He may preside over what one commentator has called “our first Third World state,” but that hasn’t stopped Governor Gavin Newsom from reveling is his own prediction that the whole country will become like his California. This isn’t surprising, though. The powermongers among us would, after all, rather reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.
Of course, Newsom wasn’t thinking about the United States becoming “Californicated,” meaning, descent into a land characterized by “medieval diseases, gangs, corruption, crime, crumbling infrastructure, [and] out-of-touch wealthy elites,” as Victor Davis Hanson recently put it. Those are just by-products of what he was talking about: His predicted death of the Republican Party nationwide, which will allow the type of hegemony Democrats enjoy in the Golden State.
Newsom made his comments in a widely publicized Monday Politico interview, in which he likened today’s national Republicans to California’s GOP, which held some power in the 1990s but has in recent times become a negligible force (Democrats now have a veto-proof majority in the state legislature). As The Hill reports:
Washington Republicans will “go the same direction — into the waste bin of history, the way Republicans of the ’90s have gone. That’s exactly what will happen to this crop of national Republicans,” Newsom told Politico.
Former California Gov. Pete Wilson’s (R) push for a ballot measure in 1994 that prohibited illegal immigrants from gaining access to public schools and health care has been widely linked to the GOP’s erosion in the state.
Newson [sic] drew a connection between that and today’s politics.
“America in 2019 is California in the 1990s,” he told Politico. “The xenophobia, the nativism, the fear of ‘the other.’ Scapegoating. Talking down or past people. The hysteria. And so, we’re not going to put up with that. We are going to push back.”
Not surprisingly, Newsom has it backward and is engaging in that all-too-human habit that most characterizes leftists: projection.
“Xenophobia” and “fear of ‘the other’” are a problem, but of the Left — and it’s conservatives who leftists treat as foreigners and “the other.” This is evidenced in how liberals now generally prioritize illegal aliens over citizens, an example of which I reported Tuesday.
In fact, insofar as leftists (self-centered and solipsistic to the core) can feel a kinship with anyone, they’re more likely to have it with (im)migrants for a simple reason: These newcomers vote as they do, thus facilitating their passions and empowering them.
This brings us to how Newsom’s prediction is right for the wrong reasons. The whole nation is moving in California’s direction (and we’re allowing it). Consider: California was once a Republican state that gave us Ronald Reagan and gave him and his vice president its electoral votes in three consecutive presidential elections. Yet Reagan could be resurrected in all his rhetorical glory, and he couldn’t even get close the state’s governor’s mansion today. Note also that California hasn’t voted for a GOP presidential candidate in more than 30 years.
Other states are following suit, too. Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina, and Virginia had long been solidly Republican, but are now considered swing states. Amazingly, Arizona chose for senator radical Kyrsten Sinema (D) in 2016, North Carolina went for Barack Obama in 2008, and Virginia voted in pro-infanticide governor Ralph Northam (D). And Georgia gave Governor Brian Kemp a slim 1.4-percent victory last year over delusional extremist Stacey Abrams (who still insists that she won the race).
Then there are the erstwhile swing states, such as Illinois and New Jersey, that are now completely out of the GOP’s reach. Moreover, in general, the whole country has been moving “left” for a century. Why, even Texas, with its hardcore conservative reputation, came painfully close to making juvenile Jacobin Irish Bob (a.k.a. “Beto”) O’Rourke senator in 2018.
Yet contrary to Newsom’s and his fellow travelers’ fantasy, this leftist transformation has nothing to do with the “superiority of their ideas” and victory in the “debate arena.” In point of fact, they make no effort to debate. Realizing on some level that their agenda lacks a basis in reality, leftists prefer stifling and silencing their opposition via personal attacks, shouting people down, and big-tech censorship.
Moreover, if they really thought their ideas could so effectively sway the American people, they wouldn’t have to replace them with a more compliant people — also known as “(im)migration.” As I often point out, 85 to 90 percent of our post-1967 immigrants have come from the Third World, and 70 to 90 percent of them vote for leftists upon naturalization.
This is why Democrats love immigration (not immigrants) so much; it’s why they’ve become an open-borders party. This is also one of the main reasons California is now a Third World leftist bastion, and the rest of the country is deteriorating likewise: (im)migration-enabled demographic change.
Another major reason is that, after the Gramscian march through the institutions, the Left controls the culture shapers: the media; academia; entertainment; and, increasingly, big business. For, remember, politics is downstream of culture.
Then there’s simply the fact that what we call leftism is merely the natural result of slouching toward Gomorrah. Just as a house or car deteriorates if allowed to sit, neglected, so does civilization also move toward moral disorder without the application of energy. This gets at a great mistake of conservatism, the “idea that if you leave things alone you leave them as they are,” as G.K. Chesterton put it.
“But you do not,” he continued. “If you leave a thing alone you leave it to a torrent of changes.”
Descent into vice — otherwise known as today’s leftism — is easy: If it feels good, just do it. It’s a lot harder to maintain virtue through the generations, which is why civilizations, like people, deteriorate and die.
Of course, we don’t have to continue walking into darkness. That’s a choice. But staying on our current cultural trajectory will only send our Republic, as Newsom’s prediction informs, into the “waste bin of history.”
Photo: Chalabala / iStock / Getty Images Plus
