Alan: When red states disparage California as "vaguely unhinged and un-American," I remind myself that The Golden States is the most prosperous, progressive and creative state in the Union.
Furthermore, Californians like being progressive, not only because it feels good, but because it is a delight to be embedded in a social milieu that works at progress, at betterment, at advancing the cause of The Common Good and The General Welfare.
It feels good -- personally and politically -- to be part of a social contract rather than live in a hardened ideological silo committed to continual re-litigation and quarrelsomeness over bygone "conservative" traditions, most of them having to do with white supremacy and white privilege.
Only progress creates a social milieu in which race-based privilege is seen as a hobbling anachronism trying to "get back to the past" where people lived in their "home on the range," where the "six shooter was king," a place where suspicion and religious superstition were mutually reinforcing - a place where "rugged individualism ruled" and, by God, you liked it... or left it.
People want to visit California - its cities, countryside, wilderness and shoreline.
Generally speaking people do not want to visit The Bible Belt.
When was the last time you said to yourself?
Let's visit Mississippi!
Let's visit Alabama.
Let's visit Arkansas!
Let's visit Missouri!
Let's visit Indiana!
Let's visit Iowa!
Let's visit Oklahoma!
Let's visit Kansas!
Let's visit Nebraska!
Let's visit South Dakota!
Let's visit North Dakota!
People are drawn to progressivism because it creates and informs a social matrix that is uplifting, energizing, a matrix that looks forward hopefully to the betterment the future will surely bring.
In California - as in most other progressive blue states - people feel the thrust of upward, onward movement and are eager for the life-giving sense of eager anticipation that comes in tow.
Notably, blue states always believe in truth and science.
Red states believe that everything good has already happened and we only need to get back to some Golden Age - "the fifties," "the frontier," "The Holy Land."
To the extent that "Golden Ages" are golden, the seductive glitter is almost always the "patina" of age seen through rose-colored glasses.
The Golden Age is an article of faith, not a restorable reality, even if a given individual's "Golden Age" actually existed in the first place.
Consider...
Until 1750, half of humankind died by age 8.
Until 1850 human beings lived half their lives with toothache.
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