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A Conservative Rebuttal to ‘The Great Lesson of California in America’s New Civil War’

https://medium.com/@duffiereport.com/a-conservative-rebuttal-to-the-great-lesson-of-california-in-americas-new-civil-war-b088a1b96e92A Conservative Rebuttal to ‘The Great Lesson of California in America’s New Civil War’

By TRD

Recently, Twitter CEO, Jack Dorsey, set off a firestorm with a Tweet for implicitly endorsing the sentiment outlined in an article by Peter Leyden and Ruy Teixeira entitled ‘The Great Lesson of California in America’s New Civil War.’ The message in the article was that there was no legitimately bi-partisan way forward. Instead, we are in a new civil war. One side or the other had to win. And for the liberals, California is what a victorious future should look like. California, it claims, is fifteen years ahead of the rest of the country.

Much of the reaction centered on the fact that it was the CEO of Twitter himself that was apparently adopting this World view. After all, Twitter has become one of the main platforms for political debate and information distribution, for both sides of the debate. Moreover, in response to their surprise defeat in 2016 and the subsequent largely manufactured hysteria, it has become abundantly clear that the social media giants now feel that censoring and silencing opposing voices on these platforms is a satisfactory substitute to actually winning the debate. And what lay underneath it is the frightening admission of their desire that everything be like California.

It’s not so much that there are extremist radicals that hold views like this, but instead that major players in our social media hold views like this. They themselves are radicals too! And it’s not hard to imagine, with all the one-sided censorship and silencing, that Jack Dorsey is actually representative of not only many of the social media bosses, but also of many in the traditional media, those in academia and the trend-setters in the entertainment industry. While this constitutes a relatively small segment of the American community, it’s influence is disproportionately large. It’s a small but very vocal and powerful minority.

The idea that somebody like Jack Dorsey would be seduced by the article’s obvious tripe is disheartening. However, at least they’ve admitted what the silent majority has always suspected, that the failed US State, California, is actually a vision of utopia for many upper-crust liberals. And as misguided as the liberals are, they’re actually on to something…

To those of us in the center, center right and right, we are indeed becoming like California: THAT’S THE PROBLEM.

Actually, California’s climate and natural beauty does remain the envy of the nation. I, myself, have often fantasized about living in San Diego, often considered to have the most appealing climate in the nation. However, aside from a relative handful of ideologically stuck liberals, there’s little else about California for which America pines.

California is not an ideal model for America’s success; it’s a model of failure for the rest of the country. It embodies exactly the kind of moral, intellectual, financial and political bankruptcy, which the silent majority seeks to avoid.

In all likelihood, if California was itself an independent country, they would be irreparably damaged by now. The actual reality is the rest of the country saves California from itself. If half the country wasn’t committed to these out-dated ideologies such as basic economic laws, California would be well past the point of no return.

And if the rest of the country ever became California, then there would no saving the Nation. California is a case-study in what not to do. After all, according to an article posted in TIME, California led the nation’s way in creating the Great Recession. And, according to the Huffington Post, was one of the hardest hit by it. This is why then Governor, Arnold Schwarznegger, came begging with hat in hand for a bail-out from the US Government in 2008. And that’s just one of many examples.

Jack Dorsey, and the others that find California ideal, are what are often referred to as “limousine liberals.” However, the Dorseys of the World aren’t just your average liberal elite; they are among the technology high priests, social engineers with a God-complex. They are arrogantly engineering our future, leading and nudging us into our assigned spaces. Meanwhile, the everyday problems of California’s “subjects,” produced by this dysfunctional state, are of little inconvenience or true concern to these elites.

No, the only people really impressed with the conditions in California are these elite technology masterminds, entertainers and the corrupt politicians themselves who plunder the public treasury and demagogue their subjects for a living.

It is only with great irony and strained credulity that this is the group of people supposedly with the little guy’s interest first and foremost in their minds. As you’ll see, the California Utopia is a utopia for the elites only. Indeed, what Peter Leyden and Ruy Teixeira desire is a new system of totalitarianism, a liberal technocratic fascism, over which they, as tech Gods, rule. The rosy picture they paint is merely typical demagoguery meant to fool their likely audience, while they simultaneously belittle the non-believers as old, out-of-date, provincial, brain-dead, bitter clingers with old fashioned and small minded racists, sexist and bigoted tendencies.

The elites must really be counting on the power of artificial intelligence, and their ability to run it, because if one thing has remained the same throughout time, it’s human nature. Indeed, the article reeks of hubris, as it declares, in defiance of reality that “California today provides a model for America as a whole. This model of politics and government is by no means perfect, but it is far ahead of the nation in coming to terms with the inexorable digital, global, sustainable transformation of our era.”

He further compares America today with California in the early 2000s: “In the early 2000s, California faced a similar situation to the one America faces today. Its state politics were severely polarized, and state government was largely paralyzed. The Republican Party was trapped in the brain-dead orthodoxies of an ideology stuck in the past. The party was controlled by zealous activists and corrupt special interests who refused to face up to the reality of the new century. It was a party that refused to work with the Democrats in good faith or compromise in any way.”

It’s funny he should say that — and quite revealing. To the “progressive,” the orthodoxies of the past are popularly held in low esteem…over and over again…all throughout the past. In fact, it’s only when we forget the past that we’re left vulnerable to this tired old progressive tripe. Progressives love hating on the past. One noteworthy progressive, Cambodia’s Pol Pot, even reset the calendar to ZERO. You might say that this attack on the past is one of the progressive’s oldest and most tired brain dead orthodoxies.

Conservatives, or the so called “science-deniers,” don’t cling to the past merely out of fear of change; many conservatives are instead guided by the historical knowledge of what has worked and not worked throughout the history of civilization.

The self proclaimed “party of science,” on the other hand, seems to think it can defy the laws of economics and human nature, over and over and over again. And each and every repeat of the cycle shows some progressive selling the same old Utopian snake oil, while they belittle and demonize their opponents as “zealots,” “enemies of the revolution,” “enemies of progress,” etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

These so-called “brain-dead” enemies of “progress” don’t envision utopia but rather financial ruin, enslavement to debt, balkanization, silencing of speech, political persecution, the general curtailment of individual freedom and the rise of a liberal fascist technocracy. Why? Because that’s what our brain-dead orthodoxies of an ideology stuck in the past tell us. It tells us that in example after example, ad infinitum. Ironically, it’s these old and provably failed progressive, collectivist, statist, Utopian ideologies that we want to keep stuck in the past.

The article attempts to draw stretched parallels between our current energy debate and the divisions that preceded the outbreak of our Civil War. While the article correctly asserts that the conflict was fought not only over slavery but also economics, it erroneously presents as on-par the divide that existed then with the so-called climate crisis of today. Slavery was real and undeniable. That there were two diametrically opposed economies was also beyond question.

To compare the divided opinion over the so called climate crisis with the circumstances existing then is merely another propaganda technique used to make the so-called climate crisis more significant than we actually know it to be. Most Americans believe in clean air and water, and to the liberals’ credit, they have been leaders in this effort. Additionally, most Americans agree that the climate changes and is probably currently warming. After all, Science indicates that the Earth has gone through cooling and warming periods all throughout time, even before humans began significantly polluting the environment.

The real divide in this case is 1) to what extent the so-called science, based on computer models, which suggests human activity is to blame, can really be relied upon 2) how much can we really do about it and 3) at what cost? How much individual freedom must be ceded and how much financial resources devoted to a crisis that may or may not exist and about which we can likely do very little. In short, this isn’t a true national fault-line. Extremists might be willing to engage in civil war over it, but in reality, they represent a small minority of the whole.

But without tediously debating every false belief of liberals, let’s take a brief look at this so-called Model for America, and discover just how invalid a World-view one must must have to actually desire these conditions for the entire country…

According an article in CALmatters, a nonpartisan, nonprofit journalism venture that focuses exclusively on California public policy and politics, the middle class in California is shrinking. In the article entitled California’s middle class is in decline, despite the state’s immense wealth, by Amita Sharma, Joel Kotkin, a presidential fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University in Orange, informs us that rather than having improved, California has actually declined for almost every population group, aside from the technology industry, that is.

Kotkin says “Today, we have a society which over time is becoming more and more feudal with the very rich, very successful — some of the richest people in the history of the world — at the very top, and then a diminishing middle class. And what’s more frightening is you have young people, some of them with college educations working at Uber, working at Starbucks, essentially barely making it.”

These very rich, very successful people are the same ones so enamored by the California model. Meanwhile, the model holds very little appeal for the struggling middle and lower classes. Indeed, while rich elite liberals virtue-signal and decry inequality, this lauded model for the future actually creates that very inequality they supposedly oppose. Indeed, according to a March 12, 2018 CNBC article entitled US states with the highest levels of income inequality by Emmie Martin, California is listed as having the 4th MOST INCOME INEQUALITY in the country.

Not only is the California success model a leader in income inequality, it’s also a leader in the largest Municipal Bankruptcies in US History, which according to Forbes includes San Bernardino in 2012, Stockton in 2012 and Orange County in 1994. That would be 50% of the 6 biggest municipal bankruptcies in history taking place in California.

According to the CATO Institute, while California is traditionally very free concerning social issues, it was also recently determined to be the 49th LEAST FREE state in the nation. It’s one of the most heavily taxed states in the country, and government debt equals 22.8% of personal income.

In an over-simplified manner, the article portrays the Democrats as having “won,” a scenario that is supposedly the success model for extreme liberals in America as a whole. In reality, they didn’t win; the “enemy” just moved. They made the state so intolerable for average people that they fled the state completely, for good. What they’re left with now is merely an extremist liberal echo chamber, in which they can convince themselves of the reality of their delusions and in which everybody looks different but all think exactly the same. If the states are really laboratories of experiment, then California is experimenting with fascism with a happy face.

Paul Chabot, a former Californian, even started a company called Conservative Move, an organization dedicated to literally facilitating the escape of normal people from California to other states like Texas.

According to an NPR Article, Chabot said “And that left ideology in California are largely wealthy liberal coastal elites that I believe controlled most of California through politics and fundraising and policies, hands down. But when you get to the inland part of these states — the Inland Empire, the Central Valley — these are areas where you have working poor people that are living largely impoverished and forgotten. It’s because of liberal laws that have basically destroyed the infrastructure or the region.”

Indeed, the American Enterprise Institute, a public policy think tank, recently listed California as one of states from which people are most rapidly leaving. So if it’s such a model of success, why are people leaving? And if Democrats are “winning” in this manner, how do they really expect this scenario to be attractive and repeatable nationwide, anytime in the near future?

I could go on about the failures of the California Dream, and how it’s not a success model to anybody other than the elites, but I’m not writing a book. I could talk about how their homeless problem has led to the spread of hepatitis A through Los Angeles County, of which at least 600 people had been effected statewide. Or I could point out how Utopian enclaves like San Francisco are suffering from massive human defecation on its streets? But again, this isn’t a book.

So while I could go on, to be honest, that article is one of the most unimpressive analysis’ I’ve ever read by supposedly serious people. It’s evident that the article is really more about the self-interests of relatively few deluded yet rich and powerful Globalist elites who reside in California, rather than the everyday person who will be victimized by their schemes.

Aside from being just wrong, the article is also full of every old, standard and tired liberal talking point and virtue-signaling rhetorical device, emanating from thoroughly indoctrinated and wishful thinking minds, impressive mostly only to those inside the same elite liberal bubble. The only impressive aspects of the article are the long awaited confession of their intentions and that this article represents the thinking of those at the helm of our social media giants.

California is a model of failure, which a large and powerful segment of America wishes to avoid. So the only way it’s going to happen is either through deceit, financial ruin or force. And the program of deceit and financial ruin are well underway. Indeed, it seems plausible that the United States could collapse in fifteen years, if we continue on our current trajectory.

Indeed, America is in a civil war over the direction of the future. However, it’s far more about individual freedom and financial prudence than it is about climate and energy. Most of America can find compromise on these issues. However, the liberal radicals insist the rest of America MUST ADOPT THEIR BELIEFS OR BE NEUTRALIZED. Fortunately, the authors are incorrect that California presents a model of victory for America. First of all, it didn’t win anything; it was merely written off. And secondly, saying California is the model of success is a lot like saying WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY OR IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.

And if the war ever became physical, I think we know which side would win that one. HINT: Not the side that celebrates effeminate men and is scared of guns.