FEATURE Image: “California” by Thomas Hawk is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.

San Francisco Democrat and longtime U.S. House Representative Nancy Pelosi recently said to Bill Maher on Real Time With Bill Maher (HBO) that California “is always in the lead” and “it is up to those states” in the rest of the country whether to choose to “follow that lead.” What the former Speaker of the House stated on August 31, 2024 is insightful and, I believe, de facto correct. Vice President Kamala Harris who is running for president on the Democratic ticket in 2024 is also a California native who is its former Attorney General and U.S. Senator. Their California approach of proud diversity reflects the state’s history and is very much what’s beginning to profoundly happen, chosen or not, in the rest of the country. And there’s more to it than demographics. It is said that “every state today is a border state” but one can also say “every state today is a state of California.” In Sam Wasson’s The Big Goodbye: Chinatown and the Last Years of Hollywood (2020) – and any analysis and conclusion made in this post on its facets or any other are entirely my own – he mentions educator and author Richard G. Lillard (1909-1990) who wrote about the development of Los Angeles from the 1880s, forward. By Lillard’s observation L.A. was an open border town that ended up growing too fast. Sam Wasson’s book cites journalist Morrow Mayo (1896-1983) who wrote that L.A. had always been a commodity sold as a place to come to. When VP Harris said “Don’t come, don’t come” in Guatemala in June 2021 the comment could be read in a California context – the perennial resigned plea when faced with a constant barrage of newcomers that is the defining aspect of the Golden State’s history. Because of this unique American – indeed, California – dynamic, unlike other cities – even less so in San Francisco to the north – L.A. doesn’t speak of her past because she has no past. For 150 years L.A. knows only a constant present moment, always turning the page, moving forward. Whereas other American towns had a discernable boom stage and then settled back to normalcy, Wasson states that L.A. is a boom town in a perpetual boom stage – with “boomer” pros and cons in vision and behavior such as weird crimes. As California drew migrants from all over the country in the late 19th and 20th centuries, it draws them today from all over the world. There have been since between 2021 and 2024 nearly two million new migrants to California – or 500,000 people each and every year. With or without the necessary infrastructure to service them and the existing population, this is a massive human boom and much more than any of the other 50 states. Since the 1880’s California has imported waves of migrants, while at the same time its ideas and increasingly its own people are being exported nationwide. This California dream, as Nancy Pelosi alludes, would be spreading its wings farther beyond California’s borders than ever before if their lead is chosen by others. It is the “Californication” of the U.S. that is underway with only its level of acquiesce and attendant possible pacing the sole important choice left. If Trump believes he can undermine this juggernaut by “deporting” the state’s illegal population and those illegals dispersed across 50 states that equal all of California’s population – and in the face of this California state of mind which is already planted and alluring to many – it will be a heavy lift.

It is instructive to look at L.A. insofar as its constant booms as this phenomenon is national and shows a similar experiential trajectory to the Golden State in terms of its positives and negatives. For instance, L.A.’s booms – and increasingly the nation’s under California leadership, literal and inspired – is and will be the condition, as Wasson mentions, of an influx of the new that quite literally inflicts “destructive erasures” of what’s been – and in perpetuity as subject to the ever-boom mode. That’s the California way which this election perhaps will, as Nancy Pelosi told Bill Maher, find states choosing to follow. Even political flip flops for which, since becoming the presidential nominee Vice President Harris has been criticized for, might be read as part of enduring California history of which she is a part: that of constant boom and erasure.

Californians leaving California, under Californication, looks to be mostly in vain. Likely they are contributing to its spread. It is a California state of mind that 15,000 Haitian (legal) migrants showed up as if in one day on the doorstep of Springfield, Ohio to inflict so-called destructive erasures. To a certain extent, its “Californication” happening with Venezuelan migrants taking over real estate in Aurora, Colorado. If it hasn’t come to town yet, it must. It is the Californication of Everywhere U.S.A. For Los Angelenos and most Californians, it is forward – no past – a constant state of booms and erasures that aren’t even recalled.