If you live in the San Francisco/Oakland Bay Area you have likely noticed the cultural revolution taking place as this is “Ground Zero” for the massive societal change which has erupted over the past year in the wake of everything from the COVID-19 economic shutdown to the riots this past summer and fall in response to the death of Minneapolis resident George Floyd.
During the Cultural Revolution which occurred in Maoist China, roving gangs of youth dripping with contempt for their heritage and traditions and convinced their way was the only way, would force their less enlightened elders to engage in Struggle Sessions designed to embarrass, humiliate, and shame their accomplishments as well as their ancestors.
The victims of these Struggle Sessions would swear in the future to mold themselves after the new and improved version of humanity which was of course “scientifically” created from communism. And only a reactionary would be against science! We see the same thing today in the corporate and government sector with political commissars renamed “diversity officers” sending employees to Struggle Sessions until they too can first admit to and then purge themselves of their implicit biases.
Like Winston Smith, successful graduates from this “training” win the victory over themselves as George Orwell’s Winston Smith learns to do in the novel 1984. You will recall that at the end, Winston Smith “had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.”
We are now being subjected to the same treatment as our parks, institutions, and schools are renamed and the individuals initially honored are Memory Holed – our schools revise and reprioritize history, and everything from the financial sector to sports and entertainment is reorganized to focus more on identity politics than simple carefree escapism. Even Senator Dianne Feinstein cannot escape since she committed the unforgivable sin of allowing a Confederate battle flag to fly from San Francisco City Hall—way back in the unenlightened year of the actual and genuine 1984 when she was the mayor of the city.
Yet here in California this hatred for our past is not exactly new. As Victor Davis Hanson writes, this began when California lost its pride in its own heritage and broadcast to newly arrived immigrants how they were morally superior to the pioneers and settlers who initially blazed a trail to the state, conquered its frontier, established an infrastructure, and transformed it into the envy of the civilized world.
Victor Davis Hanson wrote, the “state’s implicit message to new arrivals was that the now long dead who built California—which everyone wished to come to—were racists deserving of contempt and Trotskyization, despite immigrants’ dependence on their strange 1950s and 1960 freeways, UC/CSU/JC master education plan, once-modern airports, and ingenious water projects.”
Has this rejection of our heritage and tradition improved the lives of individuals here whose families go back for generations, as Victor Davis Hanson’s family does? Or made the lives of newcomers any better? Victor Davis Hanson does not believe it has benefitted anyone. “The result of lots of fresh newcomers, a politicized education system, and an inert infrastructure is now that Californians live in something akin to the Greek Dark Ages. They wander about looking at the ruins of prior civilizations and seem dumbstruck at the nature and purpose of decaying monuments in their midst. The problem is not just that the state does not wish to build a new dam, but it is questionable whether it can anymore, even if it wished.”
And it doesn’t matter because the individuals who created and built California happened to belong to the wrong race. So the engineering, infrastructure, and logistics involved in making California a habitable state are dismissed for the lack of diverse racial identities which participated in the creation of the late, great, Golden State. “Millions drive along the California aqueduct and have no idea who built it or why, only perhaps that it gives them life. Californians love their Sierra reservoirs but haven’t a clue how hard it once was to build them or why they were ever created in the first place, much less who planned and constructed them—and who is draining them.”
The beautiful places throughout California we can all enjoy, such as Yosemite Park, remain with us for all to enjoy due in large part to the ceaseless efforts of conservationist John Muir– one of the most prominent residents of the Bay Area whose home can be seen in Martinez even today. However, John Muir is persona non grata in polite company now, due to the beliefs he shared with millions of other Americans in his era and so he is also in the process of being Memory Holed.
At some point, a lifelong resident of the Bay Area such as myself has to wonder when the revolution will begin to eat its own. After all, even progressives such as Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama were opposed to same-sex marriage only a decade ago. When will they also be considered politically incorrect reactionaries? For those who believe this obsession with identity politics may never end, take heart: Proposition 16, which would have divided Californians even further with a racial spoils system, was overwhelmingly defeated. There may be a sliver of hope left for this state yet.
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