California: Where the Logic of Over-Under Bites

Although I critique the over-under political formula of our educated ruling class as a bad thing, I also understand that it traps our liberal friends.

To do a bit of logic on you...

If you agree with the notion that "there is no politics without an enemy" it means that anyone in politics is necessarily battling with an enemy. In politics you strive to win the control of government, the apparatus of force, and the reason you do that is to be able to take the fight to the enemy.

In the old days of the feudal system, society was simply hierarchical. The warriors were the political leaders and the lower classes knew their place. The middling sorts were yeomen and small landholders or leaseholders. The lower orders were serfs and slaves. And political life was all about the enemies of the feudal lords.

But ever since Marx at the latest, the West has operated on a more combative political system, what I call an over-under political formula. Under this system the rulers pose as the saviors of the lower class against the oppression of the oppressor class. This oppressor class has variously been the bourgeoisie, the capitalists, the patriarchs, the racists, and now "white oppressors."

The fly in the ointment is, of course, that these "oppressors" are not an overbearing political elite armed with all the powers of government, but ordinary private individuals, for the most part unorganized, just going about their ordinary lives.

So what happens after the over-under political formula has been in operation for a generation, or getting on for a century and more?

The answer, of course, is California, which is visibly hollowing out. The upper class of tech lords and Hollywood and government bureaucracy is doing very nicely thank you. The lower class is pacified with all kinds of benefits and privileges and exemptions from the law.

And the middle class is getting screwed to the wall. The American Spectator's Dov Fischer puts things fairly well.

It is not just Steven Greenhut writing one of his excellent columns about California nor a Tucker Carlson special about Los Angeles committing suicide. Rather, this is intense and hits everyone really close to home: people really are leaving California. And, yes, I will turn off the lights.

 Because, of course, the middle class can't change anything in California. The educated class is all in on green energy and systemic racism. The lower class is getting its bennies. And the middle class is stuck in the middle with eroding schools, sky-high energy, and sky-high housing prices.

So whaddya do? All you can do in alifornais up sticks and leave.

Incidentally, when I knew some Californians back in the 1970s and 1980s I could see all this developing. But I could also see that the people I knew just accepted this as the way things are. Of course we needed to preserve hill-slopes from development.Of course water was a problem and we needed to conserve it. Of course the coastline was fragile and we needed to protect it. And so on.

Sorry folks. What you get in California -- and anywhere else where you let the educated class off the leash -- is the agenda of the educated class and the rest of the world go hang. Because our educated class only knows what gets boiled up from the deep by the thousands of activist groups. And if things don't work out the solution is more activism. And you are a racist.

In California all you can do if the educated class oppresses you is to leave. In the rest of the US we are going to have to stop them. Because there's nowhere for us to go to.