A look at the emerging dark age in California
The coming dark age: Victor Davis Hanson took a journey through California recently and what he learned he found quite depressing.
The state bears little to no resemblance to what I was born into. In a word, it is now a medieval place of lords and peasants—and few in between. Or rather, as I gazed out on the California Aqueduct, the Golden Gate Bridge and the San Luis Reservoir, I realized we are like the hapless, squatter Greeks of the Dark Ages, who could not figure out who those mythical Mycenaean lords were that built huge projects still standing in their midst, long after Lord Ajax and King Odysseus disappeared into exaggeration and myth. Henry Huntington built the entire Big Creek Hydroelectric Project in the time it took our generation to go to three hearings on a proposed dam.
His analysis is cogent and worth a careful read. I think the most depressing point he makes is how the priorities of liberal elites of California have no connection with the real needs of the general population, and are thus causing the quality of life for those without gobs of money to decline precipitously.
Stranger still, the infusion of hundreds of billions of global tech capital created a new, politically active, multimillionaire elite, completely insulated from the consequences of their own therapeutic ideologies. The reason why California’s gas and electricity prices are among the highest in the nation, why its income, sales and gas taxes are likewise among the steepest, and why the price of housing per square foot soars over $1,000 while nearby tens of thousands of acres of open ground sit sacrosanct—essential open viewing space for those who can afford $1.5 million, 1,500 sq. feet 1970s houses—is this new rich elite.
California is No Place for the Middle Class
Easy money translated into a utopian view of living. Higher taxes were a small price to pay for the psychological reassurance that a millionaire was still liberal. Professions of abstract progressive piety make guilt-free grasping materialism possible. I suppose if you make $800,000, having your legislature outlaw dogs chasing bears and bobcats instead of building a reservoir makes you feel as if you make $80,000.
We are seeing this pattern repeat everywhere across the country. We are even seeing it repeat in Europe, with the ordinary citizens finding their lives destroyed by Islamic immigrants forced on them by pie-in-the-sky elite elected officials.
The last link is very illuminating. It shows a German townhall meeting where an elected mayor tells his citizens that rather than stop the physical abuse of women by Muslim immigrants the women should run and hide. The crowd understandably reacts in horror and indignation. Whether they will move to replace this mayor and his ilk remains an unknown. In the U.S. too many Americans remain willing to accept the rule of similar elitists, which is why we still have a viable Democratic Party.
The support of my readers through the years has given me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Four years ago, just before the 2020 election I wrote that Joe Biden's mental health was suspect. Only in this year has the propaganda mainstream media decided to recognize that basic fact.
Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Even today NASA and Congress refuse to recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are five ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation:
5. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
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c/o Robert Zimmerman
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You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above. And if you buy the books through the ebookit links, I get a larger cut and I get it sooner.
The coming dark age: Victor Davis Hanson took a journey through California recently and what he learned he found quite depressing.
The state bears little to no resemblance to what I was born into. In a word, it is now a medieval place of lords and peasants—and few in between. Or rather, as I gazed out on the California Aqueduct, the Golden Gate Bridge and the San Luis Reservoir, I realized we are like the hapless, squatter Greeks of the Dark Ages, who could not figure out who those mythical Mycenaean lords were that built huge projects still standing in their midst, long after Lord Ajax and King Odysseus disappeared into exaggeration and myth. Henry Huntington built the entire Big Creek Hydroelectric Project in the time it took our generation to go to three hearings on a proposed dam.
His analysis is cogent and worth a careful read. I think the most depressing point he makes is how the priorities of liberal elites of California have no connection with the real needs of the general population, and are thus causing the quality of life for those without gobs of money to decline precipitously.
Stranger still, the infusion of hundreds of billions of global tech capital created a new, politically active, multimillionaire elite, completely insulated from the consequences of their own therapeutic ideologies. The reason why California’s gas and electricity prices are among the highest in the nation, why its income, sales and gas taxes are likewise among the steepest, and why the price of housing per square foot soars over $1,000 while nearby tens of thousands of acres of open ground sit sacrosanct—essential open viewing space for those who can afford $1.5 million, 1,500 sq. feet 1970s houses—is this new rich elite.
California is No Place for the Middle Class
Easy money translated into a utopian view of living. Higher taxes were a small price to pay for the psychological reassurance that a millionaire was still liberal. Professions of abstract progressive piety make guilt-free grasping materialism possible. I suppose if you make $800,000, having your legislature outlaw dogs chasing bears and bobcats instead of building a reservoir makes you feel as if you make $80,000.
We are seeing this pattern repeat everywhere across the country. We are even seeing it repeat in Europe, with the ordinary citizens finding their lives destroyed by Islamic immigrants forced on them by pie-in-the-sky elite elected officials.
The last link is very illuminating. It shows a German townhall meeting where an elected mayor tells his citizens that rather than stop the physical abuse of women by Muslim immigrants the women should run and hide. The crowd understandably reacts in horror and indignation. Whether they will move to replace this mayor and his ilk remains an unknown. In the U.S. too many Americans remain willing to accept the rule of similar elitists, which is why we still have a viable Democratic Party.
The support of my readers through the years has given me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Four years ago, just before the 2020 election I wrote that Joe Biden's mental health was suspect. Only in this year has the propaganda mainstream media decided to recognize that basic fact.
Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Even today NASA and Congress refuse to recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are five ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation:
5. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above. And if you buy the books through the ebookit links, I get a larger cut and I get it sooner.
Another way to put it: California has two classes: rich elites and poor lemmings.
Why do you think they want open borders?
As soon as a group of people gets educated they leave the state or become the ruling class. They no longer are willing to do the cheap manual labor a society needs to keep the rich getting richer at the pace they like.
Tax the middle class so much they will never become rich and hire only the cheapest of workers.
But I do predict that the immigrants will soon (in a generation or so) rise up and take power by their shear mass alone. They come with a good Christian background, if the republicans can gain influence with them on that point we have a chance of saving (taking back) California.
Cruz could set some very good groundwork with this idea. He needs to talk to the churches there. Especially after he gets elected President.
The republicans can workout a good immigration policy and procedure that everyone could get behind. It will just take a lot of work on everyone’s part.
The dark age spreads, right across the country to Connecticut.
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2016/02/02/uconn-building-black-only-living-space-to-promote-scholarship.html
This I am sure will work out well, not much can go wrong with this concept. These people so confuse themselves that they in time become what they profess to despise. I shaketh my head.