California is just Fucked-Up

[Ninurta]

Yes, I vote Democrat but am more or less a single issue voter and not the radical looney leftist liberal some would make me out to be and as it seems most of those that do lean left have been voted off the island, you should thank me for helping the site not be just another fully redpilled echo chamber. I purposely come here and to places like ATS so that I don’t fall victim to group think mentality by looking at both sides of an issue to form my own opinions while it seems many come here to support what they already believe (confirmation bias).

No one has been "voted off the island" unless you count them voting themselves off by voting with their feet. As far as I know - and I'm one of the ones who should know - no one at all has ever been banned other than spammers who are here to sell crap rather than add to the discussion. It's not our problem if other folks cannot hold their own in an open discussion and slink away tail firmly tucked between their legs. Maybe they should get a better argument if the one they are using ain't working right.

You, on the other hand, are more resilient than most, and capable of making cogent points. For that, we ARE grateful, since as you point out, it keeps us from becoming just another echo chamber like Facebook, which would be pretty boring.

If one's thoughts and opinions cannot stand up to challenge, then perhaps those thoughts and opinions should be revisited and revised in light of that revelation.

But as @Ninurta has pointed out, much of California is a shithole and I wouldn’t want to live there in any of the major population centers even though they may have left leaning policies I could support or benefit from. I think one should also point out the income disparity between the haves and the have nots adds to Cali’s shitholeness.

In this country, urban and rural political views seem to favor the left or the right accordingly and when you concentrate a lot of people together what do you expect? California has three of the largest top ten cites in the country so it is no wonder California has always been considered “the land of fruits and nuts”!

Indeed! California IS diverse politically, but the problem is the concentration of left-leaning folks in small areas, with right leaning folks spread out over vast areas. The situation is substantially similar here in Virginia, and I suspect across most of the nation. So what we get is people holed up in tiny areas, but in large numbers, writing policy for other folks they have no connection to, nor interaction with, and that ain't cool. In Virginia, that situation boiled over early last year when Michael Bloomberg and George Soros bought themselves a mighty fine General Assembly in a state they have no connection to in an effort to overturn the politics of the entire state. By concentrating their purchasing power in tiny but populous enclaves in Northern Virginia and around Richmond, the effectively re-colored the entire state by bypassing most of it.

The net result was a State Legislature that sought to enslave territory they could not hold. They set about trying to pass laws to take our power away out here in the hinterlands and make good little serfs out of us all. The resulting reaction from the hinterlands was to declare almost the entire state - with the exception of the Marxist enclaves that Soros and Bloomberg bought - to be "Second Amendment Sanctuaries", one county or municipality at a time. The county I live in was the first to authorize a county militia in case they wanted to test us out.

One thing that Marxists seem to have never learned after all these years is that you should never attempt to seize area that you don't have the ass to hold.

Anyhow, California, Oregon, and New York, and to a somewhat lesser degree, Maryland, are exporting personnel and infiltrating them into other areas. I believe they are doing that in an effort to take territory they cannot hold, you appear to believe they are doing it out of economic necessity. Only time will tell which viewpoint is correct, or if both are - an argument can be made for that possibility. 

Most of the exports, strangely enough, are gravitating to cities where they can concentrate their political power to seize the rest of the states they are moving to, like Texas. Idaho, North Carolina, Georgia, and Florida are undergoing, presently, the same sorts of influxes. The county I lived in when COVID became a thing saw a wave of New Yorkers try to infiltrate using COVID as an excuse, but we got rid of them pretty handily. The county government passed ordinances, also under the guise of covid defense, to send them packing. It was as much for their own protection as it was for ours - they would not have lasted as long as lighting on a limb if they had gotten burrowed in like the blood sucking ticks most New Yorkers are.

We welcome folks who are genuinely after a better life, but when they come in and try to kick OUR barstools over, it's on. If they are after a better life, and they tread our turf to find it, they need not try to bring their failed crap with them and institute it on our turf. They should instead accept that if they are looking for a better life in our world, then they should accept that better life rather than trying to change it into whatever they were running away from.

On the other hand, Texas has the 2nd largest economy and also has three of the largest top ten cities in the country; Houston, San Antonio, and Dallas all of which are left leaning in an otherwise red state.

I would bet dollars against donuts that the CA imports are gravitating to those cities in an effort to amplify their political power in Texas and thereby "flip" it. I think they are trying to seize territory they don't have the ass behind them to hold. Texas is a big state, much bigger than those 3 enclaves.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, there is a move afoot by sections of California and Oregon to secede from their states and join to other, more liberty friendly, states. Also in Colorado, there is a county taking steps to secede from CO and join to Wyoming which, if accomplished, will actually increase the population of the entire state of Wyoming by about a third. In Virginia, the state of West Virginia issued a standing invitation during the unrest here of last spring that VA counties could, at will, vote themselves into WV and leave VA. So we have that option open to us at any point.

The map is open to rearrangement along ideological lines if the Left keeps going the way they are. There are responses to these "flipping" attempts available.

I wouldn’t want to live in Texas either as it is the heart of the Bible Belt full of religious zealots wishing to impose their particular flavor of morality on my body and in my bedroom and I have already stated that the influence of religion on politics is one of my biggest issues. I’m a firm believer that our 1st Amendment protections for religious freedom should also protect us FROM religion as in the separation of church and state, something of which I am very adamant about.

Our daughter lived in San Antonio when she died. I would not want to live in Texas, either, but on different grounds. I don't like the weather climate there. The ideological climate doesn't faze me, because Bible-thumpers don't faze me. They can rant and rave all they please, because that is their right, but just as soon as one lays hands on me, they have overstepped their bounds, and one of us will come out the other side resembling a pretzel. 

I agree that the First Amendment protects freedom FROM religion as much as it protects freedom OF religion. No one can tell us what to believe, or what not to believe. We always have the option to walk away from objectionable opinions, and leave them talking to the air. We have the option as well to offer them counter opinions, to see if it breaks their brains trying to find a way to counter OUR opinion, which is usually my personal choice of action. What we don't have is the right to tell them to hide their opinions, any more than they have the right to tell us to hide ours. We no more have a right to silence them than they have a right to silence US.

Separation of Church and State is often severely misunderstood and abused. It means, for the most part, that YOUR religion cannot make policy for MY life, politically. That's why I worked in favor of gay marriage. My personal beliefs have no place in regulating how other folks choose to live. That's their choice, not mine, and not my God's. So, since the State regulates marriage, they have the same right to marry, under law, that I have. The law should be impartial, and what one has under law, the rest should also have under law. That also means gay folks don't have the right to coerce anyone to perform the marriage against their own convictions. I can't force a Catholic priest to perform a protestant ceremony for me, nor can I force a Muslim cleric to perform a Christian ceremony for me, and neither can gay folks. They have the State option open to them, under the law, and since the State regulates marriage.

Yeah, we’re a big country, don’t all get along and have our regional differences but it still boils down to the fact most Americans want the same thing – a good job, a family, a nice place to live and the independence and freedom to do what the hell we want. You’ve got to keep in mind, especially from the perspective of living in another country, is that apparent divisiveness seen from the outside is entirely media driven to sell papers, get clicks and to promote disunity. In spite of how it all may seem, I can’t think of anywhere else I’d rather live.

I'm not gonna run from them, either. If folks were to look for common ground as stridently as they look to find divisive ground, we'd all get along better. I blame that on the handlers, both right and left, who are instructing them to ignore common ground and seek division. That never ends well, and the handlers know that.

BUT - my region is definitely better than your region! More fruits, fewer cactii! Not all of us, however, share that opinion. One of my best friends from high school is, right this minute, living his life somewhere in your dessicated neck of the woods, because he chose that over this.

it takes all kinds to make the world work.

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