Things Are Looking Up

A pretty good rule of politics is that your enemies will always give you terrible advice. It is a lesson the so-called conservatives and Republicans have never learned. The Left offers them advice and they jump at the chance to take it. The corollary to this is you know you are doing something right when your enemies try to steal your issues. The Tories figured out that UKIP was getting traction on immigration, so they moved right on the issue and offered a referendum on Europe. It worked, even though it tanked Cameron’s career.

We have not seen much of that since the start of the populist revolt led by Trump in the GOP primaries. In fact, the GOP went the other way. The higher Trump’s polls rose, the more they rejected Trump’s issues. It was a weird thing, but the Republicans are not called the stupid party by accident. Even after he won, his own party is struggling to come to terms with the new reality. The Left, in contrast, is good at politics, so seeing some rumblings on the their side about adopting nationalist themes is interesting.

Across the Western world, center-left parties are in trouble: In Germany, Austria, France, and the Netherlands, social democrats have suffered historic electoral defeats. Right-wing populists, meanwhile, have scored a series of victories, including Trump’s election, the vote for Brexit, and the continuing erosion of liberal democratic institutions in Hungary and Poland.

But while many people take for granted an inherent contradiction between nationalism and left-wing politics, there simply isn’t one, either historically or philosophically. Throughout the 20th century, progressives mobilized for social justice most successfully when they spoke in the name of national solidarity rather than focusing exclusively on class-based interests or on abstract notions of justice. Left-wingers often cite the adage that patriotism is the last resort of the scoundrel — and with good reason. But it is important to also remember that a deep sense of national commitment underpins the egalitarian institutions we hold dear.

The historian Michael Kazin put it mildly when he wrote that patriotism “is not a popular sentiment on the contemporary left.” The influential British left-wing commentator George Monbiot has equated patriotism with racism: To give in to patriotism, he writes, is to deny the plain truth “that someone living in Kinshasa is of no less worth than someone living in Kensington.”

Yet in giving up on appeals to national solidarity, the left has forgotten the basic political argument that served it so well in the past: that out of the ties that bind together our national communities emerges a deep commitment to the well-being, welfare, and social esteem of our fellow citizens. This recognizes a basic moral intuition: We have deep and encompassing obligations to those we consider our own, based on a shared sense of membership in a community of fate — or more simply, based on our shared national identity.

American Progressives are pegged as fanatical ideologues, but that misses an essential feature of the American Left. They can turn on a dime and reverse course if it has practical value. In the Clinton years, Bill Clinton scoffed at homosexual marriage. Even Obama seemed to be revolted by the idea. Yet, they spun around on a dime and embraced the whole rainbow collation of sexual deviants when it suited them. Hillary Clinton ran her 2016 campaign on the not so subtle theme that she was an old lesbian.

Bernie Sanders did a lot of damage in the 2016 primary because he had a reputation for left-wing populism. You can be sure that he regrets abandoning his closed borders position that he held for decades. There’s a good bet he would have done much better if he had embraced a halt to immigration as a way to help the working class. The alt-right guys will tell you that some of guys came to their thing from the Bernie Sanders wing of the Democrat coalition. You can bet Democrats have noticed this as well.

None of this should suggest the Left is about to go alt-right, but when old liberal warhorses are on the ropes, because the “New Americans” are voting for their own, you can be sure there is some soul searching going on now. The math says the coalition of fringes only works if the fringe types are just a supplement to the core white vote that has always voted Democrat. Once the fringes decide they want to be in charge, and they have the numbers to make it happen, there’s no room for whitey at the top of the party.

It’s hard to know where this will go. The Left is committed to identity politics and to open borders, but that does not mean they cannot find a way to adopt populist and even nationalist language. On the other hand, the Left has pivoted on issues when practical politics demanded it. Regardless, It really does not matter from the point of view of populists and nationalists. If the other side is trying to figure out how to steal these issues, it means these issues are working. It means we’re doing something right.

63 thoughts on “Things Are Looking Up

  1. You miss the point.
    The left is MORE nationalistic than Trump.
    But it is of the nations within America exept whites.

    Puerto Ricans
    Central Americans
    Mexicans
    Other Hispanics / Latinos
    Somalis
    African Americans
    Jews

    Each has formed its own nation within the USA and demands things for its own benefit. They are often at odds – Jewish reps are being replaced with one with their district’s ethnicity – see Minnesota (Somali), New York (Puerto Rico), Califonia (Diane Feinstein). Jews don’t have many votes.

    There are the Civic Nationalist equivalents:

    LGBTQ
    Feminists
    Greens
    Unions

    Similarly, when Unions lost votes, they started being ignored – many of these are white, but the question is whether they can provide enough votes to win elections, and it is easier to increase Latinos with Amnesty, and others with Refugees.

    Trump wants to make America great again, Democrats want to pander to these “nations” within the nation. Cuckservatives and RINOs just want to hold onto power in their own palace of Versailles.

  2. I read that Diane Feinstein did not get the Democrat endorsement for the 2018 CA Senatorial race. Her Demo rival, Kevin De Leon (D) Mexico, is going to make short work of Feinstein.

  3. The situation with Di-Fi is also driven by the fact she is 84. Granted Senators have served longer, Strom Thurmond anyone?

    However there are a lot of people out there who really don’t want to wait for another six or even twelve years

    Can’t blame them really.

    That said its going to be interesting when the Kevin DeLeon’s of this world get out of the Cali bubble and run into the rest of the country

    If they can’t manage to the culture clash its going to push the US closer to some kind of solution , war or succession are the most likely

    This seems a good thing to me, much government in the US is corrupt but I’d rather be ruled by my local corrupt leaders than by someone in another state, federally or worse by some unaccountable multinational agency

    And yes I’d rather have the complete union, only eliminating the crazy left and the globalists from power and mass repatriation would make that work . The other groups, globalists (corporate and otherwise) and leftista re far too destabilizing

  4. “Across the Western world, center-left parties are in trouble: In Germany, Austria, France, and the Netherlands, social democrats have suffered historic electoral defeats“

    What is center-left today isn’t that different from center-right, it’s all Neoliberal Globalism in different flavors.

  5. sooner or late the dumb white liberals are going to learn this identity stuff will play havoc with their power and privilege. although possibly too late.

  6. With DiFi getting a vote of no confidence and Tony Villaraigosa almost even with Gavin Newsom in the polls, my home state seems to be well on the way to becoming a Latino ethno-state.

    MEChA wins. Speaking of MEChA, they are forcing some town in CA to take down a statue of William McKinley, pretty much because they can. Triumphalism is in the air. If DeLeon and Villaraigosa win, what way will Kamala Harris swing? In that scenario, I’m hard pressed to figure out a path for for her to win a second term. Maybe that’s why she wants to run for president?

    • In South Africa, there are white women in the ANC. They are happy to take up support roles. I suspect a lot of Progressive white women think that will work in the Brown Party, but I’m skeptical. Latins like their women a little more womanly. They also have no interest in blacks or Jews.

      • Yep, Latino society doesn’t work like that. When I left So Cal, all of the Latino Congressfolks in the LA Basin were women. The word “jefa” (chief) is an honorific for your mother. Those women would tear the eyes out of any gabachas who tried to get in the way.

        • In Mediterranean cultures, as well as Latin American cultures, there are two dominant female types. There’s the maternal head of the household type and there is the arm candy. There is no place for the feminist power-skirt. My hunch is female Hispanic politicians got a lot of support from whites, to offset the disinterest from male Hispanics. I’m not sure that is a sustainable formula, given what we can observe about Latin American politics.

          • Once Latina and Asian women get to the U.S., there is often a second generation new model and a new family model of careerist women. They are not half so deferential and unambitious as you might think. I’m not sure male Hispanics will tell the females to am-scray if they successfully advance the cause.

      • BTW, I was pretty down about this all weekend. But this morning, I’m amusing myself imagining the conversations in San Fran, Silicon Valley, and Westside LA. To be a fly on those walls!

  7. Sanders is a bait and switch guy. He plays up like he’s a radical socialist taking on the man but really his platform is old-fashioned New England “tax and spend” which only seems radical because it is as much of an anachronism in our day as actual socialism is.

    In reality he votes just like any other back bench Democrat.

  8. You’ve outlined the reason why conventional political analysis does NOT work with Trump. He is a Buchananite/Reaganite–with the Reagan Democrat vote behind him.

    Conventional (R’s) on the other hand, are showing their Big Money/Chamber of Commerce loyalties–and will be damn lonely at the polls.

    • Meanwhile, Kaisch is saying that the two party system has failed and from now on the US will have multiple political parties. Sounds like whistling past the graveyard to me. Trump has shown that nationalism and looking after the interests of the country’s citizens’ interest first is a winning political platform. No matter how hard they try, the PTB are not going to be able to get that toothpaste back into the tube. Please excuse the two trite cliche phrases.

      • You’re reading too much into Kasich, a simple donor class parrot. He is simply announcing that money will be going to find third party spoilers for 2020 (and beyond should another populist get through the GOP primary).

  9. Back in the 70s Cesar Chavez talked about growers using illegals as a tactic to subvert the picker’s union. He stated that he wanted tough border enforcement. Hell, the unions and a good portion of the left opposed NAFTA. But I think those days are gone and won’t be coming back anytime soon. The Democrat party is now owned by nut cases and minorities that are actively hostile to whites. And are self-righteous about it.

  10. “But while many people take for granted an inherent contradiction between nationalism and left-wing politics, there simply isn’t one, either historically or philosophically” LIES!!! I have been told, by the best academic authorities, that something like “national socialism” cannot exist, and anyone who calls himself a “national socialist” is by definition a right winger, because reasons. Who is this lying liar who lies?!?

  11. Well, they ran in 2007 as conservative Democrats in red districts, the so-called “Blue Dog” Democrats. That was always a fraud. But, people are stupid, so it worked, and it gave us (among other things), Obamacare. Virtually all of them lost (all but one who voted for Obamacare) in the 2010 landslide.

    I fully expect them to do this again. They have the national media in their pocket. It’s not like anybody running as a closed borders nationalist is going to get any media spotlights placed on them to question their fidelity and veracity.

    As far as Sanders go, my thought on him remains the same today as in 2015/16: he and Trump represent basically the same people as opposed to the Bush/Clinton/Obama/Pelosi/Boehner “Government Party”. Although, it still cracks me up that calling me “comrade” or “Putin’s troll” is a favorite put-down of Democrats these days. It’s a great example of their selective memory. This is, after all, the same Democratic Party that tried to nominate a Marxist – er, uh, “Democratic Socialist”, hahahaha – for President.

    • Granny Warren is gearing up to run a Bernie Sanders in a dress. Her trouble is she is quite stupid. Sanders, at least, understands the material. Still, the Democrats are slowly transforming into some weird form of multicultural nationalism.

      I’ll just note that after the last Progressive awakening, the Democrats offered up Humphrey, McGovern, Carter twice, Mondale and Dukakis. In other words, it took them 25 years to find a populist male candidate willing to run like a normal politician, rather than head of the grad student union. They don’t have that long this time. The Democrats are becoming the Brown Party. The question is what happens to the white Progressives.

  12. Leftist, socialists , progressives, democrats – call them what you wish, have only one goal; to attain and maintain absolute power.

    They will support or repudiate any policy or group or agenda as often as necessary – regardless of their previous stance – as long as they believe it will advance their cause.
    The ends justifies the means.
    This is nothing new for lefties.

    They really have no moral compass.

    And it is this latter characteristic of leftists – no moral compass – that makes them exceedingly dangerous.

    Just look at history.

    • They could repudiate anything, but they probably won’t. The ideological bent of white lefties dove-tails perfectly with the genocidal kitch of the worst diaspora offenders and the swarthy hoards of back benches who have been promised a nation to rule. The coalition is fragile, on account of the single minded hatred binding it with little else to speak of, but the extraction of the white and diaspora shitlib elite from their glass totem would be extremely messy for them.

      Imagine a million shitlib footsoldiers being told tomorrow that being white is alright and the platform will now include immigration restriction. Even assuming this was transparently disingenuous, it would take a pick-axe to decades of political organizing. All that to win over the most gullible swing voters? I could see it as a final gambit if 2020 looked close, but the chances are good they have decided there are too many balls in play to stop the game now.

  13. I’m especially attracted to trying to figure out how this whole mess will turn out. With California sliding into the abyss, does the rest of the country (federal government) jump in and forcibly try to stop the Calexit? My daughter lives in San Diego and is tired of stepping over drug addicted homeless crappers. She is moving back to the midwest and is not letting the door hit her in the ass. What I’m trying to get my head around is do we even have the national will to stop the invasion. Not sure we do unless what Z is saying is correct, the left flip-flops back to some sort of rational immigration policy. At this point, don’t see that happening but I hope I’m wrong!

    • Why stop it? If it succeeds it’ll be a foreign country and then we can declare war on it. After a few neutron bombs, it’ll be fit to be annexed and recolonized. Really, they can’t leave fast enough!

  14. The golden brown homo party may try a swing at nationalism but as their honkey purge continues it will be for nought. Once the moneyed yids leave the dems will implode under the weight of an alliance of the most ridiculous assortment of fringe freaks ever assembled.

    • The loons, psychos, degenerates and freaks of the Left moved from the side show to the center ring of the Big Top.

      • There’s a parallel problem there. As the freaks take over the Dem party – all the slightly less freaky will start jumping ship and looking for a place to go.

        I sense that is already happening somewhat with the alt-right. As somebody here pointed out – there are commenters out there using words that stink the place up – like “masses” and “proletariat”. One of the things that has killed the right – is letting the Neocons get a say within the right. If the Dems go full retard and the slightly normal jump ship…… don’t pick them up. You’ll swamp your own boat.

  15. If the Dems start using nationalist appeals they will be fake ones, like back in the day when so many of them were “pro-gun”. Remember back in the 1970s-1990s when so many Dem congressmen and senators had near-perfect NRA scores and yet we still had various types of gun controls and restrictions voted in? Assault weapons ban? So Gore had a perfect NRA score going in to his race against Bush in 2000.

    All they have to do is talk to their Republican buddies about how to fake being pro-American.

    I bet McCain is writing a handbook for them now.

  16. Here’s hoping the Dems have gone too far and “we won’t get fooled again”

    The rhetoric between right and left has gotten pretty nasty. The whole deplorable business pretty much put the Line in the Sand. As mentioned the oligarchs will keep pressure on their little pets in DC to keep the immigration spicket open.

    The rest of the planet is getting hip to the New World Order. Will be interesting to see if whitey can get it together before it’s too late.

  17. Well, it took Stalin and Bukharin (if I recall correctly) all of about 2-3 years to figure out the Marx/Engels “all workers of the world are the same and borderless” shit was just that and get about building their socialist paradise on the base of an appeal to nationalism.

    • It was actual Russians taking the reins of the communist party away from the largely Jewish Bolsheviks. After this trend began playing itself out the remaining Jews in the USSR became the famous dissidents we all worshipped back in the 1970s and made up the large exodus to Israel under Gorbachev.
      It is also how we got the Commentary magazine version of neoconservatism.

      • Except for Trotsky and his “permanent revolution” schtick, he just got an icepick in the skull. But largely an unheeded cautionary tale for the useful idiots.

  18. There’s a word for when center-left socialists adopt populist and nationalist policies in order to gain popular support.
    It rhymes with “Potzie”

  19. The types of people Z describes today are not the people he was ferrying yesterday, but the mob that will be leaving a couple vices behind and carrying the rest with them. Deja vu all over again. Democrazy is not self correcting.

    • Sure it is. It just takes a while for the minority that identify as ‘explosively propelled lead projectiles’ to qualify for suffrage.

      Their votes REALLY matter, though.

  20. If one were to draw a Venn Diagram of Nazi and Communist beliefs (and I mean literal Nazis and Communists, not the insults hurled on the internet), there would have been overlap between Julius Streicher & Co. and Rosa Luxembourg on the Treaty of Versailles, the decommission of the Ruhr, and the onerous war-guilt debts. The left as a deliberate suicide cult (as delineated by James Burnham) is a more recent phenomenon.

    Still, the left must be granted a massive victory inasmuch as our thinking has been altered to the point where we consider borders and sensible immigration policy “right-wing.” The kinds of things Trump or Sessions suggests are self-evident, and about as “right-wing” as not slamming your dick in a car door. Actually, considering I don’t know the extent of Anthony Weiner, Al Franken, or Weinstein’s sexual appetites, maybe “slamming your dick in a car door” is a central plank of the democratic party. I could see the #Metoo shrikes supporting it.

  21. I am more on the nrer side. For the critical reason of Demographics.

    First, the Left representing fully the commercial oligarchs who really run the West is committed to stuffing Western countries with as many people as possible. A declining population like Japan is disaster. Disaster for Nestle, for General Mills, for Amazon, for Wal-Mart, for Procter and Gamble, for Johnson and Johnson, and for various financial institutions like Wells Fargo, Bank of America, and even investment banks doing M&A work for consumer companies like Time-Warner or Disney.

    The declining native birth-rate has led to Open Border mania. I agree with Nietsche as far as looking beyond stated moralistic reasons. The real reason is paymasters — baronies founded upon commercial consumer empires like Apple or General Mills need an ever expanding consumer base hence importing the Third World and taking Whitey’s money to allow them to buy stuff.

    Secondly, this demographic imported into the West has already reached critical mass. California is minority White, and plurality Latino (not over 50% but the biggest racial group). California Senate President Kevin de Leon sees no reason why some old White Jewish lady like Dianne Feinstein should be Senator, and furthermore why Whitey should have any rights at all — to vote, to bear arms, to own property, to even exist. He’s about as anti-White as it gets, and it stands to reason. There is no way his voters will *EVER* have White income without simply seizing it from Whitey. Some semi-literate (in Spanish only) restaurant busboy or cook is not going to make money the way some Marketing Manager or Software developer will, and the only explanation is Whitey-Racism and the only remedy is take Whitey’s stuff.

    Its the Latino version of Julius Malema and Cyril Ramphosa in South Africa. Whitey (like me) will get his stuff taken. [I am a long-time native of SoCal, born and raised here.]

    Long term, there will be enormous pressure for California to simply join Mexico, as most of its population is in fact, Mexican and is only growing in that regard (i.e. born in Mexico, allegiance to Mexico). The same is true of Arizona, Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, and places like Georgia, Ohio, and Illinois. They are just not as far along as California.

    So no, the Left is INCAPABLE of adopting any sort of nationalism. Indeed Steven Pinker is quoted on Steve Sailer’s site by a commenter in Pinker’s latest book as saying that of course its better to have the Western middle and working class worse off if it means lifting Third Worlders out of abject poverty to simple poverty. This argument has been repeated over and over again in the Financial Times — its a mantra for the court jesters and minstrels of the commercial Oligarchs.

    The leading candidates of the Dems: Kamala Harris, Corey Booker, Oprah, are all on the Get Whitey Train, and Bernie Sanders was punked out like a wimp by a couple of Black ladies who screamed at him (and he being a White male just had to take it) at his own rally.

    Trump will cave on guns and immigration just like George Bush or John McCain both of whom he increasingly resembles, to be sure. But someone will take his example and rally the White minority in America (we are defacto an oppressed minority in our own nation) even with the Oligarchs against him.

    The Left vision of the future is a President Zuma with Oligarchs like the Guptas stealing the nation blind. No Whitey or nationalism allowed unless its Black or Latino Nationalism.

    • Expediency is often the undoing of even the most crafty. This last election signaled two things. One is the honky is not dying out as fast as the narrative claims. Second, the honky is waking up. Put another way, the Left got too far over their skis. That seems to be what’s happening in California. Progressives created a monster that is about to eat it.

      • I’ve been arguing with all the right wing “conservative” types I know for going on 2 decades now – that the way to defeat the left is to stop fighting them and trying to hold them back – and just let them do the stupid shit you know they want to do. Just let them ” get too far out over their skis” – as you put it (good description BTW).

        The problem we’ve had for a long long time – is that the left has always been far too circumspect about what they REALLY want – for the normies to catch on to the craziness. Another factor traveling along the same timeline – is people’s acceptance of craziness – which seems to ratchet up over time. There does reach a point where people throw up their hands and say ” fuck this – this shit is out of control” – the problem is that craziness has taken such deep root at that point – it gets really hard to rip it out fully.

        We probably wouldn’t be suffering thru much of the current day craziness of today – if leftists had been allowed to run amuck many years ago – back when people had more “conservative” sensibilities. The crazy might have been suffocated in the crib if people had just been allowed to recognize it for what it was.

        I believe the old saying was ” give them enough rope to hang themselves” . The current problems were created at least in part by pulling back on the rope.

        • I am perfectly fine with letting them hang themselves, and I’m also fine with selling them the rope and building the scaffold.

          At work I notice a more open “fuck them” attitude when the subject of leftists comes up. Granted, I work with construction types, but they certainly aren’t as hesitant to express their conservative views as they were.

    • yeah, I agree….open borders propaganda is being pushed because it increase consumer demand, which is 80% of the economy…if consumer demand drops, the assets of the elites & big corporations will decrease, and they do not like that…
      our enemy here are the big corporations, and their CEOs and plutocrat shareholders….plain and simple….that fact needs to always be foremost in our minds…

      at this point, I don’t think there is any political solution…for congress, unless I see a really radical GOP candidate on the ballot, I will vote Dem (but I will vote trump in 2020 unless I see a really radical GOP candidate in the GOP primaries)….if we want change, we need things to get much worse…and that means voting in more nonwhites…this whole white populism political thing only got going because of the outrages perpetrated via the media, starting with the saint trayvon/zimmerman trial…we need more like that, ASAP.
      We need millions of more outraged whites…and we cannot get that with GOP in control….the gop congress has no intention of passing populist legislation…let’s see if the Dems will pass the single payer they will no doubt promise in 2020.

  22. The pivot of which you speak is out and about. It’s the individualism of Pinker, Peterson, and so forth. They stride as close to the dissident position as they safely can and fish for those who are timid enough to be brought back onto the left’s moral reservation. “Take two slaverys and a holocaust, call me in the morning if you still think whites deserve political representation.”

    • That “Baghdad Bob” black pill isn’t necessary. When the left (or even the grimmer faction of the right) starts talking about something as inevitable, it’s time to fight harder. There were plenty of sensible people on the right (alt right/dissident right) who said Trump had no chance and he won. There are some smart, young white guys who are tech savvy and don’t care for our enemies, and sometimes getting rich is a fluke or an accident. Imagine a James Damore with Mark Zuckerberg’s money. As referee Frank Frank Cappuccino used to say, “Fight ain’t ovah!!!”

    • DiFi is the best the Demonrats can come up with. The others are on full race warriors and prog lunatics. DiFi doesn’t scare the normies like the others do

      Long term that should worry all whites. Because the bench of white progs who aren’t totally batshit crazy is almost gone. After them comes the rubber room squad that amount to political arsonists. Once they get in power they will burn down the country.

      • This will be one to watch. In the current Prog construct DiFi sits just barely to the left of Pinochet. Another interesting sideshow is watching just how far a white, cis, hetero guy like Schiff will debase himself trying to signal enough virtue to be eligible for a job beyond the one he has in CA. But it seems no matter how much wet work he does on behalf of the party he’s going to be stuck right where he is. Whitey is now the one working the fields in CA politics.

        • He’s actually Jewish and likely identifies as non-White and sees himself as the natural ally of Mexicans and Negros et al. But Mexicans and Negros identify him as White, just as they did to Weinstein at Evergreen State and the two buffoons at Yale. Whites and Jews (however they self-identify) have no future in the Democrat Party. If they want a progressive party, it will have to be a separate, Whites-only, party.

          • That’s always been their MO, only now, as Z points out the fringes are getting uppity. And guys like Schiff are out there still thinking if they take enough for the team, they get to move to the next job. My money says poor Adam ends up with a felony indictment and the next day the party line will be “Adam who?” Not that I’ll shed any tears.

          • The whole issue of who is white is an interesting one. Marco Rubio glows in the dark, but he’s a person of color. Feinstein is Jewish, but Hispanics see her as white, even though many Jews see themselves as not white. Whiteness is a matter of perspective now.

            Audacious Epigone has looked that the numbers and Hispanics and blacks are the most anti-Semitic groups, Whites are the least. As Muslims and Asians filter into the rainbow coalition, the results are predictable.

        • I can tell you, living here in California, the Prog whites live away from any direct consequences of the batshit crazy non-white takeover of the Left. The lines of segregation are explicit and clear. Those bronze guys working the artichoke fields in Watsonville are decorations for the people driving through the area. The Central Valley will be a nice cultural exhibit for the hermetically sealed bullet train passing through. No different from looking at the giraffes from the trains at the Safari Park. The Prog whites will just throw money over the gates of their communities via the tax bills, as their version of the Danegeld.

          Tom Wolfe’s “Bonfire of the Vanities” is perhaps a bit instructive. The likeliest interaction between the Prog white and the dusky ones is a car crash with an unregistered vehicle driven by an unlicensed uncitizen on the freeway. At which point the ambulance chasers identify an easy mark and turn up the heat.

          • Had a multi-year streak where was traveling to Palo Alto and environs on a regular basis (was running a major IT re-platforming). Used to walk around Palo Alto a fair bit and always seemed like the valley had morphed to an extreme “barbell” economy. Wealthy people that made it in tech and the serfs that made their coffee and salads and were trucked in from outside and expected to vanish each evening. Never felt like a thing that was going to go on.

      • California’s collapse trajectory is way ahead of the rest of the country. It will be interesting to see what happens to them in the near future. Every municipality is bankrupt by ordinary accounting, and almost bankrupt by cash accounting. The tiny percentage of people who pay the majority of the state’s taxes are still free to leave for now.

        More to your point: California will be a charred corpse well before the arsonists get real power in DC. Context might change things. Mass sanity has broken out on occasions past.

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