Victor Davis Hanson // American Greatness
One way of understanding California is simply to invert traditional morality. What for centuries would be considered selfish, callous, and greedy is now recalibrated as caring, empathetic, and generous. The current ethos of evaluating someone by his or her superficial appearance—gender or race—has returned to the premodern values of 19th-century California when race and gender calibrated careers. We don’t pay medieval priests for indulgences of our past and ongoing sin, but we do tweet out displays of our goodness as the penance price of acting amoral.
A paradox ensues that Californians both have a high, indeed smug, view of themselves and yet do a lot of damage to their fellow human beings. Their haughtiness is based largely on the reality that Silicon Valley, sandwiched between Stanford University and University of California, Berkeley, became the birthplace of the global computer, internet, social media, and a high-tech revolution. For progressives who deprecate the capitalist lifestyle, having a lot of money still allows one to say one thing and live out the opposite.
The state’s multi-trillion-dollar companies have hired tens of thousands of seven-figure, mid-level executives and computer experts who assume that life in the California coastal corridor is a birthright paradise.
The resulting tax revenue bonanza to the state allows one-party-rule to rid California of the old bothersome Reagan-Deukmejian-Wilson working- and middle-classes by embracing not-in-my-backyard zoning, identity politics, anal-retentive regulations, steep tax rates, utopian green agendas, open borders, and decriminalization of things that used to be felony offenses.
Indeed, the bigger and wealthier California became, the more the rich sought to privatize their lives and to give up on public services, the more the middle classes left the state, the more the poor from Mexico and Latin America crossed the southern border illegally, the more its schools deteriorated, and the more its infrastructure ossified and became decrepit, from century-old power transmission towers to pot-holed and jammed highways.
Discussion (5)
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I had a hard time grasping the Alice-Through-the Looking-Glass setting of your first paragraph but the title made me press on. First thing I noted was your derogatory-implied definition of "medieval"and the usual accompanying smear of medieval clerics "selling of indulgences". The selling of indulgences was appalling, but it was not, as you implied, for "ongoing sins". Please, ignorance on the vital aspect of the subject with all the information available is "vincible", of which I am sure you could not be guilty. As for "medieval", why doesn't the word bring to mind that after the decline of the Roman Empire the Catholic Church kept Christianity and arts alive and the monks preserved great literature, and copied BIBLES. Don't smear them, thank them! Feudal states were effective means of governing small states and territories, they were not slave states. Medieval knights fought off barbarians from the west and Islam from the south. Universities were established, St. Thomas Aquinas lived and wrote and left a timeless legacy. Towns formed and grew, merchants thrived, guilds were established, good weather brought about agricultural advancement, and by the way, the Magna Carta was signed; Notre Dame and Chartres built; a woman led the French in battle, science made progress, thanks to the later scholastics, etc., etc., etc. Oh, there were plagues and wars and bad stuff. Please, think of a better descriptive word for this mess called California than "medieval". Medieval is great.
Professor Hanson, Your words ring very true with me. I'm one of the many who left my beloved California after graduating college in 1993 from CSU, Chico with a degree in civil engineering. It saddens me that I'm now living in Texas and rebuilding its infrastructure with new and more efficient water treatment plants, rehabilitating sewers, building aqueducts 22 miles across Houston - basically doing the things I should be doing in California if its crazy and irresponsible government didn't run me off. I'll never forget what my physics professor (Professor Meyer) at Moorpark College told us one day (1988) about what California would look like in twenty years. He prophesized that its cross-section of population would look just like an hour glass, with the wealthy at the top and extreme poor on the bottom. No middle class. At the time I thought he was crazy, and couldn't wait to graduate and prove him wrong. I often wonder what signals he observed during that time that would cause his prediction to be so accurate. When I get depressed about California I just thank my lucky stars that I got to see her when she was still beautiful - the late 60's, 70's and the 80's, and the filth and decline that exists today is some other place I see on television. That's not my California...My California was living in the San Gabriel Valley just 20 minutes from the beach, where my friends and I would ditch high school and ride the RTD buses to Newport Beach for a quarter, or go dirt bike riding out in Joshua Tree, or snow skiing at Big Bear. All my friends are still there but only a few own a home. They can't leave because they can't afford to; just stuck. And I can tell by their posting on Facebook that life is getting unbearable and they don't really understand why. Your article really hits home with me and I know if even half is true - that's really, really bad.
This is one of your best articles yet. I am a 5th generation Californian and live in Clovis. My people were from Kingsburg and Selma. I lived in the Bay Area for 25 years so I know how the other half lives. Growing up in Fresno, my city is now unrecognizable. Downtown looks and sounds like Tijuana. So does most of Fresno. You have hit the nail on the head that quite simply, the ruling class will never be affected by their “progressive values.”
Kudos to you Dr. Hanson. You dared tell the truth that the Golden State is actually Fools Gold, paradice not lost but squandered. Thank you for stating it so clearly.
Dystopian.