The Last Days of California

As 2011 dawns, and Americans awake much further to the right side of the bed than they have in many years, the disdain felt towards our own Greece on the Pacific has turned to disgust, and loathing.

Theories abound; we'll start with Goldfish and Clowns:

I know most everyone in the other 49 states hates California.

I also know why.

It used to be envy.

Now, it is deep burning anger at how a state once rich beyond compare has slit its own throat in the name of modern liberalism. In professing to care for all, California takes care of no one, let alone itself. And no song, no matter how dreamy or romantic about what was once the Golden State, can change the hideous truth about its rotting from within.

Victor Davis Hanson has spent much ink lately chronicling California's descent into third-worldism, and he speaks a softer truth to liberalism - the way one speaks to a wayward child:

What strikes me is not that leftism does not work, but that when it is indulged and doesn’t work, its beneficiaries scream at the unfairness of it all—in the fashion that a theorist who claimed 2 plus 2 equals 5 blames the construct of mathematics because his equation is not true.

...In short, there is no “them” who wrecked Greece, ruined California, subverted the climate change movement, sidetracked a half century of liberalism to come, or discredited mega-deficit spending.

“Them” you see is simply a shorthand for “I got what I wanted, and I am mad at someone or something for not allowing the world to become what I think it should have been..."

Ed Morrissey lays it out as a Zimbabwe, Mugabe-like disaster:

Nine of the top 10 metro jobless rates in the nation are California, and seven are in California’s Central Valley....

Why has California become the epicenter of unemployment? ....California’s Central Valley woes are entirely a government creation. As I wrote yesterday, the decision by a federal judge to cut off water supplies to an area that literally fed the world turned the Central Valley from an agricultural export powerhouse to a center of starvation within two years. Congress has refused to act to reverse this decision, and as a result, almost a quarter of the families in the area now need government assistance to feed themselves while living on some of the most productive land in the world.

Even the late Notorious B.I.G. knew the limits of Cali:

Going back to Cali, strictly for the weather
Women, and the weed -- sticky green
...If I got to choose a coast I got to choose the East

So what's next for the once-Golden State? Do they revolt against reality, Greek-style? Will it burn to the ground, Roman-style? Will it become a giant federal penitentiary, a la Escape From New York? Or, given the extensive freeway system, does it just go all Mad Max/Road Warrior?

Well...let's just say if riot dog shows up, we know we're in for a helluva ride...