Posted on 12/23/2020 10:57:44 AM PST by Tippecanoe
Discussed on Rush today: =========== The Sovietization of California -------------- By Dennis Prager December 22, 2020 6 min read
I am writing this column upon returning home to California after five days in Florida. For the first time since my first trip to Los Angeles in 1974 and moving there two years later, I dreaded going to California.
That first trip, as a 25-year-old New Yorker, I experienced the palpable excitement looking at the American Airlines flight board at JFK airport and seeing "Los Angeles." For most Americans, the very name "California" elicited excitement, wonder, even envy of Californians, and most of all ... freedom. While America always represented freedom, within America, California exemplified freedom most of all.
Yet, here I am, sitting in a state where corruption reigns (one of the leading Democrats of the last half-century told me years ago that politicians in California are window dressing; the real power in California is wielded by unions) and where, for nine months, normal life has been shut down, schools have been closed and small businesses have been destroyed in unprecedented numbers.
During these last five days in Florida, a state governed by the pro-freedom party, I went anywhere I wanted. First and foremost, I could eat both inside and outside restaurants. At one of them, when I stood up to take photos of people dining, a patron who recognized me walked over and said, "I assume you're just taking pictures of people eating in a restaurant." That's exactly what I was doing. I even took my two grandchildren to a bowling alley, which was filled with people enjoying themselves playing myriad arcade games as well as bowling.
None of that is allowed almost anywhere in California. It is becoming a police state, rooted in deception and irrationality.
Restaurants have been shut down (except for takeout orders), even for outdoor dining, for no scientific reason. After ordering Los Angeles county restaurants closed, the health authorities of Los Angeles county acknowledged in court that they had no evidence that outdoor dining was dangerous; they ordered restaurants closed, even to outdoor dining, solely in order to keep people home.
The left's claim to "follow the science" is a lie. The left does not follow science; it follows scientists it agrees with and dismisses all other scientists as "anti-science."
Science does not say that eating inside a restaurant at least six feet from other diners, let alone outside a restaurant, is potentially fatal, but eating inside an airplane inches from strangers is safe.
Science does not say mass protests during a pandemic (when people are constantly told to social distance) are a health benefit, but left-wing scientists say they are — when directed against racism. In June, Jennifer Nuzzo, a Johns Hopkins epidemiologist, tweeted: "In this moment the public health risks of not protesting to demand an end to systemic racism greatly exceed the harms of the virus." She cited the former head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Tom Frieden: "The threat to Covid control from protesting outside is tiny compared to the threat to Covid control created when governments act in ways that lose community trust. People can protest peacefully AND work together to stop Covid. Violence harms public health."
Even The New York Times, in July, acknowledged the double standard: "Public health experts decried the anti-lockdown protests as dangerous gatherings in a pandemic. Health experts seem less comfortable doing so now that the marches are against racism."
Science does not say, "Men give birth" or, "Men menstruate." But the left routinely argues that "science says" such things and that "science says" there are more than two sexes, many more.
The last time I felt I was leaving a free society and entering an unfree one was when I visited the communist countries of Eastern Europe. As a graduate student majoring in communism, during the Cold War, I would travel through the countries known as Soviet satellites: Poland, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria. In the middle of my trips, I would stop in Austria to breathe free air.
Never did I imagine I would ever experience anything analogous in America, the Land of the Free, the land of the Statue of Liberty and of the Liberty Bell. But I did yesterday, when leaving Florida and returning to California.
There is no question that America is becoming, if it hasn't already become, two countries: one that values liberty, from small businesses being allowed to operate to people being allowed to say what they believe, and one that has contempt for liberty, from eating in restaurants to free speech.
I am asked almost daily by friends around the country and by callers to my national radio show whether I intend to stay in California. Were it not for all the close friends who live here and the synagogue I and a few friends founded, the answer would be no. But at a given point, I am sure that I will leave this Soviet satellite for a free state. The bigger and far more important question is: How long will the Soviet states of America and the free states of America remain the United States of America?
Good summation. They now tell you who you (collectively) voted for. Also, you are allowed to worship how you like, although not together, as long as you don’t let it influence your behavior outside of church or home.
But since the spirit tying them together is evil, it can be expected that the iron curtain will fall upon California shortly.
It won’t in 2021. Newsome destroyed many businesses and more fled. Whole entire strip malls lay vacant around me in San Jose
Ping for later read.
Good point about voting. We will soon be at the Soviet point where the leader gets 99%.
The Franchise Tax Board has been doing something like that for years. We left in March 1996 after we’d both lost our jobs. In 2010 we got a tax bill for ~5,000 dollars. Since we didn’t file our taxes in 1997 in California — because we lived in AZ then, FFS! — they went ahead and averaged out what realtors were making then and came up with a total. WTF??!!? We just ignored the bill, especially after I read that this was SOP for them in their attempt to find more money for the state.
Every single small business owner in California, and every resident of high tax California NEEDS to see this.
While other states are enjoying FREEDOM, the citizens of California, have been FORCED out of business , and are living under the oppressive rules of an UNCONSTITUTIONAL authoritarian, dictatorship.
And the craziest part is that the Democrats have done this to the people who voted for them. (They even let Santa Monica be looted and burned. Shocking.)
I felt the same way, living in California in the sixties. Southern California had its problems, especially heavy smog and urban sprawl that was gobbling up all of our open spaces, yet still, I couldn't imagine living anywhere else.
It was around 1974, when Prager made his first visit to California, that things began to go south. The previous year, Tom Bradley, a leftist Democrat replaced a solid conservative Democrat as mayor of Los Angeles. Then in '74, Jerry Brown was elected governor and H. L. Richardson, a solid conservative failed in his bid to unseat Democrat Senator Alan Cranston.
And like everything else they do, the libs accuse everyone else of what they are doing themselves.
I just listened to Rush’s Christmas message. It sounded like he’s not coming back. I’m glad I was able to hear him.
So true.........as an aside Rush’s last program of the year was one of the most emotional shows ever. Dear Lord, heal him and give our President the victory he won and heal this nation......In Jesus Name
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Well, I cried at Rush’s sign-off today.
After he leaves us, I would like to see a real million person memorial for him.
This is a shit year.
I just listened to Rush’s Christmas message. It sounded like he’s not coming back. I’m glad I was able to hear him.
_____________________
Well I guess I’m not the only one who got that feeling. :(
Yeah, I was listening today, just by chance as driving around. And I got that same feeling, like it was really his LAST show. Prayers up for him, and for our country.
L8r
I’ve wondered if Gavin Nobrain and his Demonicrats might consider seceding from the US and invite China to come in and co-govern with them.
I’m glad I was able to hear him today, too.
I go back to when his radio show came to Detroit, on my car radio. Was an early adopter of The Limbaugh Letter. Have two of his beautiful ties. Got his history books for my grandkids.
Holding back tears as I key this.
I listened to the last segment today. It made me so so sad.
You know, just to torque the left, he should be given a state funeral and lay in honor under the Capitol rotunda.
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