"We escaped Commie-fornia": Californians are leaving the Sunshine State in search of a better life

 Driving home from New Mexico a couple of weeks ago, I stopped for gas at the Love Truck Plaza in Tucumcari, New Mexico. A guy pulled up at the gas pump next to mine, driving a good-sized vehicle and pulling a large storage trailer.

As I walked behind his rig, I notice a sign on the back of the trailer: "We Did It!! We Escaped Commie-Fornia. We back the Blue!!"

I've got to meet this guy, I said to myself. So I chatted with him a bit while he was gassing up. He turned out to be a real nice guy with a big smile and a sunny disposition.  He said he and his wife were moving to Florida to be nearer their grandkids.

I didn't want to intrude on this man's privacy, so I broke off our conversation without asking him about his political views.  I don't think he was some right-wing zealot.  I read him as a guy with mild political views who just wants to move to a place where life is a little easier. 

And who can blame him? I'm not making a political statement when I say that California appears to be rolling downhill like a snowball headed for hell (to paraphrase Merle Haggard). The forest fires are out of control despite everything the Californians have done to manage their public lands.

I'm not saying these massive fires--4 million acres burned this year alone--are anyone's fault.  I agree with Governor Newsom that climate change is probably the biggest contributor to the state's forest fires.  Who's done more to combat climate change than the Californians?

Nevertheless, it must be terrifying to live in a neighborhood that could be engulfed at any time during the fire season by a holocaust fire.  That little fire extinguisher you bought at Home Depot won't do you much good when the big one comes roaring down the street at 20 miles an hour.

Then, there is the growing problem of homeless, which is out of control in San Francisco and a few other California cities.  I'm not blaming that on anyone either. I have thought a lot about the homeless crisis, and I've done some volunteer work at food banks.  

I don't know how to solve the homelessness problem--made almost intractable by the fact that so many homeless people suffer from mental illness. Nancy Pelosi doesn't want homeless people living in her neighborhood, and I can't really blame her.  The image of some bum peeing in her hot tub is too horrible to contemplate.

But something else is going down on the West Coast--beyond the forest fires and the homelessness. The California legislature appears to be dominated by lunatics who, unfortunately, are not homeless. The California university system is a mess and seems to have forgotten how to teach young people how to think and reason.  

Crime.  I read that Walgreen's closed its third store in San Francisco due to high levels of shoplifting. 

The state pension funds are underwater and will someday collapse.--when, nobody knows. Who is going to bail out the California pension funds--the taxpayers of Ohio?

I find it ironic that hundreds of thousands of Americans from the Midwest came to California as refugees during the Great Depression--the Okies and others who rolled down old Route 66 in beat-up cars and trucks.  And the Californians tried to keep them out.

Now, Californians are baling on the Sunshine State and are moving east to the Rocky Mountains states, Texas, and Florida. They can count their lucky stars that the people who live in these states are mostly decent and compassionate Americans who will greet them much more warmly than the Californians greeted my ancestors when they went west in the 1930s to escape the Dust Bowl.

Not all white people live in a "place of privilege": Minneapolis City Council wants to dismantle the police department

Okie use' ta mean you was from Oklahoma.  Now it means you're a dirty son-of-a-bitch. Okie means you're scum.

John Steinbeck

The Grapes of Wrath 

Last month, the Minneapolis City Council voted unanimously to dismantle the municipal police force and replace it with an agency that will address crime more holistically. I take it that means more social workers and fewer guns.

Although the city council wants to deny police protection to the citizens of Minneapolis, some officials still want it for themselves. The city hired a private security firm to protect three council members at the cost of $4,500 a day. In other words, security for me but not for thee.

A CNN reporter asked Lisa Bender, president of the Minneapolis City Council, what people are supposed to do if their homes are being burglarized. "What if in the middle of the night my home is broken into," the reporter asked. "Who do I call?" 

Bender basically said the police aren't necessary to deal with a home invasion because if you're calling 911 to report a burglary, you're coming from a "place of privilege."  By privilege, I think Bender meant white privilege. 

If I follow her reasoning aright, Bender is basically arguing that white people don't deserve police protection from theft because they (or perhaps their ancestors) benefited unfairly from our society's structural racism.

But of course, that's bullshit. 

As far as I know, my family hasn't exploited anybody. My great grandfather on my father's side worked in a brick factory in England. Sometime in the 1880s, he immigrated to Canada with his wife and children and finally wound up in Kansas. No slaves on that side of my family.

My mother's people emigrated from Germany before the American Revolution. They settled in Pennsylvania, and several of my ancestors fought in George Washington's army. No slaves or racial exploitation on the German side of my family.

Even if you buy the tortured argument that my ancestors engaged in racial exploitation simply because they were white beneficiaries of a racist society, they certainly paid for that sin. Both sets of my grandparents lived in the Dust Bowl during the Great Depression and suffered greatly. 

Although my immediate ancestors did not migrate to California during the 1930s, many of their relatives and acquaintances did. Much like today's Mexican immigrants, Oklahomans uprooted themselves and headed to the Golden State in search of a better way of life.

And when they rolled up to the California border in their broken-down cars, the state police would not let them enter. These economic refugees were referred to as Okies--a term almost as derogatory as the N-word.

Think of that: Today's California politicians want to abolish all immigration laws and allow anyone to enter the country--even criminals. But in the 1930s, the Californians denied entrance to American citizens who just wanted to work and feed their families.

American history is tainted with systemic racism to be sure. Africans were enslaved in the South, Chinese workers were abused in the West, and the Irish were exploited in the East. And if you want to know how the Okies fared in 1930s California, view John Ford's great movie, The Grapes of Wrath. 

But today, in the second decade of the 21st century, we all deserve to be treated equally and with respect. And if someone breaks into our homes, don't we all deserve police protection?

Okies, keep out of California.

Harvey Weinstein, the Napa-Sonoma Wildfires, and California's Travel Ban: Greetings from Flyover Country

Awhile back I wrote about California's legislative travel ban, which bars state-funded travel to states that passed so-called unprogessive legislation. Eight states are now on that list, including Texas and North Carolina.

At the time I wrote, I considered California's travel ban to be arrogant, self-righteous, and gratuitous. But that was before the Harvey Weinstein scandal and the Napa-Sonoma wildfires. Now I consider the travel ban to be pathetic.

People who live in flyover country have grown accustomed to being reprimanded by the California entertainment elites--all those beautiful people who are so cool and sensitive. We've endured public scoldings from the California legislature, which passed a law that bars state-funded travel to eight of California's sister states.

And now we find that Hollywood, the capital of coolness, has been enabling a sexual predator and accused rapist for decades. Everyone in the movie business knew Harvey Weinstein was preying on vulnerable women. His own company knew; in fact Harvey's employment contract contained a clause obligating Weinstein to reimburse his employer for future sexual abuse lawsuits (he had already settled with eight accusers) and to pay escalating penalties for future sexual assault complaints.

And then came the Napa-Sonoma wildfires, which have killed at least 40 people and scorched 350 square miles of the California wine country. Firefighters are pouring in from all over the United States to help fight these fires--including firefighters from North Carolina, which is under California's travel ban.

Do you think the California legislature will bar North Carolina fire crews from tackling the blaze in the Napa Valley? No, of course not. California's politicians want all the help the state can get to put out the deadliest wildfire in California history--even help from insensitive North Carolinians.

Do you think Hollywood will ask the folks in flyover country to boycott all the  movies associated with Harvey Weinstein? No. The movie industry depends on the rubes to buy movie tickets and $10 popcorn. Puh-leeze buy a ticket to see all the movies Harvey Weinstein and his cronies vomited into American culture.

Do you think any of Hollywood's supercilious, pompous asses will apologize to middle America for all the judgmental lectures they delivered while they covered up the Weinstein scandal? No, I don't think so.

But it is not my purpose to scold Hollywood or California politicians now that the Golden State's hypocrisy has been exposed. I don't wish to descend to the level of Alex Baldwin.

No, I wish to evoke the spirit of Woody Guthrie, the great folk singer and Dust Bowl refugee who migrated to California during the Great Depression, back in the days when California state troopers turned Okies away at the state border.

"This land is your land," Guthrie sang. "this land is my land.

From the California to the New York island

From the Redwood Forest

To the Gulf Stream watersThis land was made for you and me.

So this is my message to California:

We, the people of flyover country, grieve for you as you battle the Napa-Sonoma wildfires, and fire crews from all over America will come to help. We'll even continue watching the retched movies that Hollywood grinds out ever year.

But here's the thing: This land is not just your land. It's our land. It was a land made for all of us. So let's all be a little more tolerant toward one another.

Public Philosophy Network boycotts Texas: Oh, the awful humiliation!

Hey you don't know me, but you don't like me

You say you care less how I feel
But how many of you that sit and judge me
Have ever walked the streets of Bakersfield?

Streets of Bakersfield

Dwight Yoakam and Buck Owens 

The Public Philosophy Network joined The Association of American Law Schools and the state of California in boycotting the state of Texas. The PPN announced that it is moving its 2018 conference from Denton, Texas to Boulder, Colorado.

  

 Why? The group opposes the Lone Star State's immigration policies and a new Texas adoption law, which, the PPN maintains, discriminates against gay people. "The basis of publicly engaged philosophy is the absence of barriers to participation," Robert Frodeman, a PPN spokesperson, explained. "Every person should feel welcomed regardless of their [sic] place of origin, sexual orientation or gender identity."

And besides, Frodeman might have added, the restaurants in Boulder are better than the ones in Denton, Texas.

I have a couple of thoughts about this latest boycott of Texas:

First, who gives a damn if a gang of knucklehead philosophers decides to hold its wingnut conference in Colorado instead of Texas? Philosophy programs are collapsing like aluminum beer cans at universities all over the United States. I say let these nerds nurse their delusion that what they say and do is important. 

And what exactly do the PPN professors say and do? Here's a sample of the group members' scholarly interests, taken from the PPN web site.

Wendy Lee, a PPN member and philosophy professor at Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania, listed her areas of scholarly expertise as follows: "philosophy of language (particularly later Wittgenstein), philosophy of mind/brain, feminist theory, theory of sexual identity, post-Marxian theory, nonhuman animal welfare, ecological aesthetics, aesthetic phenomenology, and philosophy of ecology." Total cost to attend Professor Lee's university for a year: $24,587.

Tadd Ruetenik, a PPN member and philosophy professor at St. Ambrose University in Iowa, described his interests to include pacifism, vegetarian ethics, and prophetic pragmatism. And what does it cost to take courses from professors like Mr. Ruetenik at St. Ambrose University? $30,000 a year, not counting room and board.

And then there's Maureen Linker, a PPN member who teaches at University of Michigan at Dearborn. Her academic interests: "Implicit Bias, Epistemic Privilege and Epistemic Injustice, Social Difference and Difficult Dialogues." What does it cost to attend Professor Linker's institutition? If you are a non-Michigan resident, it will cost you $29,000 for books, tuition and fees.

No wonder the discipline of philosophy is collapsing at American universities. Students have figured out they are paying too much to attend college to take courses from professors who specialize in vegetarian ethics and epistemic injustice.

And here' my second reflection on the PPN boycott. Although these kooky academics don't realize it, the boycott of a state based on prejudice is reminiscent of the Okie migration into California during the Great Depression.

As John Steinbeck chronicled in The Grapes of Wrath, California state police actually blockaded the state's highways and turned back Dust Bowl refugees at the California border. In the minds of many Californians, the Okies (who were actually from several Southwestern and Midwestern states) were a substandard class of humans who would pollute the pure and sunny atmosphere of the Golden State. 

My analogy is not perfect. The Californians of the Dust Bowl years were trying to keep disfavored people out of their state. Today's prejudice involves a refusal to visit a state deemed a pariah by political elites. But the prejudice is the same. And didn't Professor Frodeman, PPN's spokesperson, say his group believed people should be welcomed regardless of their place of origin?

On the other hand, the Public Philosophy Network's decision to boycott Texas may be a good thing. I'm not sure Texans would feel safe having a bunch of wacky philosophy professors roaming around the plains of North Texas, babbling about epistemic injustice, vegetarian ethics, and nonhuman animal welfare. 

Regional bigotry in the 1930s

References

Nick Roll. Philosophy Group Moves Meeting Out of Texas. Inside Higher ED, August 3, 2017, accessed August 5, 2017, 

https://umdearborn.edu/admissions/undergraduate/reasons-attend/cost-snapshot.