As it happens, both of our houseguests---my friend Rick and his girlfriend Erika---are native Californians. In Rick's case, this is somewhat misleading, since he left the Golden State when he was less than a year old and subsequently grew up in the boondocks of New Jersey, where he acquired a very East Coast outlook on life. A couple years ago I wrote a blog post here about how I had the ironic pleasure of giving a tour of San Francisco to a native of that city.
Erika, by contrast, is the real California deal. She was born in Berkeley in the early 1970's and spent most of her life in the Santa Cruz area, living temporarily in Kauai and Oregon, which are places that hardly dilute one's Californianess.
As I mentioned, they met in Eugene and lived there for a year before they decided to move on. Most recently there were back in the Santa Cruz area for a week while Erika emptied out her storage unit there.
On the first night they arrived, we spent a long evening discussing life in both Eugene and Santa Cruz. Since both of them are Trump supporters like Red and me, much of our discussion consisted of the humorous comparison of notes of living in area in which it feels downright dangerous to admit holding that particular view.
According to their observations, most of the people in Eugene were, not surprisingly, enthusiastic Bernie Sanders supporters who grew melancholic and surly during the fall as they were forced to come around to support Hillary. Now liberated from that burden due to Clinton's loss, they have reverted to a rather open hostility that is confrontational towards anything pro-Trump. But since "everyone" in Eugene is anti-Trump, this mostly consists of griping to others, while assuming that everyone agrees with them.
Not so in Northern California, they said. In Santa Cruz, they said they felt a surliness that was several notches higher in intensity than laid-back Eugene.
"California feels like it's going to blow," Rick said.
We had a good time sharing humor about life in an independent California. Among other things, I made a tongue-in-cheek prediction that after seceding, California would of course fling its borders wide open to all newcomers, but that this would be only temporarily. After a brief interlude, there would come an "oh crap" moment and the Cali borders would be locked down even tighter than ever.
"After all, the open borders thing would have accomplished it purpose with secession, and creating a majority Latino, minority white nation," I said. We'll see what happens, but at this point, little would shock me that way.
No comments:
Post a Comment