Oh California

In college, inland not far from Los Angeles, where I was born and at that point had lived all my life, I had a philosophy professor, a young PhD from Yale, who claimed that whatever was happening in California would soon spread to all the nation. He was talking about casual clothes and barbecues, California informality, throwing out all sorts of dress codes. It was 1965 or so. He was rumored to take LSD on weekends and to flirt with female students, maybe even, somewhat secretly, to date them. He was young and unmarried and these rumors carried more glamour than scandal, and even though I left California long ago, and have left again, frequently, more than once, I remember this claim of his about California as precursor, harbinger for the nation, whenever the news from the west gets big enough to reach the east, and I rehearse the many ways that professor has already been right. The John Birch Society, Ayn Rand, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, health food diets, vegetarian- and veganism, the first American megachurch, Anglos practicing traditional Asian religions, beats, hippies, the Black Panther Party, New Age spiritualities, occupations and uprisings, street fighting resistance, the Delano grape strike, tax revolts, taco trucks, smog, emissions standards, Google, Meta, Uber, and AI, atmospheric rivers, drought, fire. Visions of utopian dystopia or the other way around, depending where you stand, in the sky or on the ground. And so on. In 1969 in Berkeley the national guard invaded. Reagan as governor called them in. Trucks of armed soldiers rolled down my ordinary residential street on the way to encircle and confront thousands protesting the destruction of People’s Park and the war in Vietnam. Which brings me to today.