Coming Soon to Your State: Californication

By David Bittinger

May 1, 2024

California has become a bad movie. It’s a big-budget turkey produced by the state’s Democrat rulers for the two audiences they care about: the prosperous and fabulous in elite enclaves, the benefit-dependent most everywhere else.

Once upon a time, California’s large numbers of middle-class citizens were largely contented. But their ability to live comfortably and safely was gradually reduced by the political and social values of their superiors in government, show business, Silicon Valley, corporate news and other sectors with ample stocks of fine wine.

Traditionally, even Californians who weren’t wealthy felt adequately nourished by California’s sunshine, palm trees and hip attitudes. Unfortunately — especially on American coasts — powerful elites have gradually pushed aside powerless middlers.

Starting around the time when Republicans became Sacramento onlookers, middle class Golden Staters began to experience life in the Golden State as less golden. California’s expanding taxes and leftist decrees increasingly protected only the insularity of the rich, the dependency of the poor, the security of government employees, and governmental folly.

A theme song for California was effectively crooned in the opening lines of a 1979 Gatlin Brothers hit:

All the gold in California

Is in a bank in the middle of Beverly Hills 

In somebody else’s name

Many a Californian with a non-golden small business or a non-golden job has come to realize that he or she — or pick your pronoun — is an extra in a real-world movie produced for California’s elite class and dependent class. Middle class strugglers began fleeing in significant numbers from 2000 to 2019 and saw their status stressed even more over the past five years.

The term for a nation ruled by and for its wealthy is “plutocracy.” But the 21st century California plutocracy is unique. These Bolsheviks in sunglasses rule their state with single-party authority, maintaining a mutual admiration society with the state’s rich and supportive condescension toward its poor.

Of course, the rich love the feel-good production and are able to laugh off the taxes. The poor naturally rely on California’s supports and entitlements while increasing their squatter ownership of sidewalks. Needy reinforcements keep arriving in droves from states and nations that don’t incentivize poverty as California does (that is, is the entire rest of the world)

Unnoticed by Border Czar “Cackles” Harris, the largest wave of illegal immigration in American history keeps washing over the country. California keeps promoting the wave. On January 1, 2024, “migrants” (previously “undocumented aliens,” previous to that “illegal immigrants”) were even gifted California’s generous Medi-Cal insurance benefit. Why? Because it’s California.

So it progressively goes. One day you’re a Venezuelan citizen struggling in an economy ruined by socialist despots (for whom you once voted). A few weeks later, for the mere price of being indentured to a Mexican cartel, you’re provided free health care by California taxpayers even though they’re on the hook for a current-year state budget deficit of at least $73 billion.

California economics: Disneyland fantasies gone global.

As America’s leading trend-setter, California keeps promoting its Hollywood-heartfelt storylines while the whole country buys tickets. This creeping influence has been known as Californication. That term was created by Red Hot Chili Peppers in a 1990 song. The broad phenomenon of California political / cultural influence has been analyzed over many years by brave California citizen and genius writer Victor Davis Hanson. He did so brilliantly in a 2023 essay (whose repost contains a couple terms probably too crude for a classy classicist).

Californication has an accidental spokesman now: California’s governor of stylish incompetence, Gavin Newsom.

Have you seen Newsom perform on TV? He’s handsome as a mannequin, actually talks and preens like a mechanized mannequin. A master of failing up, Newsom was mayor of San Francisco from 2004 to 2011. During that period, “The City” (as the faithful still grandly call it) was still mostly safe for those living behind gated walls. Today San Franciscan elites need armed bodyguards as well, which some less self-deluded Democrat rulers have.

Newsom hasn’t been alone in leadership of progressive plutocracy. San Franciscan Nancy Pelosi long maintained a leadership position in Congress, saving enough time to be a brilliant stock trader. Behold her exquisite mansion in Pacific Heights, gleaming behind 12-foot walls. For many years she relaxed there when not casting a spell on the entire country as America’s Evil Queen Speaker of the House.

Sustained Democrat rule has transformed the city once serenaded as the dreamy place “where little cable cars climb halfway to the stars.” Transformed to — what is it now? Try the world’s most pricey outdoor toilet / drug house.

Newsom has special skills. He smiles while rationalizing civic decay. He concedes “problems” in California while promising a more successful national implementation of the same policies. He implicitly presents himself as a young, healthy replacement (for a president who has trouble speaking).

Newsom’s act would seem laughable, a weak leading man in a bomb movie. But in a time when a goofy plagiarist and unprincipled grifter has become a mumbling president and the vice president addresses major issues of the day with mindless baby talk, can America correct this administration’s disasters through Hollywood-style fantasies?

Newsom’s genre is less comedy than horror. It’s the type of fright movie that draws big audiences of not very bright people. He believes that his management of San Francisco and California qualifies him to be the next president. And he’s serious.

Californication is coming to the other 49 states, maybe 52 if Democrats achieve statehood for D.C., Puerto Rico, and Haiti.

This is the progress Democrat “progressives” keep producing:

  • internationalized welfare flooding the country with maybe ten or twenty million non-citizens (nobody knows the number) demanding taxpayer support
  • repeat criminals released to terrorize city streets in the name of social justice by Soros-funded D.A.s
  • those streets now increasingly littered with syringes and worse
  • mountains of debt produced by landfills of government.

The next catastrophic president might not be another stammering, stumbling old dunce. He might be a handsome, grinning dunce in his prime.

-30-

David Bittinger lives defensively in Packers country but still feels deep affection for the Chicago he moved from shortly after the kingdom of Daley The First.As a young advertising copywriter in Chicago, he was advised by the Tribune’s wise Managing Editor to write newspaper commentary. This good advice took 15 years to sink in. The great, open-minded Tribune Commentary Editor Marcia Lythcott published him a number of times. His op-eds were also published at the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and elsewhere. Today he posts articles on his seldom-visited website curveballcommentary.com and political poetry on “X.”  He’s remained a faithful White Sox fan since the Louie-Nellie era, but is now embarrassed even to wear that fine logo. 

 

Comments 35

  1. David, the Democrats in Puerto Rico are against statehood. It’s the Republicans that want it. Things are reversed in Puerto Rico. That’s why I was laughing my rear end off when AOC, Schumer, and the rest of the east coast Democrats were pushing this three years ago. Puerto Rico would be a purple state. The Democrats there are fighting each other. So much so that a progressive Democratic Party was created. This is why the two top spots in Puerto Rico belong to Republicans.

  2. The voters, knowing the Democrats and their positions and policies, continue to elect the Democrats. Those that have realized the futility of voting against the idiots, either do not vote, leave the state, or both. The voters that elect these politicians get what they deserve – a state that is going down the drain (sound familiar, Illinois?). The Democrats pay the bills by printing funny money. We all pay the bills, and the voters become more apathetic. The road to Hell is paved with these liberal politicians, paving it with other people’s money (never their own).

  3. It’s the “Blue State Refugees” that are flooding Dane County / Madison WI and other locales around the country. Gavin while having dinner mask-less at the French Laundry in 2020 was meeting with healthcare lobbyist, which says a lot. Remember Chris Christy on the beach, Nancy getting her hair done, Whitmer and AOC going to Florida, and you can’t forget Tony Fauci sitting in the stands watching the Washington National game with his mask hanging down with a smile on his face. Victor Davis Hanson said California appears like the old south before 1864. Nice work David !!

    1. I have to very politely disagree with Dr. Hanson on his comparison of the Old South to California. He tends to be a bit challenged when it comes to that region’s history. But I love him, he can recite WWII like he lived it. And he’s a farm guy, like pretty much everyone in the Old South. He’ll come around as he gets older.

      What is happening in California today, with aims to go national is PRECISELY what was happening in the industrial North, prior to the War – and war came. Because, like today, the Liberal Northerner just could not comprehend a people being happy, even content, with life as it was while embracing traditional values and virulently opposing any knee jerk change.

      Like conservatives today in the Southland, and the Middle and Mountain west, so similar are today’s conservatives to the Old South before 1864.

      So rather than secede today, kick states out – and Mr. Bittinger makes a compelling case here!

      1. The Old South was a lot of middle-class whites who were cucked into supporting a society where the average person got to economically-compete against slave labor. Not much virtue in that.

  4. There’s a sign on I 10 at the Texas state line that says “Welcome to Texas but leave your politics behind”. Don’t know if it’s still there but it’s true.

  5. So scary, so true.

    With Mumbles & Cackles you think it can’t get worse. But then you have a knucklehead like Newsome and a knucklehead-moron like Pritzker and you scratch your head. Hmm , Mumbles/Cackles bad enough, but imagine Newsome/xxx or Pritzker/xxx or SHRIEK GASP COUGH COUGH Newsome/Pritzker. It can’t get any scarier than that. Funny (not really) the number 2 on that ticket would probably be plotting to find a way to off number 1 !

    Man, if this country ever needed something ultra major to happen this August to maybe, and I mean maybe, wake people up it’s now, with those 2 catastrophes in wait. This something needs to make 1968 look like a kids birthday party.

  6. The term predates the Red Hot Chili Peppers. While living in Rogers Park in the 1970s, I saw a car with Colorado license plates and a bumper sticker that read, “Don’t Californicate Colorado.”

  7. Agreed. I lived in CA in the late 70s and early 80s. Had a job interview in Oregon in 1979. On my way to the interview I saw a billboard that said “Don’t Californicate Oregon”. I didn’t get the job but Oregon has become Californicated, especially Portland.

  8. I first heard the term “Californicate” during a visit to Oregon in 1978. At the time, Oregonians were apparently not simpatico with their cousins in California.

  9. I really don’t think the rest of the country will buy into His Hairfullness. And VDH deserves hazardous duty pay for sticking it out in the former Golden state! Who knows, maybe the normies in CA will surprise and give us a baseball player as its junior senator in November!

    1. There are too many painful awards events (has anyone tried to watch the Grammys lately?) but if there were a Comments Awards and a special one for nicknames and insight, that one should be given to Mr. Stramaglia.

  10. At this late date, I don’t know how the Dems can avoid giving the nomination to Mumbles and Cackles. Barring physical misfortune to Mumbles, e.g., a stroke or other incapacitating occurrence, the ship has seemingly sailed on the idea of replacing that disastrous duo.

  11. “..kinfolk said Jed, move away from there. Said California is the place you oughtta be so he loaded up the truck and moved to Beverly.” Not anymore. California much like New York used to be a place to visit and explore at least once in your lifetime. Not anymore. Both are rapidly sinking to Dystopian crises due to the horrible politics they have endorsed through their voting practices. You’ve summed it up perfectly. Yet when Californians had the chance to recall Gavin the Fool they didn’t. Just goes to show you can’t save those to stupid to save themselves. I left Chicago for the same reason. I realized we we were outnumbered by the stupid. About a year ago I have noticed television ads for tourism for California. A state that never had to advertise, its luster sold itself. Not anymore. I wouldn’t spend my cash to watch people sleeping in the streets and using the streets as their toilets. New York is the same. People traveling abroad have noticed how clean the cities abroad are. Like things used to be here. Not anymore. You’ve summed it up perfectly. California has become the Elite Class served by its Servant Class. The twenty dollar minimum wage for fast food workers is the best example of this. Throw the working poor a biscuit. After the federal income tax, the highest state income tax in the country, social security and unemployment insurance pick away at the twenty dollars you’ll be lucky to net twelve take home. That’s if you still have a job. The minimum wage “increase ” wasn’t for the benefit of the workers. It was intended to keep you working for the Elites. Great article, hope you write more and hopefully John is getting better.

    1. Now I have further motivation for placing another column on JKN: reading another shrewd Comment elaboration by the eloquent Mr. Diaz. Wow, you were able to comment cleverly on my column by referencing The Beverly Hillbillies? Do you have some clever references for a column on gambling?

    2. “I wouldn’t spend my cash to watch people sleeping in the streets and using the streets as their toilets.”

      Interesting tourism idea that’s not as far-fetched as you think. During the waning days of the USSR, there were bus tours of hard-core Communist communities where foreigners could soak in the vibe of a totalitarian society just before it vanished. They were wildly successful – ‘morbid curiosity’ is a very real draw.

    1. Obama is a strong Newsom model, Tim. And though Newsom’s wealth was handed to him by people outside organized crime, he probably has a bunch of Tony Rezko-type “supporters” in his French Laundry crowd.

  13. Nobody forced the voters to cast their ballot for the moron/pols around this country. People get what they vote for.
    What we need for president is a statesman, not a low life pol.

  14. Thank you John Kass for introducing me to David Bittinger… God bless both of you excellent journalists….even though both of you skipped out of Chiraq….no, I don’t blame you, but I am jealous…God bless us all.
    Tom

    1. Tom — It’s admirable that you have such a generous, thankful temperament if, as your “jealous” feeling here suggests, you are still living in Chiraq (or should we call it CTUville)? Well, stalwart American Thomas Adams deserves blessings more than I do. My adopted state would improve if TA moved north, and the real journalist Mr. Adams properly blesses might say the same if TA moved southeast.

  15. “So it progressively goes. One day you’re a Venezuelan citizen struggling in an economy ruined by socialist despots (for whom you once voted).” The key is “for whom you once voted.” That applies equally well to the down trodden citizens of the once golden state. No matter what, Californians continue to vote for these knuckleheads. Look no further than the Guv recall from two years past. Guv Kendoll won overwhelmingly despite his oily car salesmen personna and demonstrable incompetence.

    Mr. Bittinger, you should take a political lesson from Chicago that applies to California and the rest of the country. After the disaster known a Mayor Lori Lightfoot, no one in their right mind could imagine anything worse for Chicago. We all thought there would be a major “recalibration and correction.” Right? Well instead we got Mayor Johnson. Truly remarkable. No?

    1. Of course, Mr. Kleinman is right about citizen-supported disasters in California and Chicago. Worse-than-Lightfoot did seem an almost impossible achievement, like the one my White Sox seem sure to achieve this season. Can Chicago somehow do even worse than Mayor Panic Attacks? Maybe Bozo? I’m pretty sure his clown horn went silent, but then, he would still attract fat bags of votes in Chicago’s high-turnout cemeteries.

      1. David. Think abut this. We are at a point in Chicago politics where a Mayor Bozo might actually be an improvement over our present Mayor … not by much, but a little bit.

  16. Speaking of low life worthless pols: Vallas asks for clemency for Burke!!!! Well Paul, I’m glad you lost. You are no better them the scum you ran against. Check it out in CST.
    WE ARE DOOMED

  17. re: Puerto Rico statehood……as a Puerto Rican thru marriage I observe their collective wish to remain a commonwealth rather than a state for purely economic reasons…….foremost being no income tax,,,,,,Uncle Sam pays for most infrastructure ….schools ..roads…police and fire. My in laws pay about $200 per year in property taxes as well. No wonder they all like the status quo.

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