by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
PJ Media<\/em><\/p>\n California is a rich state \u2014 as the world found out the last century. It has the best farmland in the world, much of it watered by gravity-fed irrigation from the Sierra. Its timber acreage is vast. There is a lot of natural gas and oil still in the southern interior and off the coast. Silicon Valley, tourism, Hollywood, defense, and Napa Valley all contribute to natural wealth.<\/p>\n The problem is that we have created a strange drone mindset that manifests itself in two ways. Among elites there is almost a \u201cDon\u2019t touch or disturb that!\u201d mantra. The law of the hothouse orchid reigns. Once our grubby ancestors created our infrastructure, we wish sometimes to ridicule and \u2014 use \u2014 it, less often to leave anything better behind for anyone else.<\/p>\n Fish, Not People<\/strong><\/p>\n We want all the dividends of industrial society, but an 18th century wilderness at the same time. So the in-the-know people demand cheap, plentiful, and tasty food, but worry more about a three-inch fish than the farmers and farm workers who keep us alive one more day \u2014 and so divert fresh water out into the bay to keep the delta smelt alive. (Oh, I know the Gorist logic: the smelt is a canary in the mine; when he can\u2019t get enough oxygen, then we won\u2019t be able to drink soon.\u201d Sorry, I suggest that communities whose treated sewage goes into the bay begin using some sort of organic toilets rather than the old flush models.)<\/p>\n To drive through downtown Santa Barbara is to count the amazing variety of Volvo, Mercedes, Lexus, and BMW SUVs \u2014 and wonder where the gasoline comes from, as off-shore drilling declines. You get the picture \u2014 our top echelons have become quite prissy. The redwood deck is beloved, not the falling coast redwood tree; kitchen granite counters are de rigueur, not the blasting at the top of the granite mountain; the Prius is a badge of honor, not the chemical plant that makes its batteries; we now like stainless steel frigs, but hate steel\u2019s coke, and iron ore, and electricity lines; arugula is tasty, not the canal that brings water 400 miles to irrigate it; I support teacher unions and ***-studies courses in the public schools, but not with my Ivy-League bound children.<\/p>\n And on the Other Hand\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n At the other end of the social spectrum, the underclass seems to be growing. I don\u2019t expect to see much cash at mega-supermarkets in my area. Food stamps \u2014 and yet expensive food \u2014 are the norm. The school systems of California\u2019s major cities are broken; the wealthy praise them and flee, and the poor complain about their inadequacy, but insist on the sort of identity \u201cpride\u201d politics curriculum and staffing that ensure the inadequacy.<\/p>\n Don\u2019t mention parental responsibility; that\u2019s either Neanderthal or racist. When I see gang bangers in San Jose or Fresno, I think two things: they like DVDs, nice cars, drugs, and the cult of male violence, but when they get hurt they show up at the emergency room and demand 21st-century medical care from the nerds they so often intimidate on the street. Is a Stanford-trained emergency doctor potential prey on Saturday night at the stop light, or a few hours later in surgery a godsend?<\/p>\n It is taboo to ask our failing youth a simple question, \u201cWhat exactly have you done the last month to ensure your birthright to the world\u2019s most sophisticated lifestyle propped up by advanced math, science, social stability, and political tranquility?\u201d<\/p>\n It other words, our elite is becoming more elite and refined, while our non-elite is becoming more rough around the edges. But they share a disturbing commonality: both expect something that they are not willing to invest in.<\/p>\n Both Ways<\/strong><\/p>\n The well-off like nice cars, tasteful homes, good food, and appropriate vacations \u2014 but not the oil, gas, coal, nuclear energy, transmission lines, timber, cement, farmland, water pumps, etc., that bring that to them. In California, we like to leave old pot-holed roads up to the Sierra as proof of our environmentalism (cheaper too), and then clog them when we wish in politically-incorrect fashion to have a picnic in the mountains. You see, the mindset of the elite Bay Area denizen is to keep California pristine, rough even, for that one day a year in the wild experience, even as it turns out most green suburbanites actually like to go to the lake or beach, and get in their carbon-emitting cars on congested roads to get there.<\/p>\n The less well-off want their versions of the same things \u2014 cool clothes, good music players, neat cell phones, the best plasma TVs, blue-ray players, video games \u2014 but are not interested in the hard study and discipline necessary for a society to create the sort of educated work force that makes and deserves such appurtenances. If the math scores of an inner San Jose, Fresno, or Los Angeles public school are dismal (forget per pupil spending or the exorbitant cost to staff such schools), or there are few mastering mechanics or the building trades in our unions and trade schools, then even fewer make the connection that their own assumed perks are, well, doomed in the long run.(I used to get memos the same week at CSU dryly reciting that 50% of our students were now in remedial math and English, while praising to the skies a new [quite costly] program to attract the \u201cnon-traditional\u201d student.)<\/p>\n I suppose the attitude of the directionless youth is something like the following, though never articulated: \u201cSome nerd will dream up a new video game; the Chinese will build it for me cheaply; and I will play it at my leisure given my birthright both as an exalted American and the enormous debt \u2018they\u2019 (fill in the blanks) owe me.\u201d At some point the world snaps back, \u201cNope, the Indian and Chinese young person knows more, works harder, produces more \u2014 and gets more than you, despite your American brand.\u201d<\/p>\n I now expect to be better treated on the 1-800 line from someone in India than an American \u2014 and am discovering that the former really tries to speak the King\u2019s English he learned while the other doesn\u2019t much care for the language he was born with.<\/p>\n This recession has really brought out the dichotomies: We spend billions of scarce cash on imported food, fuel, and manufactured goods, but have acres of idle farmlands, vast untapped deposits of natural gas and oil, and millions of feet of unused factory space. Bread and circuses seem to be the answer for the angst of the underclass.<\/p>\n Some Modest Suggestions<\/strong><\/p>\n Natural gas and oil producers need to say they are really building solar and wind plants, then all public law suits and concerns over a messy access road, a rare desert lizard, or a fragile cactus will disappear. Freeway builders should say those are not roads, but \u201clight rail\u201d going in. Lumber men must claim they are looking for \u201cbio-fuels,\u201d while West Side farmers whose empires used to produce tons of cotton and carrots, must assure us they are remaking biodiverse, organic sustainable plots. The nuclear plant designer should talk of carbon footprints, warm water discharges for sustainable aquaculture, and reusable nuclear waste \u2014 emphasize talking green, even though in fact much of this is absolutely true.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, we should plug subliminal Latin messages in killer video games. CDs should have one 30 second airing of a part of the Constitution before \u201cKill the Bitch\u201d lyrics begin. A spelling bee should be mandatory half-time entertainment at basketball or football games, and to get into the emergency room, one should be able to recite the Pythagorean Theory or name five presidents \u2014 or explain what a battery or hydroelectric power is.<\/p>\n In other words, our Eloi elite need to get a little more real, and our Morlock non-elite need to become a little less frighteningly real. And the rest of us in the middle? A little more pragmatic, and a little less sanctimonious, a little less politically \u2014 and environmentally \u2014 correct, if all our children are to inherit even a semblance of what we were born into.<\/p>\n \u00a92010 Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media California is a rich state \u2014 as the world found out the last century. It has the best farmland in the world, much of it watered by gravity-fed irrigation from the Sierra. Its timber acreage is vast.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[608],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s466Sb-dronism","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":4484,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/sunny-california-caught-by-gathering-storm\/","url_meta":{"origin":1805,"position":0},"title":"Sunny California Caught by Gathering Storm","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 21, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services California's weather is nearly ideal. The soil is the nation's richest. There is a 1,000-mile coastline and endowments of fishing, timber, petroleum and water. In less than a century, our ancestors created Hollywood and Silicon Valley, as well as booming agribusiness, tourism and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "February 2005"","block_context":{"text":"February 2005","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2005\/february-2005\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1934,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/islam-and-reason-new-book-shows-decline-after-the-10th-century\/","url_meta":{"origin":1805,"position":1},"title":"Islam and Reason: New Book Shows Decline after the 10th Century","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 22, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Raymond Ibrahim Jihad Watch A review of\u00a0The Closing of the Muslim Mind: How Intellectual Suicide Created the Modern Islamist Crisis\u00a0by Robert R. Reilly (Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 2011. 244 pp.) Last week, \"Saudi Arabia's religious police arrested an Indonesian housemaid for\u00a0casting a magic spell\u00a0on a local family and 'turning its\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Islam"","block_context":{"text":"Islam","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/islam\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7002,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-costs-of-the-environmentalism-cult\/","url_meta":{"origin":1805,"position":2},"title":"The Costs of the Environmentalism Cult","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 11, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton \/\/\u00a0FrontPage Magazine California is in the third year of a drought, but the problem isn\u2019t a lack of water. The snowfall in the Sierra provides enough to help us ride out the years of drought. 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