Thread by @BusterUSMC

**The Fall of California**
The “Golden State” Goes Brown.

1. California isn’t just a place, but a dream.

2. In the American mythos, California represented the end of the journey, the land where the dispossessed & forgotten could start again, where “Okies” who fled the Depression searched for relief & veterans of the WWII discovered a middle-class paradise.

3. And what’s most incredible is that, for a time, that is exactly what California, USA was for so many American Citizens.

4. Today, white Californians are fleeing, & the Golden State is becoming demographically, culturally, and economically is quickly looking more like a Third World country.

4. The California dream can only be spoken of in the past tense.
And the fall of California is a grim prophecy of how paradise can be lost, & how those who have everything can be short-sighted enough to give it all away.

5. It seems impossible to believe now, but California was, until recently, an ideal state for middle-class families.

After the end of the Second World War, California meant “the good life” in the minds of Americans.

6. “Thanks to wartime &Cold War defense spending, a flourishing consumer economy, & seemingly ever-expanding tax base, the state was at the forefront of the single greatest rise in prosperity in American history”
theatlantic.com/magazine/archi… Kevin Starr’s Americans & California Dream.

7. High wages not only sustained a thriving middle class but meant the govt could invest in public institutions all its residents could enjoy.

8. Mr. Starr’s multi-volume history defines the “California Dream” as
“the highest possible life for the middle classes,” in a state where ordinary ppl enjoyed well-maintained public services, quality schools, their own homes, & ever-increasing wages. amazon.com/Americans-Cali…

9. It’s hard to imagine LA as a white city, let alone a middle-class city.
Yet even such iconic examples of urban dystopia such as Compton once hosted California Dreamers.
davestravelcorner.com/journals/desti…

10. For a short time, the Bush family (including future presidents George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush) lived in Compton. gizmodo.com/when-george-bu…

11. In L.A. City Limits: African American Los Angeles from the Great Depression to the Present, Josh Sides describes Compton as a city that “offered its predominantly blue-collar residents affordable homes in the heart of a thriving industrial center.”
muse.jhu.edu/article/172853

12. Of course, as you would expect a book about African-American life to note, segregation & restrictive housing covenants protected this middle-class paradise. kcet.org/history-societ… scribd.com/document/14680…

13. That paradise is gone. “The San Fernando Valley was once America’s suburb, the nation’s most firmly rooted bastion of families holding jobs sufficient to pay for homes, cars, leisure and college tuition,” noted Beth Barrett in the LA Weekly in 2009. laweekly.com/news/middle-cl…

14. Yet now the Valley is, as she puts it, “the poster child for middle-class flight.” In 1970, more than 60% of residents could afford both an average priced house as well as the costs of a college education.

15. By 2007, fewer than half could.
Perhaps not coincidentally, more than 40% of Valley residents in 2007 were born "outside the country."

16. What is true for the Valley is also true for the state more broadly.
Fox News reports California’s housing situation is “broken:” foxnews.com/us/2017/12/14/…

17. Seventy-five percent of Southern Californians can’t afford a home, & 16 of the top 25 "least affordable American communities" are in California.

18. A majority of state voters report they may have to relocate because of housing costs, with 25% saying they plan to leave the state.
ppic.org/content/pubs/j…
House prices in California are twice the national average.
Today, few speak of the middle-class “California Dream.”

19. Everyone has heard of the progressive politics of the nation’s “Left Coast,”
but when cost-of-living is considered, California has the HIGHEST poverty rate in the nation. politifact.com/california/sta…

20. The Los Angeles Times recently profiled a number of former residents, including professional left-wing “community organizers,” who have fled California for more affordable housing in Las Vegas. latimes.com/local/californ…

21. As author Steve Lopez observed, these Golden State expatriates are not leaving to look for work or higher wages, but to find a place to live.

22. According to North American Moving Service’s annual report, California was one of America’s top five outbound states for the first time in 2017, with
40% inbound moves
vs.
60% outbound moves.
aei.org/publication/am…

23. And those people who are still moving to California are no longer Americans; the state’s new residents are increasingly foreigners. unz.com/isteve/the-big…

24. The Bay Area has been especially hard hit.
The number of people moving out is now at its highest level in more than a decade, according to local press reports. sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2018/02/08/san…

25. Rent increased an average of 40% in just 2 yrs from 2015 to 2017 in Oakland, San Francisco, & San Jose. mercurynews.com/2018/02/18/the…

26. According to the Bay Area Council, a public policy advocacy organization, 40% of the population wants to leave, & they cite cost of living, traffic, housing, & homelessness as the top four problems. sf.curbed.com/2017/3/31/1514…

27. There are already reports of violent confrontations between residents and groups of homeless. One resident circulated a letter in a homeless camp saying, “We are sick of watching you leave needles in the park and stealing.” kron4.com/news/homeless-…

28. A recent investigation from NBC Bay Area found squalor and filth in downtown San Francisco which drew comparisons to:
“...some of the worst slums in the world....”
nbcbayarea.com/news/local/Dis…

29. This does NOT mean California is a "POOR STATE"
motherjones.com/kevin-drum/201…
California’s "per capita income" has actually increased in recent years and the state’s iconic tech companies are still powering economic growth.

30. Yet much of the wealth is going only to top income earners. The median Californian family is barely making more money than it did in 1980, and the bottom 20% of earners are doing worse. dailynews.com/2018/02/15/has…

31. Because housing costs are so high,
it’s far more difficult for the "typical Californian" to remain middle class.

32. The result is “white flight” on a statewide scale.

Half a million white Californians left the state from 2000 -2008, while the state’s population grew overall.
Whites were 48% of the population in 2000,
but only 40% in 2008.
sfgate.com/news/article/W…

33. Hispanics were 32% in 2000 but 37% in 2008.
On July 1, 2014, Hispanics became the largest racial group in the state.
They are projected to become the MAJORITY by 2060. theguardian.com/us-news/2015/j…

34. Facing a high cost of living, a majority-minority population, and crumbling cities, many whites are relocating to areas that are moral rural and white—the way California used to be.

35. Acc to Vox, while only a minority of whites openly state they're looking for a whitecommunity (at least not to jrnlsts or academics) resrch shws they're highly conscious of race when choosing where to live: They seek out places that are majority white. vox.com/2017/1/18/1429…

36. Not all whites have fled; an influx of tech wrkers to San Francisco has radically changed that city, often to the frustration of liberal residents who, although they don’t frame it this way, are opposed to cultural transformation when whites bring it. newsweek.com/2014/04/25/tec…

37. They are said to carry "the plague"
known as
“gentrification.”
cbsnews.com/news/anti-tech…

38. A particular type of 'white person' is fleeing California.
According to the Mercury News:
“The largest group of out-migrants tends to be 'middle-aged people making btwn $100,000 & $200,000 annually'
mercurynews.com/2017/04/24/lea…

39. . . . [those who] constitute the solid middle ranks critical to any healthy economy.” And it is those people
—those who don’t want live in California’s squalid, expensive cities & who want to own their own homes—
..who have no future in the Golden State.

40. Urban theorist Constance Perin, quoted in Starr’s Golden Dreams: California in an Age of Abundance, believes home ownership reinforces racial identity & conservative social mores. ...

41. It was thus crucially important not just to California’s economic structure during its postwar golden years, but to its social structure.

42. Summarizing Miss Perin’s views, Mr. Starr writes:
"Middle-class Americans preferred to live among their own kind of people: people, that is, who looked like they looked, earned what they earned, had been raised the same way they had been raised, ...

43. "...and generally shared the same philosophy of life.
Home ownership
—especially on the mass scale practiced in the new California developments—
ensured such a willful segregation.
Families voluntarily came to these places to be with their own kind."

44. Now Californians are trying to recreate this in other states.
NPR noticed that at least some out-migrants are deliberately seeking out conservative areas such as Idaho. npr.org/2017/02/14/512…

45. Race is also a factor, as many are explicitly looking for white areas.
As one frustrated & lonely Democrat from Coeur d’ Alene complained,

“We’re very, very white up here .. it’s very dull.”
That kind of "dullness" is exactly what many former Californians yearn for.

46. In the interior of the state, where housing is somewhat more affordable, there is less outward migration.

47. However, there's an attempt at political escape, as activists are trying to create the state of “New California,” which would include everything except the southern coastline and the cities of Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Sacramento. usatoday.com/story/news/nat…

48. Such a political escape is necessary because California is on the brink of becoming a one-party state. Independents are likely soon to outnumber Republicans. latimes.com/politics/la-po…

49. In the upcoming gubernatorial election, the Republican candidate will NOT even survive the primary, since California has a jungle primary in which the top 2candidates, regardless of party, are on the general election ballot. politico.com/story/2018/02/…

50. California Democrats are competing to be the most anti-Trump candidate & use opposition to the president as a springboard to national office.
washingtonpost.com

51. 51. California has all but seceded from the Union when it comes to immigration policy, with its Attorney General vowing to prosecute employers that help federal law enforcement find illegal immigrants. dailycaller.com/2018/01/19/cal…

52. This is extraordinary, considering California’s earlier reputation as NOT just a conservative state, but practically the BIRTHPLACE of the conservative movement. Orange County was a stronghold of the John Birch Society. articles.latimes.com/1998/apr/27/ne…

53. California launched the careers of Richard Nixon & Ronald Reagan.
But NO Republican presidential candidate has won the state since George H.W. Bush in 1988, and it is doubtful any Republican ever will again.

54. Yet it’s too simplistic to say "white voters" have been overwhelmed by non-white immigrants.
Hillary Clinton won the white vote in California.
What happened is 800,000 working-class Californians left for other states btwn 2005 & 2015. (rplcd by abt 1,000,000 ILLEGAL Voters)

55. . As The American Interest notes, while Hispanic workers who fled were replaced by new Hispanic immigrants, white workers who fled were not.

The whites who remain are either the urban upper class or those who are trying to be & are predisposed to cultural liberalism.

56. What middle-class jobs remain, are mainly in the public sector, (taxpayer funded of course) & they are "a unionized contingent" of which is solidly Democratic & far oversized by national standards. nationalaffairs.com/publications/d…

57. California’s burgeoning minorities are of course automatically hostile to Republicans.
As Troy Senik put it in National Review,
“California is a state that owes its regnant liberalism to a political alliance btwn the super-rich & the super-poor.”
nationalreview.com/2014/02/land-i…

58. And as it is the super-rich who actually wield political power, Ca is governed by what some have called “gentry liberals” described by Mr Senik as “a left-wing governing caste whose public-policy predilections owe more to considerations of taste than of economic necessity.”

59. A demand for more govt unites these constituencies, but they share few institutions such as schools or community groups.

The ONLY time the different elements of the Democratic coalition actually meet is at a Democratic convention, NOT in normal social interactions.

60. The real question is:
"What changed California from a conservative middle-class paradise into an unruly conglomeration of wealthy liberals ruling over teeming, poverty-stricken non-white masses?

61. In an article outlining the problems facing the “California Dream,” the LA Daily News admits the state has the “highest rates for poverty & income inequality [&] govt resources are stretched thin.”

62. But, the article concludes,
“The news isn’t all bad .....[we’re] much more diverse!”
dailynews.com/2018/02/16/by-…

63. It’s not just that mass immigration is straining local infrastructure, increasing demand on housing, & bringing crime, disease & cultural conflict.
It’s that diversity CAUSED much of this collapse to begin with.

The “Ca. Dream” began to break down... as demographics changed.

64. Mass immigration, & the wholesale transformation of entire cities from all white to "all-Hispanic" within only a few decades is only the most obvious example. amren.com/news/2008/05/c…

65. Public policy also accelerated the decline.
As in in the rest of the country, the push to desegregate public schools & other institutions had disastrous consequences, even before California’s demographics were transformed by immigration. amren.com/news/2008/05/c…

66. In 1978, Los Angeles began a busing program to enforce desegregation, sometimes forcing children to attend schools more than an hour from where they lived.

67. Not surprisingly, it practically destroyed the school system, as white parents pulled their children out. The public-school system has never recovered. jewishjournal.com/cover_story/74…

68. Looking for an explanation of California’s decline, progressives point to what they claim is the destructive impact of 1978’s Proposition 13, which imposed stringent limits on property taxes.

69. They claim this prevented necessary investments in public infrastructure, but even this was partially driven by diversity.

70. As Peter Schrag, author of 'Paradise Lost: California’s Experience, America’s Future' points out, the revolt against government spending “occurred precisely during the period when the state was undergoing those demographic changes:
archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.co…

71. " ...from a society that thought of itself (&in many ways was) overwhelmingly white & middle class which whites will soon be just another minority & Hispanics, Asians & blacks already constitute a sizeable majority in school & in the use of many other public services.”

72. This shouldn’t be surprising.
Research into the “progressive’s dilemma” shows diversity tends 2undermine support 4public welfare programs & investment, since taxpayers are less likely to support payments to ppl who are far different fr themselves. journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.11…

73. With the end of “restrictive covenants” in 1948 & the implementation of the Fair Housing Law in 1968, the tactics that preserved white neighborhoods such as the Compton of the Bush era were undermined.
amren.com/news/2012/09/t…

74. Ca’s white txpyrs stopped having as great a stake in parks, neighborhds, & schls that were once the pride of the state.
Political action became focused on how 2protect property &wealth from non-white dependents & how best 2escape fr crumbling, desegregated public institutions

75. Yet the deathblow to white, middle-class California was the reversal of Proposition 187, which would have barred illegals from public schools & welfare & would have allowed police to question arrested suspects about their immigration status.

76. While it wouldn’t have restored the golden age, Proposition 187, if implemented, could have prevented California from becoming an outright Hispanic state. amren.com/news/2012/03/c…

77. The mainstream media now tell the story of Prop 187 as a cautionary tale, as the reason non-whites abandoned the GOP. dailycaller.com/2018/01/22/pro…
Yet this measure, which saved political career of Gov Pete Wilson, won maj supprt not just fr white Californians but Asian & blacks.

78. Unfortunately, after a lawsuit from the American Civil Liberties Union & the Mexican American Legal Defense & Education Fund, a judge threw out Proposition 187.

79. Governor Wilson was forced out of office by term limits, & his successor, Governor Gray Davis, REFUSED to appeal.
amren.com/archives/back-…
Governor Davis’s political career ended in a humiliating recall.

80. There is some hope that “New California” could retain something of the old California, & the state is so unwieldy & populous that breaking it up wld probably be best for all of its regions & peoples.

But that is only an attempt to salvage what is left.

81.The impending departure of Peter Thiel from Silicon Valley suggests some of California’s elite may know the situation is unsustainable & are making escape plans. wsj.com/articles/like-…

82. The American middle-class paradise is now a society on the Latin American model, with elites enjoying cheap labor, gated communities, & a privileged existence, lording it over the 21st century’s equivalent of landless peasants.

83. The fact that much of this later group is non-white, BROKE THE LAW TO ENTER to enter this country, & have deep-seated grievances agnst the European-American population suggests ...

84. ...there is almost no possibility of rebuilding the spirit of civic solidarity needed for California to solve its social problems. amren.com/news/2017/09/h…

85. That spirit was a creation of the white population that conquered, settled, & built the state but is being driven out by desegregation & ILLEGAL mass immigration.

86. The lesson of California is that 'racial solidarity' is essential to building a prosperous society that offers real benefits to ordinary workers & middle-class families.

87. Absent white racial identity, community dies, institutions break down, infrastructure crumbles, it becomes too expensive to form families, & elites exploit cheap labor while isolating themselves from its consequences.
telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews…

88. When California was a white state it was truly the Golden State for middle-class America, the exemplar of our country’s bright future.

89. Now, the state is a WARNING of a what a Third World America will look like
—and serves as a challenge to white advocates to keep the rest of our country from sharing California’s fate. borgenproject.org/californian-re…

~End.