As the violence against dissenters increased, the economic regulations began strangling business, and the systematic elimination of seniors continued unabated, it became harder and harder for people to survive in California. Most were frightened into silence, and as their incomes began to drop, to pay for the ever increasing size of the California government, people began looking for a way out.
That “way” came from the US federal government. Working Californians were highly educated and a net benefit to the economies of the states remaining in the US. To take advantage of this workforce, the US federal government decided to honor the US passports of those who lived in California, as long as those passports remained current. This led to a flood of emigration from California to other states. California’s government, faced with a depleting workforce, and the lack of productivity and tax revenue that followed losing the workforce, passed an “anti-emigration” law. It then attempted to arrest these “illegal” emigrants at the border, and return them to California. The US federal government, however, accepted them all. If a California citizen could cross the border anywhere, they were allowed to stay in the US. Another “diplomatic” crisis ensued, as the California political leadership decried this illegal activity by the US federal government. The flood of emigration continued, as people sought freedom and security, neither of which they could find in California.
To stop this flood of emigration, the California first cut off the border, by building a fence, and when this didn’t work, a wall to stop people from leaving. The wall extended from Yuma to Oregon and all the northern border of California. People still continued to escape, causing the state government to establish a “border patrol” to force people to stay inside the state. The California political leadership justified these extensive regulations as necessary to protect the social and economic justice goals of the new California state. Many others simply saw California as the new East Germany, and the wall as the new Berlin Wall. In the old East Germany, the communist leaders called the wall the “Antifascist Protection Rampart,” California’s politicians referred to as a “the monument to social and economic justice.” California’s citizens simply referred to it as “the wall.”
I got out just in time. I crossed at Checkpoint Colorado, between Blythe, California and Ehrenberg, Arizona, just two months before the closure order. Many of my neighbors were stopped at the border, and, if they tried to pass, shot by the border guards. It became a national embarrassment to the left in the remaining 49 states, as stories of the shootings became publicized around the country. There are “deniers” in many parts of the country, but too many people had family killed at the border. They knew what the California government had done.
It is ironic that what had begun as a protest against a wall built by President Trump to protect the United States from a flood of “illegal immigrants” ended up as a wall built by the leftist politicians in California to stop a flood of “illegal emigrants” from California, under the guise of preventing the injustices of the US Federal Government, who allowed California citizens to “avoid” their social duties of “providing for those less fortunate” than themselves. The left in California label these emigrants “selfish” and “driven by greed,” which justified any number of oppressive tactics to prevent them from leaving California. The end result is a large, ugly, graffiti scarred wall all along the Arizona, Nevada and Oregon border of California, marred with tunnels, holes, and other escape devices that people use to leave California in search of a better life.
The inner cities of California have rotted. Crime, spurred on by a series of laws that emptied California’s prisons to “rehabilitate” criminals, has run rampant. The cities are controlled by criminal gangs, who maintain a level of peace by demanding payment from legitimate businesses. The suburbs are controlled by the black masked thugs who search for evidence of “greed” and “selfishness” to make sure no one can gather up the means to leave the state. California’s political leadership continues to justify its increasing intrusions on political and economic freedom as “necessary” to protect social and economic justice. The economy continues to collapse, as those who would invest in that economy flee the state. Buildings are not maintained, houses are left to rot, the only good news is that the freeway system is empty, not because people are using mass transit, but because they no longer commute, since the jobs to which they used to commute have disappeared.
Part IV – Where were the Republicans?