[Cross-posted at The Left Coaster.]
07/25/17 0417.53 PST
San Jose, California
Out of control, that was the frightened parental accusation put upon California after the catastrophic election 2016, for calls had gone out that now we were under the yokel of an idiot who would withdraw from the Paris climate accords it was time to secede from the Union.
Galactic in absurdity—secession from the Union is as likely as yours truly preparing breakfast for Alicia Silverstone—I still always like secession talk when it bubbles up, for it highlights how truly huge we are economically and civically and what we really could do in the Union if we chose to.
Single payer health care? Can do. An integrated electric statewide train network with car carriers and shower/sleeper cars? No problem. Expand and improve upon the greatest reservoir and public water system ever built? Oh yeah. Put solar cells on every roof and completely reorganize the quasi-public utility of Pacific Gas and Electric? Okay.
Such a list of possible accomplishment has many dimensions, primarily based upon the most shining characteristic of Californians themselves: we work here. One truly wonders what the perception of California is outside of the Union—hippies in San Francisco, babes at the beach, the hotbed movie scene of LA, who knows—but whatever it is if it isn’t primarily about the California worker and American/Global capitalism it’s glaringly wrong.
California is presently ranked sixth on the list of world economies, how the hell do you think we got there? By workers and management who show up every day and give it all, 50 weeks a year, sweetie, bricklayers and painters and writers and housecleaners and retail managers and cooks and engineers of every stripe, many more also wake up and wear it all day, labor and bosses and customers and the road.
That’s who we primarily are and always will be, workers and managers in an American capitalism place. Know too getting to the Sweet Six on the world stage was and is only possible with a massive civic public investment, this is a place of amazing dynamism and growth with a very big government underpinning all of it. We build roads, reservoirs, a huge dual university system (SJSU 95) and public local investment to a significant degree by American standards.
That’s how you get the wonders of Silicon and Salinas Valleys, amazing Los Angeles and San Francisco, real American dreams being lived every day by millions of people, by civic investment and belief in Californian government. California Democrats built this, had we followed the Trumpian Republicans we’d be like Kansas, crippled with lying, stupidity and cruelty, sputtering economically along with a lot of unhappy Republican nobodies going nowhere.
As noted before for all of California’s righteous accomplishments we are capable of so much more, but current leadership under Governor Jerry Brown has decided civic goals should be a mega-super-mighty-penis Super Train. Hmm.
It was duly noted earlier in the year California implemented through the legislature a six cents a gallon gas tax, we need it to fix our roads and counting on the Feds is like counting on Trump to tell the truth. We need roads, government is the only way to have them, get it, Kansas?
It was also acutely remembered that when it was time for a major public education investment Governor Brown eschewed real government functionality and put the issue into a Brexit-like ballot initiative, threatening to smash our schools if it didn’t pass.
Governor Brown is a classic male chauvinist, god I’m sick of them, if liberalism means muscling up for trains or roads I’m your man, but if it means helping little people women and children get and education or healthcare, well, okay, I’ll go along.
Governor Brown is also a sane, perceptive, self-examining human being, we disagree on an approach to American liberalism, that’s all. He does care about California and our people, he shows up, his work on climate change has been exemplary, he loves his wife, he feels grief and pain just like all of us. I’ve let him know this year I appreciate his service and his adherence to the truth.
A classic California summer rolls along, millions of workers in the commute every weekday, wildfires, movies, students getting ready for Fall, families raising children and caring for parents, real American dreams really happening in a vast kaleidoscope of civic engagement that lives in the truth and never forgets our little people. There are problems with a long way to go, but that is always who we really are.