Victor Davis Hanson
American Greatness
While the media and the new Democrat Party grow hysterical over the Trump counter-revolution, they are missing some of the most revolutionary and insidious changes in American society of the last century.
Much has been written about the collapse of the old orthodox Democratic Party, along with the growing irrelevance and dysfunction of the legacy media, elite universities, and state and federal agencies. But their growing unattractiveness is all related and was not just the result of top-down development.
Rather, current Democrat Party radicalism, street theater, and violence were merely reflections of its own preexisting cultural antipathy toward the middle class. The party is now a pyramidal coalition of the very wealthy and professional classes comprising the capstone, resting atop a vast, expanding bottom of the subsidized and working poor, strapped pensioners and retirees, angry indebted students, 30s-something urban wannabees, impoverished immigrants—including perhaps 30 million here illegally—and, increasingly, trapped residents of a dystopian big-city America.
The collapse of the blue-state/blue-city model and those who work within and promote it reflects the radical environmentalism of the college-educated, as well as an array of high taxes, high crime, endless government regulations, housing shortages, massive homelessness, illegal immigration, critical-legal-theory prosecutors, ethnic and racial chauvinism, defund-the-police city councils, and, most importantly, chronic budget deficits and vast, unfunded pension liabilities and obligations.
In response to this progressive implosion that accounts for Democrat Party unpopularity, under the radar are historic demographic shifts. They reflect two insidious phenomena.
One, the blue-state, urban/professional/college-educated profile has become antithetical to fertility.
No one knows exactly the contributory relative roles to childlessness played by the progressive embrace of abortion on demand or secularism and atheism. Certainly, the fixations on higher education certification, massive student loan debt, years of student limbo, prohibitive housing prices, and a cultural value system that places status, titles, careers, and degrees over children all further promote a declining birthrate.
But in the end, the cause of asymmetrical fertility does not matter: red-state, traditional populations are simply growing, while blue-state fertility remains stagnant.
Second, we are witnessing the greatest internal migration in U.S. history since the post-Civil War era. Millions are leaving California, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Illinois, and other northern blue states. And they usually head to Florida, Texas, Tennessee, South Carolina, and other red, low- or no-tax states. So large have become the dislocations that conservative red states will in the next decade grab some 10-12 congressional seats away from liberal blue states along with some 10 or so votes in the electoral college.
The trends are not static but occurring at a geometric rate. The upper-middle and professional classes head to states with perceived lower crime, lower taxes, fewer regulations, better schools, and more affordable housing. Meanwhile, those left in blue states to pay the tab for the subsidized poor and expanding social welfare overhead shrink. For these remaining, the burdens per capita surge—in turn feeding even more exoduses.
We also may be witnessing soon the de facto implosion of a once affluent California—its growing poverty already visible in its decaying roads and infrastructure, dangerous and substandard public schools, soaring property crime, overcrowded, dysfunctional, and dangerous health care system, ethnic fragmentation, and the general bankruptcy and medievalism of San Francisco and Los Angeles.
Those left to pay for its escalating social welfare costs and debt service are beginning to lament that the advantages of the state’s climate, beauty, and once upbeat culture are no longer worth the downsides of its costs: big-city homelessness, decayed infrastructure, incompetent government workforce, crime, and general social dystopia.
In California, 50 percent of all births are now paid for by Medi-Cal, which serves 40 percent of the state. And yet the health welfare system is flat broke, nearing $7 billion in the red. California has the highest taxes in the nation at 13.3 percent (plus an additional millionaire’s tax). Its sales and gas taxes are also among the nation’s steepest, while utilities charge the highest gas and electricity rates in the continental U.S.
These disequilibria are increasingly unsustainable.
One percent of Californians pay well over 50 percent of the state’s income taxes—and is leaving in droves. Power is exorbitant, in part due to inefficient solar/wind/green mandates, restrictions on oil, natural gas, nuclear energy, and new hydroelectric production.
In addition, some 4 million—or nearly 25 percent of utility users—simply no longer pay their monthly power bills and are yet usually not subject to cutoffs of power. They in turn must be subsidized by a shrinking number whose rates climb almost yearly.
There are two general rules of California’s liberal, uni-party politics that symbolize the collapsing blue-state model: all know that the open borders and the generous welfare subsidies of the state explain why half the nation’s illegal immigrants flocked to California, almost all in need of massive government aid.
And two, given the political demographics of a minority/majority state, it is political suicide to associate that 50-year massive influx with vast unfunded social service liabilities, poorer schools, rising crime, and the creation of an all-powerful ultra-left-wing government.
The California model addresses inequality not by insisting on legal-only immigration, rapid assimilation, integration, and acculturation of immigrants. It does not acculturate by back-to-basics K-12 schooling to ensure an emerging younger workforce competent in oral and written English, math, and civic education.
Instead, any resulting disequilibria brought about by the sudden vast influx of some of the world’s poorest is explained by systemic racism and unearned “privilege”—and thus to be remedied by DEI therapeutics. Rather than fighting the left to acculturate 27 percent of the resident population that is foreign-born and prepping them to help run a once sophisticated and complex state government, each year hundreds of thousands of exasperated Californians just flee.
Moreover, California is thought to have one of the largest underground economies of the 50 states, likely reflecting that its huge foreign-born and mostly poorer population is struggling economically. In the Central Valley, it is not unusual to see thousands of residents shopping at vast weekend swap meets, eating regularly at local, ad hoc roadside canteens, and buying everything from flowers to bicycles from entrepreneurial vendors that dot almost every busy rural crossroads. Most of these exchanges are not recorded for either sales or income tax purposes and pose a huge loss of revenue for the state.
Another blue-state pathology is the asymmetrical application of the laws. And California again reflects this trend of being the most overregulated and underregulated, the most lawful and lawless state in the nation. Its upper-class coastal elite insists upon the nation’s strictest zoning and green regulations. (Gavin Newsom used the voter-approved multibillion-dollar water construction bond not to build a single reservoir as mandated, but rather to blow up four existing dams and lakes.)
The result makes it almost impossible to build new power plants, housing developments, freeways, dams, reservoirs, aqueducts, or even to either finish or quit the monstrous high-speed rail, multibillion-dollar boondoggle.
Half the state, mostly its poorer and immigrant population, largely seeks to bypass these cumbersome regulations. It is almost impossible to travel through the state’s interior and not see single-family homes with surrounding shacks, trailers, and lean-tos with substandard, illegal wiring, plumbing, and sanitation. Semi-rural homesteads that traditionally housed one family may now include four or five.
The regulatory agencies of the state exempt the poor from their massive violations of housing and building codes. They compensate for their dereliction by redirecting their energies instead to auditing the shrinking number who follow the laws and will pay fines if cited—yet another reason why the more affluent flee California.
I once asked a building inspector who arrived to certify an upgraded solar breaker box whether he was aware that a mere half-mile away, twenty or so people were living in what was once a single-house compound. Sagging Romex wire without conduit was visibly strung to a number of parked trailers, all without toilet facilities. When I asked him why not venture into that complex, he flashed, “I’m not crazy, sir.”
The result is a growing cynicism in California, as in all the blue states. Left-controlled city councils, state legislatures, universities, and executive agencies promote the narrative that the wealthy are greedy, selfish, and ‘don’t pay their fair share.’ The problem with that strategy of blame-gaming the more successful is that it is starting to run out of the more successful. As revenue shrinks and deficits climb, shouting at the increasingly diminishing upper-middle class only makes them more resentful and determined to leave.
In the current conundrum, we have forgotten completely the old themes of a blue-state Democrat Party. The 1996 Democratic National Convention manifesto that spearheaded Bill Clinton’s successful reelection emphasized secure borders, legal-only immigration, tough crime enforcement and punishment, balanced budgets, fiscal responsibility, and “personal accountability.” That agenda today in California would condemn any adherent as a racist, xenophobe, or MAGA fanatic.
In its place, the party became more intolerant, narrower in its cultural emphases, and uninterested in existential crises such as housing, secure borders, power generation, infrastructure, and crime. Without answers or correctives to the damage it inflicted, it instead focused on what was largely seen as irrelevant to the state’s struggling minority populations—LGBT advocacies, transgendered men competing in women’s sports, racial reparations, DEI-mandated programs, and boutique environmentalism.
The result may be that Californians no longer really believe there is a political solution to their crises and fleeing is becoming the only viable option—for those who can afford or are willing to move. Those left are inured to their dogmas that “they”—the allegedly culpable and greedy—will always remain so rich, so selfish, and so always a part of California, California that the government income streams will remain limitless to fund redistribution.
The only mystery is whether other blue states following California’s disastrous lead will pause and pivot, or are also already too far gone to make the necessary adjustments.
In addition, the growing dysfunction and irrelevance of the mainstream media—from network news to the old print conglomerates—of elite universities and of the federal government itself are, in part, due to their location in and symbiosis with the dead-end, blue-state model of culture, economics, and politics.
In sum, America is entering a historic reversal.
The old traditional impoverished South is becoming the engine of American prosperity. The Northern Midwest, the Northeast, and the West Coast—for a century the font of American dynamism—have become stagnant and inert, and are shrinking.
These blue loci survive for a while longer on the fumes of the work of past generations who operated under completely different assumptions and models antithetical to those of the present—and thus are regularly damned by those who squandered their once-rich inheritance.
As native Californians who lived in Southern California, each year my wife and I didn’t think the state could get any stupider or weirder, however, it just kept getting stupider and weirder! We, like many other upper-middle class folks, simply got tired of having to live under the yoke of woke idiotic rules, regulations, and taxes, along with poverty, homelessness, and crime associated with the liberal super majority that created the dysfunctional policies plaguing the once great state. Eight years ago after spending a week outside of Boise Idaho we decided enough was enough and pulled the plug on California. We never looked back and couldn’t be happier! Come join us Dr. Hanson….you can farm a lot easier here and we’d love to have you here!
Do you feel like Harry Truman ensconced in the shadow of Mt. St. Helens?
VDH,
Your essay highlights how far people -California politicians-are willing go to get what they want, even if it’s at the expense of having integrity or compassion for others.
They don’t care how much they hurt others for personal gain or justify their lying and deception to get people’s vote.
These are common characteristics of all the corrupt one party political machine blue states.
How did it come to this, who stated this craziness, those are the questions that must be answered.
It’s time to tear them down and start all over.
How’s that for a novel idea.
California is “Atlas Shrugged” in real time.
I write this having recently relocated from my native Central Valley to rural Middle Tennessee.
Memories of my brief visit to San Francisco in 2024 remind me of the opening scenes of “Scarface”, where the camera panned across tent cities along highways. My visit to Union Square saw “For Lease” signs in windows all around. Lucky for me, I live in a small town in Indiana. Leroy (above) mentioned Dr. Hanson’s sober voice, and I especially always appreciate his objective views of things. Until we educate our children again, things are bound to only worsen. Thanks for reading.
California – the land of milk and honey during my younger years – is now the land of plunder and poverty for many or even most. What a shameful loss and example for our country. It will be a long time before it recovers, if ever.
Yes, Marion, it has devolved into a land of those who are not citizens, where the state gifts noncitizens medical and dental care including cosmetic, orthodontic dental work; the state allows lower college tuition for noncitizens than nearby American citizens; where local municipalities allow noncitizens on their governing councils; recently a major city advertised police officer paid positions for noncitizens. This will allow a legal oddity of an illegal alien cop citing a legal citizen for the crime of breaking a law.
The utilities (water especially) in CA have been so beggared by the PUC, lawyers, greenmail shysters, and Sierra Club fanatics that the networks are serially failing to the detriment of everyone there. The latest round of fires provided (more) stark proof of failures at every level and it will only accelerate. Fleeing the state was the only option left for my family and we are still angry about the monumental plunder and lawlessness which caused this morass of dreck. Just when we think it cannot get worse, it does.
Dr. Hanson- In your 10th paragraph (“The trends are not static…”)
your description remeinds me the classic “death spiral”. I compare it to the “event horizon” of a black hole, where, at a certain point, no matter what the actors do, there is no escape. The inevitable has arrived upon the situation.
The CPUSA (D) is not my comrade and never will be.
I have lived my 75 years in Texas, and the thought comes to mind:
But for the grace of God, there go I.
I suppose that could have happened to any state.
Thank you again for these terrific podcasts and articles. It actually helps to read/listen to the professor’s sober/judicious voice describe scenes so objectively. In the mid-1960s being stationed in the military in California was a near-dream. When finally returning home to Washington in 1967, it did take a while but eventually it became clear the contagion that took the Golden out of California also worked its way through western Oregon and Washington. Finally, in 2022, at 81 and 79, we escaped by moving to the SW, however, that contagion is also abundant in the cities here although definitely to a lesser degree than OR or WA. Witnessing the record-breaking, logic defying court actions against DJT leads one to believe he will merely be a bump in the road to the corrupt, loudly braying Democrat Party.
Has professor VDH, in his study of the Classics, ever come across a civilization that recovered after being this far removed from its pinnacle? One might suspect such a civilization would never survive.
I have lived most of my 75 years in California.
Los Angeles (back in the smog days), valley (Bakersfield – high school), desert (Cal City at its birth), Santa Barbara (UCSB), Arcata – behind the redwood curtain, OC (now), and the Sierra Nevada mountains (also now). Also spent 20 years in WA.
Few could claim a more varied and rich California personal history.
Despite its many issues, OC is a great place to have relatives and many nearby choices for healthcare, entertainment, education, etc. However, its population is dense and you need to be mindful of the right times to navigate its freeways. For the most part, south OC is a rich neighborhood, the streets are clean, and there is little evidence of gangland activity. However, you pay for all this with astronomical prices for housing. We’ve had a home here for 30 years, so that part does not impact us.
The northern house is in the Sierra Nevada – gold country. There, we live deep in the woods, mostly unaffected by the craziness in the urban areas.
At our advanced ages, it is unlikely that we will leave the state.
Being 10-15 years younger would alter that equation.
Jim. Yes, if you’re older and well off, as I am too, CA still offers a pretty good lifestyle. As frustrated as I am by all of CA’s self inflicted ills, I did grow up here, friends and family are nearby, and I can see no reason to let the turkeys drive me out. I’m in the SF Bay Area.
However, CA doesn’t offer the opportunities it offered us when we were younger. Ironically, there’s a racist tinge to that as well. My kids will one day inherit well which will enable them to live a lifestyle, probably in their 50s, that we achieved in our 30s. Their Hispanic contemporaries not so much.
What happens when they run out of taxpayers?
This is the most informative, thoughtful, and accurate analysis of the progressive left that I have seen. Dr. Hanson is my hero.
California appears to have gotten away with collecting rent upon its nice weather . . . for only so long.
Thank you VDH, beautifully articulated. I proudly forwarded (I wrote resent, but it would could be read as resented) with Full Credit to you, to almost everyone I know, including FB and X. You should become Trump’s Rasputin. Have a great day, and thank you for all the work you do.
What good is a political machine that only serves itself? At least Tammany Hall did some useful tasks for ordinary constituents. These guys, for all their pretensions, are plain thieves. They don’t even look after their own long-term needs.
“What good is a political machine that only serves itself?”
It provides for complete unfounded optimism that yes, indeed, that the machine most certainly does have phoenix-like quailities.
No matter how rigorously the machine and its supporters continuously ignore the maxim-“If you always do what you’ve always done, you will always get what you’ve always gotten.”
Gavin Newsom is an intellectually astute political animal. As a man however, Mr. Gavin is deeply, very deeply stupid.
I have lived in California since 1992, meaning I have personally witnessed most of the steady march towards insanity Dr. Hanson writes about so elegantly. As such, I have no legitimate reason for hope… However, I do believe that the hard-core leftists running the state will either have to do major pivots towards reality in the near future or watch in horror as the hordes of immigrants they invited into the State slowly turn Republican.
The Worm Is Turning
The recent decline of support for transgenderism, Defund the Police, DEI, ‘open borders’, the current failure of Left-Wing political lawfare in the USA, along with the exposure and decline of the ‘Deep State’ in government control, the reaffirmation of the ‘broken window’ approach to policing societal problems and the semi-welcomed ‘tough love’ approach of President Trump basically lends credence to Winston Churchill’s most famous quote regarding the American mindset,
• “You can always count on the Americans to do the right thing, after they have exhausted all the other possibilities.”
Specifically, Americans are starting to do the right things for health reasons:
That is, they are sick of the Far-Left Wing nonsense that has pervaded their society and its ongoing destructively miserable neo-Marxist affects!
As always , right on point. Brilliant!
I loved visiting CA in the 80’s.
Recently, I’ve come to the conclusion that it would be best to leave CA. I just don’t want to deal with this crap anymore. If this State ever get out of this mess, it will be nothing short of miraculous.
Yes. May be too late for California, but let’s hope for the sake of the country that the less severely blue states see the California debacle and start to turn back toward fiscal, cultural, educational, etc. sanity.
Oregon and Washington are not smart enough to notice California’s decline and will dutifully march off the cliff with it.
Only western Washington. The eastern side has always regarded the western as loons.
What lesson will finally be taught and learned in those states/cities/metro locales for that change to take place?
I’ve seen nothing in a half century of lessons that has ever taken hold.
Great article. Absolute Power corrupts Absolutely and California is the latest proof.
VDH –
So absolutely true and sad. I’ve been a southern Californian for most of my life and often think about the day I can finally leave the state. A son’s obligation to his 92-year-old mother is keeping me where I am for now. I see it getting worse every day during my short commute to work. More and more homeless people with their shopping carts crossing the boulevard wherever (certainly not at crosswalks) and whenever they choose. And if you dare hit the horn, then an angry look and middle finger are shown in your immediate direction.
Alex, me too. At 63 it is also this son’s obligation to care for his mid-octogenarian parents that keeps me here; but where else would I go? I have no other family left in CA; former friends reject me for being MAGA; and anywhere else I’d go, I’d be both alone and a stranger. Frankly, I am already a stranger here in my own home town — English is not usually the first language I hear upon leaving the house in the morning.
California used to be a middle-class Mecca. No more. The places we used to visit have been plundered. We used to invest money in California. No more. People used to retire there. No more. My son, daughter in law, and grandsons just moved away from California. He (my son) had a high paying job, but couldn’t afford to live there anymore. Driving from Ventura County to LA County on Hwy 118 (Ronald Reagan Freeway) was going from first world to third world instantly right at Santa Susana Pass. Hopefully, the saying “as California goes, so goes the nation” doesn’t come true!
IMO, “as California goes, so goes the nation” is more communist propaganda poppycock pumped out by the Frankfurt School commies that Hitler kicked out of Germany. They manufactured their poison from the campuses at Colombia, U.C. Berkeley and USC. Here is the Frankfurt School target statement:
“We must organize the intellectuals and use them to make Western civilization stink. Only then, after they have corrupted all its values and made life impossible, can we impose the dictatorship of the proletariat.”
U.S. Democrats, RINOs and their fellow-travelers are seriously evil, dedicated, devoted. They hate God and they hate people who love God or are in the least influenced by even a whiff of Godly morality. They are the enemy.
Oh, Suzanna
Don’t you cry for me
I’m fleeing from California with my banjo on my knee