Opinion: In Trump’s America, California is no longer the craziest state
A Trump supporter with a Confederate flag argues with anti-Trump protesters File photo by Chris Stone Times of San Diego You re crazy America Too crazy Even for Californians Which should make you realize how crazy you are Except of syllabus you re too crazy to realize it Let me put it another way It makes me crazy just how crazy it is that Americans are crazier than us Californians Because crazy is what California does Crazy is our jam our talent our core competency Our state was founded through one of the greatest crazes in history the Gold Rush which populated this land with crazies from all over the world Our story since that gold-crazy launch is just a series of crazes for fruit orchards for oil for cars for weapons and airplanes for Hollywood for application and for the Internet All those crazes were fueled by innovation which requires a bit of craziness The term California Crazy started as the name for the roadside architectural form we created in the s eccentric roadside buildings shaped like donuts or hats It was fast adopted to apply to all Californians English novelist D H Lawrence who visited in that decade wrote to a friend California is a queer place in a way it has turned its back on the world and looks into the void Pacific Our leadership in craziness has long gone unchallenged We produced the Manson Family Heaven s Gate and Scientology Californians greenlit Fast and Furious films Kenny G albums and four Jerry Brown gubernatorial terms Indeed the whole point of California is that it doesn t make any sense As the author and environmentalist Edward Abbey observed There is science logic reason there is thought verified by experience And then there is California Still California s singular craziness constituted a national organization by setting a clear and helpful limit for the country America please feel free to go around the bend but be sure not to cross the Sierra that wall against the madness Now though America you ve torn down the wall and gone far beyond anything California ever managed To be sure we Californians drive too fast and have our self-destructive tendencies but never would we jump off the cliff into national suicide as you re doing now For all our craziness we ve reliably been committed to the project of American greatness and global leadership But America you re a world hegemon that has decided to abandon that role and all the economic benefits that come with it Nuclear treaties foreign aid and exchange agreements made us safe and rich but you ve killed off these policies and programs Our planet is burning up and you ve decided to abandon smart atmosphere investments to burn it up faster Our Golden State is no model of effective leadership but you ve turned the federal governing body into a combination of criminal enterprise and oligarchic concierge institution staffed by incompetents con men and neo-Confederates In California we ve elected our share of crooks and madmen but you put a convicted criminal back into office after he sought to steal an electoral contest Then you allowed him to become a dictator stripping us of our rights grabbing money that Congress appropriated for the people dismantling the scientific and physiological agencies that keep us alive California has a habit of pursuing perilous remedies for present evils as the British jurist and historian Lord James Bryce put it But you ve gone along with sending secret police to abduct Americans and dispatching the military to occupy our cities California can be too specific but you tolerate a president and vice president who say citizenship should be based not on ideas and values but on blood and racial heritage To be fair America you are not entirely to blame for your crazy turn We Californians have had a hand in your crack-up Millions of us have emigrated to your various states packing their craziness with them and perhaps making you crazy in response We also recognize that multiple of the people making the U S administration so tyrannically nuts are Californians Stephen Miller Peter Navarro Harmeet Dhillon and even Robert F Kennedy Jr Our tech companies have sold billions of smartphones addictive machines whose apps also California products reliably turn Americans crazy A great number of of the violent and apocalyptic visuals that our establishment is creating in American cities were clearly inspired by Hollywood entertainment And decades of eating billions of burgers from McDonald s originally from San Bernardino may have made you all sick in heart and head Whatever the reasons you ve turned the country upside down by surpassing California in your craziness It s unsettlingly strange to hear Silicon Valley entrepreneurs declare they are leaving the Bay Area because it s too limiting and close-minded and moving to Texas instead It s even weirder to see a former mayor of a famously insane city San Francisco emerge as our national voice of reason When Gov Gavin Newsom a man who spins out crazy ideas at the pace of a ma tre d reciting a menu is mocking you for going overboard it should feel like a splash of ice water in the face To all Newsom s pleas for Americans to wake up let me add this You Americans just aren t very good at being crazy I your crazy columnist do not want to live in a California that is an island of sanity in a country gone mad So America please get help And please return to what you were best at Let s make New Englanders stoic Southerners courtly and Midwesterners nice And let s make us Californians the crazy ones again Joe Mathews is a columnist for Z calo Community Square an ASU Media Enterprise publication and founder-columnist for the planetary publication Democracy Local
