I want to thank the Democrats for giving me, a trial lawyer living in Los Angeles, exactly what I need – a big, heaping tax cut. In their reconciliation bill, there are plenty of giveaways for lay-abouts, losers, and grifters, but also for us living by the beach getting hit with huge state taxes rendered un-deductible by that evil Donald Trump, notorious friend to the rich who he…shafted. Anyway, the Dems are going to wrong this right and fix this manifest justice, though – they are going to make essentially all the money I hand over to the socialist clique that runs the formerly Golden State (and it is a lot) deductible once again.
Cool. Well, for me and other lawyers and similar blue state swells.
People often ask me why I stay in California, to which I reply, “I don’t explain myself to people – buzz off.” But if I were to explain myself to people, I would point out that despite being awash with Californians, California has beautiful weather, my family is nearby, and here I get to be part of the feudal aristocracy sucking the life from working people to fuel my extravagant lifestyle.
See, California was designed for lawyers and similar high-status low-lifes, and the beachside communities where the petty royals dwell do not experience a fraction of the hellish nightmare you see on TV. Oh, what you see is real, just not for those in the Birkenstock nobility. You see videos of hordes of hobos leaving their junkie spoor on the sidewalks and that happens, just not to the people that Prince Gavin of Newsom cares about. I don’t think he cares about me personally mind you, but he cares a lot about my ZIP code.
You can drive ten minutes from my castle and be worried about someone stealing your hubcaps. Once you start heading east over the 405 (That’s I-405 to people who don’t live in LA) real life comes and bites you hard, and the farther east you go, the harder it bites. The roads are trash – gee, I sure expect the infrastructure bill will totally make them nice again – and the schools are cesspits of violence and commie indoctrination, but the peasants just need to accept their lot in life and not complain. Their bitching would ruin our wine tasting.
Of course, I might have more sympathy for these poor devils if they had not lobbied so hard for the role of “Serf #3” in California’s production of “Game of Bums.” They voted for this. They got this. It’s all theirs.
There are bastions of normalcy. Huntington Beach, where I recently saw Ron DeSantis talk (he was excellent – if I ever have to flee, it’s to Florida, where they have two things I love – conservatism and huge, deadly reptiles), posts banners representing locals who are serving in the military. From the beach you can see the dozens of ships backed-up from the ports, which has got to somehow be DeSantis’s fault. So, there are places that aren’t fully garbage, just not many.
The problem is that the normal people who elected Reagan a half century ago have largely left. There’s this cliché that it’s all libs trekking out of Cali for red fields to befoul with their reeking ideology, but that’s not how it goes. The people leaving are the good ones, the conservative ones who work and do constructive things. In the last year, I saw an Army/cop pal, a conservative artist, and a couple Hollywood types load up the old U-Haul and move out. As a conservative in SoCal, I used to be merely lonely. Then I got forlorn. Now I’m about as popular as a Lincoln Project founder in a middle school locker room.
I don’t hide who I am. I refuse to wear masks in general – I’ll do it in a hospital because that is at least conceivably not idiotic – so I am an easy to pick out dissenter. I burst into “Let’s go, Brandon” chants whenever I see President * on a TV screen out in the world. I never offer my pronouns. As such, I represent – to many people I know – diversity. I’m a conservative Christian veteran cis-het dude of pallor with no different ablenesses, other than an inability to consume seafood of any kind. I’m the one of all of these things that most Californians in my orbit know. People are like, “Oh yeah, I know a guy who likes Trump. It’s Kurt.”
Those still here, though, are content with the stratification of our society. The state that invented the striving middle class has squeezed it between the ravenous rich and the welfare-collecting poor. You either wear a crown or a barrel in California these days; if you have a couple bucks, you have poor people who often speak with an accent watching your kids, mowing your lawn, fixing your car, and keeping your house. I bet we’re just one ballot initiative away from granting residents of Pacific Palisades prima nocta over residents making under $100K a year, and I bet it would get 63% of the vote.
And what gets me is that the serfs asked for this. The peasants aren’t revolting; they’re eagerly reinforcing the paradigm that keeps them toiling in the fields. The people who are eager to whine about all the petty annoyances that come with living here outside the castle walls are also the first to march down to the post office to mail in their ballots marked for every pinko Democrat the union bosses command them to vote for. We had a chance to make a difference in September. We could have fired Governor Hairstyle and put in Larry Elder and tried something new.
Nope.
California used to be the state where the future happened. Now it’s where the year 1213 is happening all over again.
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