New California: Shithole in the Making (but not actually)
“The rule in business is, if it is generating revenue, don't fuck with it."
“What's new in California?” you might be asking yourself. I wouldn't blame you for missing this story, it ranks right up there with hornless unicorns on the “shit no decent or halfway intelligent human should care about” list. Let me explain some.
Did you know that California is “ungovernable”? Did you know that the middle class is leaving the state in record numbers? Did you know that the state is on a road to hell and jail? No wait, that's me as a teen. Anyway, an individual named Robert Paul Preston (RPP) is looking to separate out the “good” parts of California, from the rest of it, i.e. “the hippy liberal illegal immigrant loving pot smoking parts.” Supposedly, according to RPP's white paper on the creation of a new state, the largest problems that come from the state “being ungovernable” are:
“a decline in essential basic services such as education, law enforcement, fire protection, transportation, housing, health care, taxation, voter rights, banking, state pension systems, prisons, state parks, water resource management, home ownership, infrastructure and many more.”1
Wow, that all sounds really bad, I had no idea my state was in such bad shape; because it isn't.
Should I address the half-baked lies or the half baked pastry man telling them first? You know what? This is so awesome, because I don't actually have to do any work to address the half-baked lies. They are a common collection of the Right's constant liturgy of disapproval, and therefore, this work has already been done.
Thanks go out to Kevin Drum, writing for Mother Jones, for his article, “California Is Doing Fine, Thank You Very Much.” In the article Kevin Drum addresses a lot of what RPP is claiming in his white paper, so I'm going to steal/cite highlights from his work and then move on to the slightly more interesting train wreck that is RPP, shining example of the Right in California. You might, if you have the time, also read California is Working: The Effects of California’s Public Policy on Jobs and the Economy Since 2011 written by Ian Perry and published by the UC Berkeley Labor Center. (But watch out! He worked on the Affordable Care Act, he might be one of those Nazi Commie Muslims!)
Now before I start going over the all the work someone else did for me, I just really need to point out that the white paper for New California, claims both that there is a general decline in basic services, but also, in the same paragraph, claims that California is #23 in the nation based on an aggregate score measuring economy, infrastructure, education, crime and all that crap. So it is an ungovernable nation, with a troubling decline in basic services (necessitating a completely new state to be made), that is better than more than half of U.S. states in those areas?
Yes, according to RPP, that is indeed the case; this is a level of cognitive dissonance so common for his everyday consciousness that he literally put that on paper unironically. Please keep this in mind as we continue forward.
“There’s a whole cottage industry on the right dedicated to the proposition that California is a hellhole. Why? Because California is the most liberal state in the nation, and the existence of a high-tax, high-service state that nonetheless has a great economy is an affront to their principles.”2
And that's pretty much it. Kevin Drum's article, which I implore you to read, Californian or not, is a debunking of the basic myths propagated by the Right. Within that context of propaganda vs. data, both matters of public record, is where RPP comes in.
He's a talk show host that has a radio show. That show is about the U.N.'s secret agenda, Agenda 23, or something like that, and that the agenda is to destroy Capitalism and redistribute wealth and by the gods, bodhisattvas, and buddhas, why am I writing about this? Because it is literally from his “About” page.
So the U.N. is actually controlled by, ...Islamic Communist Nazis? Hey! Pay attention! This is, important news. So the Islamic Nazi Communists are planning, or have been since 1992, to use environmentalism to steal your rights, redistribute wealth, and destroy Capitalism.
And I got to tell you, he fuckin' nailed us. He's got us cold. He (like us) understands that Capitalism and the environment can not, and have not, coexisted. The unchecked rapine of Capitalism has despoiled the Earth and is slowly making it a desert. He (unlike us) champions the continued rapine of the environment for the sake of American values. Which I have to assume, because Capitalism is the all important thing here apparently, American values are Capitalism.
He (also like us) is hip to the reality that there is no such thing as American values outside of the values of Capitalism. The two map to each other, one to one. That puts the environmentalist at square odds with the Capitalist. Or it should. I guess. Who knows what “environmentalists” get up to. I assumed doing the same things as people do. I never realized that caring about having clean air and plants and animals and shit like that made you a Nazi, or a Muslim, or a Communist.
All Communist Muslim Nazis aside, this is why I like my state so much. Stuff like this and the nice 80's retro sunsets make the constant fire and drought worth it.
So anyway the goal is to redistribute wealth to the rest of the world and enslave Americans. So his greatest fear is that he'll be made to answer for the crimes of his ancestors. I can empathize. When I found out my families DNA definitely filtered through Kentucky, and then later found out from my cousin that apparently all of us are descended from Daniel Boone, I did take pause for thought. But I do not believe in blood debts (yes I know, very brave of the white guy to take a stand on this), and instead call for the immediate dismantling of all remaining remnants of the dirty deed we call making America that continue the legacy of that string of crimes, and instead have a truly egalitarian society.
But this guys greatest fear is the modern day version of Dracula, in that there's the “fear of reverse colonization." I mean, yes, I write about corporations being vampires. But my fear is rich people eating the poor. His fear is the poor getting revenge. Totally different.
Also there is the fear of depopulation, to the tune I imagine of the depopulation of the Americas by diseases brought by Europeans. And actually, the humans that were here first were doing plenty with it. It just looked empty because they had suffered a biological apocalypse. And all that before Europeans actually even got started. So the U.N. is also trying to depopulate the Earth. I guess, because that's easier, to force everyone to be, an, um, ...Communist Nazi Muslim. Nailed it. Three by three, the spells complete.
No, for him it's all about property rights, apparently. He mentions it on his “about" page. The whole thing seems like a diatribe against something personal that happened to him. Like his HOA voted on something they saw in a U.N. info pamphlet and that set him off on his mission to save the nation and the great state of California. “Why?” you might ask. Because he's one of the idiots that lives in it--that's why. But seriously I bet it's property rights. I mean don't get me wrong, I hate work, and that set me off on the adventure I call life. So I can't fault him for being passionate. An asshole and an idiot, yes, but never the passion.
So the real story here is that the Right, or as I know them, the open and unashamed Capitalists, has been on a slander and libel campaign against the state for decades. Presumably because its existence proves them wrong. That the world doesn't make any sense, that we're all just making this up as we go along, and the best thing we can do for each other is help each other.
They hate it when that happens. They want you to believe that the world makes sense, that no one made anything up, and that the only thing left to do is step on one another. I assume to keep yourself out of the grave one minute longer. That's how it feels to me, and I'm the same white guy in California that doesn't believe in blood debts. But the Goddess Eris decreed that order and disorder, creation and destruction, are the watch towers of the universe. To arise in the universe is to be subject to these furies. But not the Erinyes and Demeter, another four furies.
So you die. And mindstate capture and reimbodiment is still only found in my favorite space opera series, so I die too. Everyone dies! So the moral question is, am I going to step on people, or hold them up (sometimes by leaning on them; are you holding me up, or am I holding you up?). Most people, because the trait that led to human ascendancy and the beginning of the Holocene epoch is our pro-social behavior, try to hold each other up.
The Capitalist claims to hold people up by serving them with the highest efficiency. An unsophisticated machine answer from an unsophisticated machine consciousness.
RPP, this is the man spearheading the “movement." This month, anyway. He isn't the first to suggest this, or something like this. I'm interested to see how far he gets with this. I guess it all hinges in how many of his listeners think it's a great idea to form cells, I mean, county committees. It really hinges on whether or not the Archons are just going to be cool with some dude fucking with their cash cow. The rule in business is, if it is generating revenue, don't fuck with it. That isn't the official rule, modern businesses stress innovation and LEAN thinking. But it is don't fuck with it.
If he's lucky, this will come to nothing. Then Californians can get back to fighting the Nazis here.
Patacelsus
A Discordian for 20 years, Patacelsus finally got comfortable when the 21st century “started getting weird.” When not casting sigils, taking part in Tibetan Buddhist rituals, or studying the unfortunate but sometimes amusing stories of the dead, he’s been known to wander the hidden ways of the city, communing with all of the hidden spirits one can find in a city. As Patacelsus sees it, we’re all already free; after completing the arduous task of waking up to that we can then proceed, like a doctor treating a patient, to try to rouse others from the bitter and frightening nightmares of Archism. He laughs at Samsara’s shadow-play in lovely California, in the company of his wife, two cats, and two birds.