Culture Wars, Conservatives and California
There are many legitimate reasons to criticize California and state policies. That is why I am shocked by how conservatives make up the most absurd claims in order to do so. Instead of focusing on real problems they invent imaginary monsters to slay.
Our Radical Center essay tackled one of those — the claim that San Francisco is covered in human excrement. Not only is the map they use highly deceptive but it shows 8 years worth of reports all at once. Using their own statistics we found excrement of all kinds (mostly from dogs) is reported an average of once for every square mile of the city — this is hardly an epidemic.
One response attacking our article implied measles is a California epidemic. I found the state had 70 cases as of October 9th and the entire country had 1250 cases as of October 3rd. California comprises 12% of the entire population of the U.S. — which is one reason people outside the state hate it so much — but only had 5% of the measles cases.
Conservative Victor Hanson has pushed the theory that California is doomed due to demographics. Like other such theories it is nonsense.
Hanson claimed the California of the past is “dead due to the most radical demographic shift of any one state in recent American history.” It’s demographics! It’s the culture war he says, not race — though he mentions Mexican immigrants several times.
He has a litany of groups to blame in addition to immigrants, including “a hip, youth, and gay influx to the Bay Area, Silicon Valley, and coastal Los Angeles that saw California as a sort of upscale, metrosexual lifestyle.” He’s just barely missing breaking out in song about the dangers of boys who re-buckle their “knickerbockers below the knee!”
Hanson claimed “California now has an enormous number of single-person households, childless couples, and one-child families,” all pariahs to those in what Ayn Rand called the “God-family-tradition swamp.”
Hanson claims “The result of 30 years of illegal immigration, the reigning culture of coastal childless households, the exodus of the overtaxed, and the rule of public employees” gave Democrats a supermajority in the legislature. The supermajority did happen last year, but the economic crisis in the state has been building for decades.
Many of Hanson’s purported facts are just not true. He blames Democrats, though it took a bipartisan effort to bankrupt the state. He says Democrats run things because of immigrants, single-person households, childless couples and one-child families. He made sure you know an “influx” of gay people are included as well.
He writes: “California now has an enormous number of single-person households, childless couples, and one-child families.” The Census Bureau seems to be misinformed then — perhaps they should get their data directly from Hanson instead of that laborious house-to-house procedure. The 2010 census actually indicates the percentage of one-person households in the entire country is 26.7 percent, but, for California, it is 23.3 percent — well below the national average.
Single-person households make up greater percentages of the population in every single Republican-leaning state you can name, with the exception of Utah.
Actually, California has a relatively high percentage of households headed by married couples: 49.4 percent — above the national average of 48.4 percent. According to Hanson’s claims, however, a large number of those have no children, or one. That is also false.
The average household in the United States has 2.58 members, but in California, the average is 2.90. California’s families are less likely to have no children, or just one, than the average American family.
In California, 6.7 percent of the population is under the age of 5, while the national average is 6.5 percent. Those under 18 years make up 24.6 percent of the state’s population, whereas, in the rest of the U.S., they are 23.7 percent.
Hanson’s critique is an envy-ridden cultural attack. He claims an “elite” populates the coast enjoying “beautiful weather, the Pacific panorama, the hip culture of recreational light drug use, neat restaurants, fine wines, solar and wind romance, foreign cars and general repugnance at religion, guns, conservatives and traditional anything.” Odd he would say that in an article that is one long “general repugnance” at the bulk of Californians. At least it isn’t as trashy as Mexico, as he reminds us — several times. It should be noted the coastal “elite” in California are the bulk of the population, and that’s only counting people who live in counties directly on the Pacific ocean.
Hanson thinks the “Latino population… would be in revolt over the elitist nature of California politics” except for the fact that they were bought off with government jobs and welfare. This is precisely the reason Republicans and conservatives have trouble wining Hispanic votes! Mr. Hanson’s article is condescending to immigrants, blames them for changing the culture, and implies they are just bought off. Conservatives such as him push Hispanic voters away, along with the young, gay and other groups he mentions.
One of the favorite welfare programs conservatives such as Hanson love to attack is SNAP or food stamps. The problem is that when it comes to the percentage of populations being “bought” off with food stamps the percentages tend to be much higher in Republican states, among the 15 states with the highest percentages on food stamps are nine Republican voting states: Kentucky, Florida, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, West Virginia, and Louisiana.
Hanson dreams of Latinos waking up, becoming conservatives, and pushing for “beefed-up law enforcement.” (Ah, the favorite big-spending project of conservatives. It should be noted that the most powerful lobbies in California represent prison guards and police officers — and are directly involved in fostering the financial crisis Hanson laments.)
A fiscally sane agenda is needed for California, but as long as Republicans or conservatives package it by stereotyping Mexicans, the young, gays, “coastal elites,” or whoever else they wish to drag into their damned “culture war,” it doesn’t have a chance. If Mr. Hanson wants to find the reason Republicans have little chance in California, he should stop looking out the window, and instead gaze into the mirror.
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