There is a state where whites have been a minority since 1990, where the Democratic Party occupies 62 of the 80 seats in the legislature, where we find two of the cities with the most billionaires on the planet, but also where we find the largest army of homeless people and fentanyl addicts in the first world, a state where in 1992 the last major racial riots took place that shook the American elites.
California is home to two sectors of the economy that have little or no competition from the rest of the world: show business in Los Angeles – America’s biggest export – and tech companies in San Francisco, such as Meta or Google. Both sectors compete with almost no one else and so are, in many ways, immune to the economic ups and downs that the rest of the country experiences. For example, whether interest rates are high or low makes little difference to Hollywood or Silicon Valley.
California is living its parallel reality. In this context, the so-called WOKE policies related to gender, diversity and feminism are in place, and in this state in particular, they are given the green light to be further developed. In this parallel reality, petty theft is no longer pursued and that is why organized gangs assault shopping centers where each criminal is careful not to cross the $950 barrier in what they steal, so the police do not intervene.
That is the bubble from which the Democrats get the bulk of their campaign funding, and from that bubble comes their presidential candidate.
How do Republican voters see California? As the future that must be avoided at all costs. Against which we must fight. In their view, Californian elites have little or no faith in the values they are trying to universalize. In other words, for Republicans, these elites are like a bunch of Alberto Fernándezes. They see the culture of cancellation as the big entertainment producers trying to cover themselves from the lawsuit industry, but also as an advance to cover up their sexist, abusive and racist past. By crucifying a few Harvey Weinsteins and Kevin Spaceys, these big film and television studios can quickly wash their hands of the matter.
The perception of tech companies is even worse. If Donald Trump threatens to shut down Google, it is because the average voter is angry at the influence and power that these octopuses are accumulating. And the only way to counteract this is through the federal government.
Republican voters are convinced that companies based in San Francisco are trying to promote the progressive culture of their city to an absurd degree. And they are determined to stop this spread.
In short, California takes the form of an American dystopia. A dystopia where the country remains ultra-rich – that was not and is not in question in the superpower – but increasingly hostile. A dystopia where, on the big screen and at the Oscars, racial problems are supposedly resolved, while a trip on the Los Angeles subway reveals them once again in a poignant way.
The Republicans
On the other hand, Donald Trump. The former president insists that his arrival at the White House in 2016 had an exclusive purpose: a U-turn in industrial and commercial policy. He is sincere. He assumed and annihilated the free trade agreement known as Trans-Pacific. He renegotiated the never-digested free trade agreement with Mexico. Thanks also to the pressure from Bernie Sanders from the left and to a China that the pandemic forced to show itself as aggressive as it really is, this industrial and commercial policy is today undisputed. Onshoring, nearshoring or, at least, a clear message to companies to leave China. The superpower reserves for its territory the cutting-edge technology factories such as semiconductors.
Everything else, in Donald Trump, is either demagoguery or a blow to the head. The first problem for the former president is that, since the liberal and open trade policy has already been abandoned, that flag is useless to him in the factory states like Michigan that gave him victory in 2016. Nor can he accuse the Democrats of being adjusters, because, faced with the Trumpist challenge of detonating the state accounts and the debt, Joe Biden went even further. The two-party system buried fiscal responsibility without crying.
So the former president must exaggerate the unmistakable Republican catharsis: Christian values, immigration, isolationism.
He is trying to kill three birds with one stone with his vice presidential candidate: he comes from the industrial swing states, is an evangelical Christian and at forty years old he looks like a successor. The problem is that Senator James Vance is mobilizing the Democratic voter base more than his own. Why?
African-American voters can’t help but see a ticket of two privileged white men attacking a black woman, gays remember when he said same-sex marriage was a “bizarre distraction,” childless women are still waiting for an explanation of why he called them “ladies who live with their cat,” and, except in Florida, a good part of Latinos are beginning to notice the blurring of the line between attacks on undocumented immigrants and outright racism.
Added to all this is the fact that the Supreme Court, with a permanent 6-3 majority in favor of conservatives, allowed states to ban abortion, which harmed poor, i.e. black, women, and made race and class quotas in higher education illegal. Again, African Americans were harmed.
Little by little, the pieces of the new Republican coalition that Donald Trump tried to put together are beginning to fall apart. The Orthodox Jews remain in the coalition, but not the bulk of the Jewish electorate, which will once again vote Democrat out of fear that white supremacists will gain legitimacy and even government positions. The community knows these guys all too well.
In short, the Republican Party is returning to its original form: representing white America. The difference now is that it has gotten rid of many subtleties and is welcoming extremists, like the coup plotters who stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
The dystopia of white supremacy is a mirror image of the Californian dystopia. In November, Americans will have to decide on the edge of which of these two abysses they are less likely to slip. And fall.
Source: Ambito
David William is a talented author who has made a name for himself in the world of writing. He is a professional author who writes on a wide range of topics, from general interest to opinion news. David is currently working as a writer at 24 hours worlds where he brings his unique perspective and in-depth research to his articles, making them both informative and engaging.
