribbed Dems. TDS is rampant, ICE is despised (even though border patrol is essential over here) and old ladies keep themselves relevant via no-kings rallies.
The Left went off the rails for me about seven years ago. I tried to remain centrist, but these delusional crazies have driven me to the other side.
Take care.
Are you in Pima Co.? Or Coconino? Just wondering. Maricopa Co certainly has its pockets too.
Cochise.
Bisbee is as blue as it gets.
I guess it can be traced back to the 70s when the mine closed, everybody left, real estate tanked and CA hippies could buy nice old houses on the cheap. So the downstream 50 years on is lib, artsy and alternative. That would be fine, but these days a whole lot of crazy has come into the mix via the permissive vibe.
Only been here about three years. People are nice if you stick to safe topics. The sticker shock is wearing off but the PTSD from the progressive excesses of the NW isn’t and finding the same delusions here is depressing.
Thanks for the advice Linda! Maybe we will just keep AZ our winter base.
Sounds like the classical problems of introducing democracy, in some form or other, to African nations back in the day.
Every tribe that could, would cheat, lie and steal (and worse!) to "win" the elections, in order to put their own tribe -clan-family into as many positions of power as possible, and then milk & bilk the system for as much as they could, for as long as they could (inc. using legislature, military, police and mercenary death squads against opponents).
Our professors gave three possible avenues of "solving this problem":
A) Keep pouring money into it, hoping and trying to uplift the natives into modern civilised people, imposing on them the value-systems necessary for any kind of democracy to function
B) Leave, and leave the natives to do native stuff in their native ways, only safeguarding the investments done in resource extraction/production via military in some shape
C) Roll in with a full-scale occupation force and impose a colonial military rule pro tem/indefinitely
...
I'm still looking for the D)-solution that doesn't offend, isn't racist, respects different cultures and makes people better themselves voluntary. I'll tell you if I ever find oine.
Democracy only works in the context of shared cultural values. In the West, that culture is (or was) the Judeo-Christian ethic. The reason why America has been so successful over 250 years is that the ideals in the founding documents, including Federalism, but mainly the idea of equal rights and equal justice have allowed prosperity to thrive. In that environment, democracy is tweaking the dials on the concert sound mixer - turn up the violins a little. It's not setting fire to the auditorium.
You don't need democracy at first. You need a constitution with equal justice regardless of skin color. Basic laws like innocent until proven guilty, habeas corpus, but also, and fundamentally closing the door on the past. That's the hardest part. Peace only comes when ancient feuds are set aside, voluntarily, as children of warring factions vow not to resume the prejudices that their forefathers had. Acts 17. Paul in Athens states that we are all of one blood. It begins there,
I don't believe you can arrive at this organically without prolonged wars, which is what happened over 1500 years in Europe to produce some measure of democracy.
So that's not the answer.
Maybe a better colonialism is the answer, except without the slavery, racism and theft that the Europeans brought. A kind of benign overlordship? Not democracy, but a fair judicial system.
‘…shared cultural values.’ Exactly, Simon.
Until about fifteen minute ago, we thought we had that.
We became lazy after WWII and stopped paying attention. Education, as in a demand for proficiency in basic intellectual survival skills, and Decency, as in demanding that we behave as functioning members of a healthy society, became obsolete, outmoded and demeaned. Individual freedom is supreme. This permissive and lax malaise allowed destructive forces implemented by cynical and self-serving people to break what was working, and generate chaos to serve their purposes.
We are left with the wreckage and an assortment of hostile interest groups clawing at each other for power over this or that scrap. We continue to function as a national entity only because there is still money to be made.
250 years is a very short time in the history of civilizations. Cultures that had survived for thousands of years and were then overrun by conquering hordes have been long forgotten.
What is strange about us is that we seem to have been convinced that we must surrender our enterprise to the barbarians and even fund their triumph.
> Sounds like the classical problems of introducing democracy, in some form or other, to African nations back in the day.
Absolutely
But good luck discussing that with "progs" and evangelicals.
You can't have a "non-racist" solution where racial demographics is a key part of the problem. People are not identical, fungible, hot-swappable entities. They're different because of stuff that happened among their ancestors long before they were born.
The only D) I see is the one involving nuking it from space to be sure, but I can't say I want to live downstream from that. I like birds.
But it seems noteworthy that in the middle of your intelligent and thoughtful perspective you felt you had to signal about being "not racist." "Racist" is a brainworm engineered to inculcate doubt, hesitation, guilt, and acceptance of self destruction. It has been deployed my entire life and has ripped through society like nothing else I've witnessed. There is nothing "negative" about functional people wanting to live among each other and keep the nonfunctional out. But that idea has been so demonized, so systematically, that the only option people have is to lie about what they're doing when they quietly do whatever it takes not to have to live around, and be destroyed/parasitized by, "diversity."
To clarify, I mean the classical definition/usage of racism, not the post-WW2 political one. The modern meaning is simply a postmodern semantic power-play, nothing else.
Brilliant as always!
The barbarians at the gate, in the citadel, occupying the institutions, on the governing boards, running the tables, controlling the money flows, managing the borders, administrating the schools, presiding over the religions, inhabiting the judiciary. The invasion is near complete, it's just not been announced. Time is running out.
That's exactly the problem. My husband says, when I point out a particular injustice, "they should put X in jail!" Well sure. But X's are all over the place in every bureaucratic and institutional role. US & State gov is what % of the entire GDP? Who is going to put them ALL in jail? Who is going to prosecute ALL of them? Who is going to arrest them?
The invasion IS complete. The schools in California would be closed without Hispanic kids.
Give it 20 more years for the white baby Boomers to die and California is Reconquested.
CHIRLA is an unabashed, unashamed cabal using the features of our immigration system to actively undermine our government and society. It’s an evil operation that is openly intent on dismantling and destroying our existing government. It’s like an autoimmune disorder that destroys its host.
Mark, and China must be rolling with laughter how not a soldier lost.
Can’t wait for the answer.
We’ve faced our own dilemma over the past year or two. It’s been quite interesting as we’ve looked at different places to live in about a dozen states.
We are getting ready to move off of our sailboat this fall after 15 years of living aboard and being full time nomads.
We could go and live anywhere really. But after much reflection and exploration, we have decided to return to our roots, at least for now. Plus doing so will allow us to keep our boat for a few more years, just in case we need or want to escape again.
So we are headed back to Michigan. To a rural county, with one decent size city and no other city over 1000 people. It’s a mostly red county in a purple state. We managed to find a condo to rent, 2BR 2BA with a huge garage. Its located 8 miles outside the city, in the middle of farm country. Our view out the back is a cornfield and a barn.
It’s $1800 per month. Snow removal, lawn care, trash pickup, and water included.
Try that in CA.
It’s just 13 miles from the place we have called our ‘home port’ for 40 years, so we can still use our boat in the summer and put it in a heated building in the winter.
And yeah, we aren’t looking forward to winter. But we survived it for 55 years before we left, so I’m sure it will be fine.
We won’t move in until September. But we are already working on the place. The landlord is awesome.
And the local farmers market has 100 vendors and 75% of what we have consumed in the month we’ve been back in MI has come from there.
Our current view (subject to change after our first winter) is that there are some amazing and reasonably affordable bolt holes still available if you do your homework and have some flexibility.
Good luck!
Watch out for Michigan.
michigan is a lot like cali, huh? more beautiful the further north you go, but witmer and learing center cartels and death houses for hospitals
Yes nymusicdaily, and the next governor is not much better . The Witchmer has her eyes on the White House too.
BNYB how do you say "after me the deluge" in arabic?
Ugghhhh
the new one is even worse than you think https://ballotpedia.org/Jocelyn_Benson
Benson hubby is even worse
prison planet here we come https://michiganadvance.com/2025/11/14/bensons-husband-to-recuse-from-state-work-on-controversial-data-center-if-she-is-elected-governor/
🤬… remember The Witchmer outed herself…. Hot mic moment on data centers in Michigan. Here we go again , follow the money … cause Michigan is surrounded by water .
Last I checked Marquette County on the UP is still hard blue. Has been for a good 30 years now.
Largest employer in the county is Michigan State's medical center.
Now whether those elections are "real" or not, who knows. We know the connections between Whitmer and her spook/Pharma daddy.
Yeah. We know that after living and working in MI for 55 years. But as I said, red rural county, center north, surrounded by farms, close to Lake Huron. And if it doesn’t work out we can leave.
Ahhh the thumb and northern Michigan!!you will like it , I’m a little south 🤗
Boats in Bay City.
All the best to you and yours !
On the positive side at lest California doesn't seem to have simply allowed at least one percent of its teen age girls to be raped every year for the last 35+.
https://substack.com/@francisturner/note/c-277728074
Let’s not give them ideas…..
Allow?? They encourage girls and boys to whore themselves, no need to go through the effort of rape.
I took similar stock of California four years ago after living there for more than 30 years. Was it worth it to stay? The kids were in college and grad school, and our formerly safe haven in Malibu was no longer safe or haven-esque (shout out to the tweakers in the Ralph’s parking lot and the homeless setting fires behind Bluffs Park!). The short answer? We moved. Fled, more like it. Our new state isn’t perfect, but it’s clean and beautiful and safe, and there’s no greasy, doubletalking governor scolding us about our wrongthink on the daily. The calculus was simple, really. Moving sucks, but staying sucks more. Best of luck with your deliberations.
Standin' on a hill in my mountain of dreams
Tellin' myself it's not as hard, hard, hard as it seems
One of, if not THE best of LZ!
Friend, that was my very first thought when I read Chris's head and subhead.
Mandolin and everything.
Right?!?! He had to have known that, thought that, put it out there knowing somebody would pick it up and run with it!
Both parties sold out their fellow citizens, with our own money.
Have fun, the state is huge and there are still some very quiet places out there.
Can’t be turned around, Chris. Hike your way out of there. Plan on coming back later on, with backup.
I’ll be waiting for Mondays answer. And sitting on the next question… is there less corruption any where else ?
TN, but people already found that out, so TN has seen massive number of families moving in. There is no job openings to support that .....
" Texas, Florida, North Carolina, Tennessee, South Carolina, and Georgia lead all states in attracting new residents through combinations of affordable housing, strong job markets, favorable tax structures, and quality of life factors..."
https://coastalmovingservices.com/city-state-guides/states-ranked-by-people-moving-to/
True….but many are bringing their disgusting voting habits with them.
Hopefully and most likely conservative people are trying to move away from iffy blue States ?
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2026/02/the_blue_states_doom_loop.html
Crime is Making Americans Flee Democratic States
https://www.newsweek.com/why-americans-are-fleeing-democratic-states-1795292
FL too. DeSantis is trying to cancel the state real estate tax since the state is over funded. Imagine that in CA!
Agree that Florida is probably best EXCEPT for the gators , bugs, hurricanes and crappy weather. 🤷♀️
Well, there’s that …
Glad you are thinking of leaving, Chris. There is no fixing this... not at this scale.
Myself, I find your articles about the decline and the squalor riveting. Real reporting from the ground up. Much appreciated.
Agree, but I also think I detect a thread of optimism behind his unsparing analysis of what's happening. Chris: even if California (and America as a whole) is lost, I think it would be great if in your travels you'd chronicle the people and places where the better parts of our civilization seem to be enduring. It would be encouraging for us as we contemplate what is to come.
Leave, it seems to have been conquered.