Thursday night at the World Fantasy Convention, I went to a panel on Fantastic California and it got me thinking, which of course is the point of going to panels.
There were a lot of stories of how growing up in, going to college in, and moving to California influenced people’s lives, but it all reminded me of something I figured out about 25 years ago:
Whatever happens in the United States happens in California first.
The thing is, when I figured this out, I wasn’t living in California – I’ve only been here 12 years. I was living in Washington, DC, and editing a legal publication on class actions. And I realized that I was heavily dependant on our three correspondents in California, because all the important legal developments started there.
You have to understand that people on the East Coast often don’t take California seriously. I mean, it’s three time zones away, and Californians who work in, say, finance, go to work at 5 am to be on East Coast time. In East Coast minds, that makes the East Coast more important.
But just as I couldn’t put out my publication without paying close attention to California cases and California court rulings, it is foolish to dismiss what goes on out here as “oh, that’s just California.”
That’s just California, the fifth (I think – maybe the fourth) largest economy in the world, the state with the largest population, the place where things happen first.
Now let me be very clear: I don’t mean only good things happen in California. Yes, California had the Free Speech Movement, the Summer of Love, and the Black Panthers (I’m a Boomer, so “the Sixties” are dear to my heart). But they also had Nixon, Reagan, Proposition 13 (which undercut so many important services by screwing up taxes), and anti-immigrant fervor (which has fortunately shifted back the other direction).
I often say that everything that’s wrong in California happened because it had Reagan first before he moved to Washington and started laying the groundwork that led to the current grifter.
I consider this a phenomenon of the last 100 years, give or take. It’s the Okies coming west after the Dust Bowl, World War II, and the explosive growth (which has been both good and terrible) out here. California was interesting before, but it wasn’t a presence.
I am now Californian enough to love many things about the place and get angry about the people who are out to destroy it. Unfortunately, those people are also in California (though they might set up their official residence in, say, Argentina), and they’re throwing money around left and right.
I think the most important thing on the California ballot is Proposition 40, the tax on billionaires. This isn’t just important for California, though we certainly need the money after the damage being down by the grifters in the federal government.
It’s important for the country. We need to show that you can tax wealth, that you can rein in the billionaires who think they should run the world. And for all those who don’t think this proposition is good enough: it’s a foot in the door. And we really need to start jamming that door open.
What worries me is that as California goes, so goes the nation. If we pass this tax, other taxes on the ultra rich will start popping everywhere. If we don’t, status quo politicians will continue to compromise with the broligarchs.
I don’t see the leading edge of the country moving to any other place anytime soon. So if you’re in California, vote for Prop. 40 (and against 41 and 42, which are meant to undercut it).
And if you’re in the rest of the country, pay attention to what happens out here. Our collective futures may depend on it.