California Dreaming
The phrase “California Dreaming” can mean a whole lot of things. Here we’ll we’ll point out some of them, as well as point out that California really isn’t much of a dream any longer. It’s more of a nightmare, a horror show of Hollywood proportions.
California Dreaming’s Genesis
Per Wikipedia, the phrase starts in 1849, and is similar in a way to the phrase “The American dream,” except with the American Dream you work hard, but a home, preferably with some acreage, prosper and die, and leave it all behind for your heirs.
Wikipedia:
“California Dream is the psychological motivation to gain fast wealth or fame in a new land. As a result of the California Gold Rush after 1849, California’s name became indelibly connected with the Gold Rush, and fast success in a new world became known as the “California Dream.””
So, it short, California was a novel Get Rich Quick scheme, or the idea of that anyway. Many did, and many others did not. So, what you’re dreaming of is quick money in your coin purse. However, California had much more to offer than just material wealth.
There is Beauty Everywhere
Majestic beauty abounds. Zip on over to Bishop, or Big Pine, or Mammoth, or Laguna Beach, or San Francisco, or San Diego. The point is, North or south, one cannot escape the beauty. There so much it almost makes you want to puke.
There also enough ugly to make the beauty even more beautiful. It’s sort of like the good looking man or woman hitting the bars with their somewhat homely friend as their wing-man/woman. It makes the better looking one look even better. And you know what? If you don’t know who you homely wing-person is, I got some bad news for you… It’s you.
Where is all this ugliness?
Well, Hemet, that rings a bell, but it has beauty if you know where to look. Nearly the whole of Los Angeles is pretty ugly, what with the vagrants, and Skid Row, not to mention the constant, 24 hour a day traffic. Oh, and bad roads a-plenty. Riverside is an ugly town, with traffic and smog, even in these, the days of “clean, but expensive” fuel. Oh, gas prices are scary ugly.
Sunset Blvd is plenty ugly, with aging grace that has become morbidly unattractive. Oh, and did I mention traffic? Ever drive through Hollywood? Ugh.
It was different “back in the day”
While back in the day it was smoggier, sure, back when leaded gasoline was king (you didn’t so much sharpen your pencil as you would wave in the air to gain a new tip), it was far simpler. I’m making it up about the pencil thing.
Oil fields and orange groves abounded. “Oil fields, oh the horror! All the dangerous chemicals blah blah blah…”
Calm your tits.
the only danger in the fields was the oil men running you off, or crashing your bike being stupid. Orange groves though, that’s where the demons lived. You could spend all day in the oil fields, but God forbid you venture into the groves. No one did. Ever.
Back in the day there were two Rush Hours. Morning rush, going to work, and evening rush, going home. And it was more or less an hour. Now if you leave Orange County for Riverside, or LA to OC, you’re a dead man if you leave any later than 12:30 PM. Seriously. Why is that?
California is Mismanaged
California has been so badly managed, and I don’t mean just the current crop of politicians locally, or in Sacramento, or even rhe current representatives and senators in Washington DC. Yes, they are culpable, but they certainly aren’t the only ones. This mismanagement has been on going since before the resurrection of Governor Brown, before Arnold the Governator. It’s been going on since the first iteration of Brown in the 1970’s. Shoot, since even his FATHER was governor! That’s where the state started it’s slow slide into the sea of craziness.
What can be done?
Well, under single party domination, not much. It does not matter if you have a right wing or left wing dominated government if that one wing controls it all, because you lose all checks and balances. Any ideology that creates a super-majority can, and does, lead to ruin.
“Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton
Currently this state is in the hands of the liberal cabal led by Edmund Brown. Yeah, he calls himself Jerry, just as Alphonse Capon called himself Al.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with liberalism, so long as it is tempered and kept in check. Recycling, a liberal idea. Clean air, trumpeted by liberals. However we have swung too far on the pendulum, and without a swing back, we are in danger of tipping into anarchy, and bankruptcy.
You see, those in power in this state really believe that which they say, what they spout, even if they do occasionally prove to be hypocritical. Many talk the talk, but do not walk the walk.
Not all liberals do that. A good liberal friend of mine was so concerned about the drought that he only showered once or twice a week. Icky, but I do admire one who walks the walk too.
1st and foremost, they must fear us, the people
Sacramento has forgotten that it, they, work for us, the people. They raise taxes as if THEY were earning it, or printing it, as if it was theirs and theirs alone. They forget that we, the workers, EARN the money they take for their projects. Do I want a folly of a bullet train from LA to the Bay area? No. I will never use it, but if by chance I must travel up there, and back here, I’ll fly, or drive.
I want my roads fixed, and I want it done with the money I, and you, have already been paying in state taxes for that very reason for years. Not with new taxes to replenish that which Sacrament has already spent!
They must fear for their jobs, their very livelihoods. You see, if you’re making money off the public’s tit, it ought not be a full time career anyway. Just like DC ought to have term limits on EVERYONE, so should California political offices.
We the People are Citizens
Listen and you’ll hear Sacramento talk about immigrants an awful lot, lumping those who come to our country legally with those who come here illegally. They do this to ensure future voters within their party, to strengthen their super majority. If I were a legal immigrant who did everything right, I’d be offended at this lumping together.
“But it’s racist to discriminate against our southern neighbors”. Why is that? They discriminate against their southern neighbors. The point is, come here, by all means, but do so legally. If you do it illegally, you have broken the law, right off the bat. Do it legally, and I’ll welcome you to the fabric our our nation with a brotherly hug.
What’s that saying? Those with no regards for the little things will have no regards for the large. If that’s not a saying, well, maybe it should be.
Wow, I went off topic, lol, back to California dreaming.
California dreaming was also a song by the Mamas & The Papas. As seen at…
California dreaming was also the hopes and dreams of all the multitudes who came to Hollywood looking to be the next star, the majority of which left again with nothing but broken dreams. Ah, old Hollywood, a topic for another time.
But wait a second.
If we don’t straighten California out, we will all be like those hordes of people who walked away disillusioned, with broken dreams and shattered hopes from Hollywood, both back in the day, and now.
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