California Dreaming
Recently Peter Leyden published the first in a series of Medium articles titled California Is The Future. I responded directly to it there, but I’m not sure my response really hits the mark — a lot of what he says in this and the rest of the series is pretty reasonable (if a bit boosterish), but as with so many Californians, he just can’t help seeing California as the progressive center of the universe, rather than just a (politically) mildly-progressive part of a mostly-regressive country. Is there nothing that Californians don’t think California is the best in the world at?!
Nonetheless, here’s my response, lightly edited, after this classic quote from the original article:
California is the future. That’s the best way to understand the way forward for America, and ultimately the world. California is roughly 15 years ahead of the rest of America in confronting the very different realities of the 21st century.
This is satire, right?
Which California are we talking about here? The one with an increasing homelessness problem (and the squalid garbage- and junk-strewn urban streets that go with it)? The one with the lack of affordable housing (a problem that’s only getting worse)? The one that has medical marijuana but doesn’t have a coherent health care system? The one(s) that want(s) to split off from SF and LA and Sacramento and San Diego (and I’m not just talking about the State Of Jefferson here)? The one with increasing levels of wealth concentration and inequality? The one with the completely broken and / or totally inadequate transit systems?
Whichever California you’re thinking about, it has a lot to learn from other places in the world. Things like health care, education, progressive politics, immigration, public transit, sustainability, clean energy, political participation, paid time off, and reasonable wealth distribution (just to name a few). You know, important things like that… things that are done so much better in some places not called “California” out there in UnAmerica. California could do a lot worse than look elsewhere for models of how to do all these things rather than indulging in so much provincial breast-beating about things like tech and how it’s going to save the world (and I’m a Californian techie, dammit).
Reading this, you’d think that the things California really seems to excel in are self-absorption and self-regard. Perhaps we could send some of California’s excess self-esteem to places like Australia, Canada, or Britain, where self-deprecation and progressive politics are still a thing. God knows they’ll need a bit of self-esteem after listening to True Californians telling them how backward they are.
But California’s a better place than you paint it, and will probably survive boosters like you. It may (or may not) lead the rest of America in so many things, but that doesn’t mean it leads the world on those same things. A recognition of that fact would be a healthy way to start a thoughtful and progressive Californian renaissance.
