Posted under Immigration
California: The Road Warrior Is Here
Where’s Mel Gibson When You Need Him?
Victor Davis Hanson, July 29, 2012
George Miller’s 1981 post-apocalyptic film The Road Warrior envisioned an impoverished world of the future. Tribal groups fought over what remained of a destroyed Western world of law, technology, and mass production. Survival went to the fittest — or at least those who could best scrounge together the artifacts of a long gone society somewhat resembling the present West.
In the case of the Australian film, the culprit for the detribalization of the Outback was some sort of global war or perhaps nuclear holocaust that had destroyed the social fabric. Survivors were left with a memory of modern appetites but without the ability to reproduce the means to satisfy them: in short, a sort of Procopius’s description of Gothic Italy circa AD 540.
Sometimes, and in some places, in California I think we have nearly descended into Miller’s dark vision — especially the juxtaposition of occasional high technology with premodern notions of law and security. The state deficit is at $16 billion. Stockton went bankrupt; Fresno is rumored to be next. Unemployment stays over 10% and in the Central Valley is more like 15%. Seven out of the last eleven new Californians went on Medicaid, which is about broke. A third of the nation’s welfare recipients are in California. In many areas, 40% of Central Valley high school students do not graduate — and do not work, if the latest crisis in finding $10 an hour agricultural workers is any indication. And so on.
Guest Worker Applicants
C Bowen (Hawthorne) on 02 Aug 2012 at 8:05 pm #
Good find. I wrote elsewhere a few weeks back on Road Warrior vs the Zombie meme (I tied in the popularity of the Road Warrior tag team, a little more low brow). Other folks are thinking the same thing, I guess, but it caught my attention that Hanson is not sure what role he has in the situation. He did not really mention associating with Mel Gibson’s Mad Max (might offend his typical audience perhaps?)
Hanson reads more like the French expat family in Apocalypse Now Redux (one of the added scenes in the re-release.)
Feltan on 03 Aug 2012 at 1:29 am #
I left California almost twenty years ago. I lived there almost ten years, and hated every minute of it way back then.
As a baby engineer in Silicon Valley I could see the writing on the wall. At times, I felt like I wasn’t even living in the United States. I can only imagine how much worse it has gotten.
Things are better elsewhere, but the troubling signs I saw as a young adult are now going national.
California will implode. The laws of physics almost dictate that it will, and the pols can only maintain the mask for so long.
Regards,
Feltan
rjp on 03 Aug 2012 at 5:54 pm #
Which to you think will come first?
The Road Warrior
or
Running Man
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Running_Man_(film)
I recommend if you have not seen it.
Feltan on 04 Aug 2012 at 11:23 pm #
Too bad this post did not generate more discussion. I shared this article with a number of co-workers, and it spawned some lively discussion over lunch.
Regards,
Feltan
C Bowen (Hawthorne) on 04 Aug 2012 at 11:56 pm #
That is the problem, Feltan. Yet another eloquently presented piece on decline. What more is there to discuss?
Unless one is willing to go mock this chap–this hack in the Cal State system who thought the invasion of Iraq was some epic thing–when did he start caring about California exactly?, there is not much more to add.