By Nathan Barton
You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy.
Obi-Wan was wrong. The writers that penned those words knew it. Because they lived in a worse, more wretched hive.
It is called California.
California has always been a morally-, ethically-, liberty-challenged society and land. Here are some examples from the history of the area and state:
- Start with the AmerInd peoples and tribes, occupying a land of indolence for millennia before the Spanish came. Able to live off the fat of the land with relatively little work as compared to the nations to the east and north (especially those of the Great Basin and deserts of the Southwest, the Rockies, and the Great Plains), they were lazy and (according to many early observers) completely without ambition, industry, responsibility, or morals of any sort.
- Then look at the friars and soldiers who came next. They claimed their goal was to bring “Christianity” (well, Catholicism) to the natives. But they treated those AmerInd people as if they were of the same nature as the Azteca and the tribes and nations of New Mexico and Arizona and New Spain. Both in skills and evil. No different from the Moors from which Spain herself had been liberated only a century or so before. The Spanish used this as an excuse to enslave the AmerInd, as peons on the mission farms and estates of the hidalgos. The Spaniards did not even follow their own moral codes.
- The Mexican governments which followed were no different. So the new immigrants into the area from other parts of the Empire and then Republic were no different than their colonial predecessors. The Californios rapidly became as indolent as their Spanish and Coastal Tribe predecessors. And as corrupt.
- Now come the Norte Americanos, first a rivulet, then a torrent. Eager to exploit a new land and quickly exploding in excitement with the discovery of GOLD. They were hard workers, although much of the hard work they did was in the form of conning people (Indios and Californios and each other), robbing and stealing and killing, and generally the work of scumbags.
- They got worse. Consider San Francisco and its Barbary Coast. And the corruption of Anglo government (worse than that of their Hispanic predecessors) led to more and more evil.
- The short-lived California Republic was admitted directly to the Union in the Compromise of 1850, as a “free state”. Despite the continued enslavement of the surviving AmerInd peoples, the white slavery of the big ports, and the shanghai-ing (enslaving) of sailors and landlubbers alike by merchant ships.
- In 1860, “free” California barely went for Lincoln, which may have led directly to the War Between the States. (Which California virtually sat out.)
- In the Old West era, Californians continued their immoral ways; wiping out AmerInd tribes, exploiting the Californios, often conning and fleecing the new immigrants from the Eastern US, and treating the Chinese immigrants like dirt of the gutter.
- During the American expansion into international imperialism, California took full advantage of its position during the war against Spain and the subsequent occupation of the Philippines, profiteering from the efforts of DC to “civilize them with a Krag.”
- It is no wonder the infant movie industry chose to establish itself in Southern California in the early 20th Century. (More than just weather!) The morality of show-biz, well established in the “legitimate” theatre and burlesque and saloon entertainment, came to LaLa Land. And loved both the real and moral climate.
- It was natural for the new media moguls of Hollywood to ally themselves with the yellow journalists and then the broadcast barons of New York. The wealth and corruption of San Francisco, especially the Hearst empire, joined in an unholy triumvirate of influence-peddling and profiting from pandering to the public.
- Many fleeing the Red Revolution in Russia (the Whites) were the corrupt autocrats and taskmasters of the Tsarist regime. In San Francisco and Los Angeles, they found themselves at home.
- In the Dust Bowl era, the Okies and Arkies, though with many good, hard-working, down-on-their-luck types, also had the grifters and grafters and con-artists and hold-up artists. They loved California, and it loved them.
- California’s war profiteering from the War in the Pacific made fortunes, especially for civic leaders and union leaders, but right down to Street-corner Sally and the rest of a growing and prospering parasite criminal class.
- All these were joined by the tongs and corrupt, and opportunistic Chinese fleeing from the fall of the imperial regime and then the war between the Kuomintang, Mao’s Communists, and the Japanese. All more seasoning for the corrupt and corrupting society of California.
- It was rinse and repeat from 1950 to 1953 with Korea, and 1963-1973 with ‘Nam. More aggression, more blood-sucking, and more wealth from immoral ways: both “home boys” and immigrants.
- Is it any wonder that the surge of immigrants since 1986 has (along with many hardworking people) brought a huge number of gangbangers and those who want an easy living? And fit right in?
With this history, of course, the education, experience, morals, and mental abilities and attitude of too many modern Californians is well below the gutter and into the sewer? California is a cesspool, with a complete disconnect with reality. California has become the plaything of the controllers, the statists, and those who prey upon the innocent.
More, later.
The Price of Liberty 
“Start with the AmerInd peoples and tribes, occupying a land of indolence for millennia before the Spanish came. Able to live off the fat of the land with relatively little work as compared to the nations to the east and north (especially those of the Great Basin and deserts of the Southwest, the Rockies, and the Great Plains), they were lazy and (according to many early observers) completely without ambition, industry, responsibility, or morals of any sort.”
So you’re saying that there’s something inherent in the land mass that led to the Natives being without ambition, industry, responsibility, or morals? And that somehow transferred to all the Europeans who moved in to that land mass? What could that entity be; and how would it be transmitted to all these cultures?
“California has always been a morally-, ethically-, liberty-challenged society and land.”
The same claim can be made and reasonably defended against the United States itself, no?
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Absolutely, with at least a few caveats. Not every AmerInd tribe in North America had the lack of work ethic and other morals, or the misfortune to be enslaved the way the Californian coastal people were. As Iberian (Hispanic) governments go, I understand California’s was low on the scale, but Texas and New Mexico had their share of really nasty government types: Spanish and then Mexican. And New Mexico’s current government has too many similarities to Iberian governments in much of the world, to make lovers of liberty comfortable.
It is just that the more I study California, the more I realize it started so low-life to begin with, and after a nearly steady descent, is about the worst of the worst among the Fifty States today.
This is not saying that other states and their governments are acceptable, or that they are anywhere close to paragons of virtue (among which is preserving liberty).
I presently have to deal regularly with three state governments (and various agencies in those), and infrequently with at least four others. Once upon a time, I did have to deal with California, and am so very grateful that I do not have to now – either with the state government or tbe denizens of the state.
But as you imply, the rest of the Fifty States are not on a different path, just not quite as far down that path of wretchedness and evil.
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So what is it about that land mass that enabled or created such depravity? And how was it spread to every culture that settled there?
I understand you not liking California’s current political climate; but I don’t understand what appears to me to be a blanket condemnation not just of the peoples there, but the very area itself.
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Excellent question, Sunni. And I do not know the answer. Any more than why, Greece for instance – Achaia, at least – seems to be similar. Or what we today call the Gaza Strip – ancient Philistia. I am sure that there are others.
But it is not a blanket condemnation – I think I made that pretty clear. There are a lot of good people in California, even in places like San Francisco and Marin County, where I have lived and known some of them. Ditto for people in true Northern California. But those good people are not (and seem never to have been) representative of the society, the culture. And so many of the best (Mama Liberty, for example) have fled the area, time and time again. (Which of course, just reinforces “success” from the point of view of the powers-that-be.)
I do believe that geography and climate can and do have a tremendous influence on people and therefore their society. We see it in people like the Pueblo (especially the Hopi) and the various Inde (Apache and Navajo). And even in the variations of the societies within those larger cultures. I see it in how the various Lakota nations differ from one another. And we see it in the dominant cultures of areas like New Mexico (the differences between, say, the Farmington area and Roswell or between Silver City and Clayton). The Black Hills compared to East River in South Dakota. And so forth. But it is just one of many factors, I agree.
I believe that the land of California is one of great beauty and tremendous natural resources. The vast fertile fields of the Big Valley, the minerals of the Sierras, the timber and water of the Coast Ranges, the climate and soils of the LA Basin and other parts of Southern California. The Bay Area especially is a place of beauty, and so are the deserts – each in their own way.
So why am I picking on California? Because it is so large in population and influence, here in the Fifty States. And even in the world. If New England was once a “beacon shining on a hill” for the world, I don’t know what that makes California: a black hole, maybe?
So I think that we who love liberty can learn from California: people made choices – often very bad choices, and what we have in California is not something that developed overnight, or even over decades. A long, slow process of not teaching values of liberty and freedom, of not holding each other (and themselves) responsible. All these things can be seen there. But more to the point, if we understand what happened there in California, is there a chance we can keep it from happening elsewhere: in the Dakotas, in Wyoming and Montana and New Mexico and Utah?
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“California is a cesspool, with a complete disconnect with reality. California has become the plaything of the controllers, the statists, and those who prey upon the innocent.”
absolutely correct, Nathan. there will be a day of reckoning come upon us all.
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