California is now THE MOST ANTISEMITIC STATE IN AMERICA upped 27% after massacre.. Other states include Mass, New Jersey and New York. Here is some more backstory: No state wears its multicultural veneer more ostentatiously than California. The Golden State’s leaders believe that they lead a progressive paradise, ushering in what theorists Laura Tyson and Lenny Mendonca call “a new progressive era.” Others see California as deserving of nationhood; it reflects, as a New York Times columnist put it, “the shared values of our increasingly tolerant and pluralistic society.” In response to the brutal killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Los Angeles mayor Eric Garcetti announced plans to defund the police—a move applauded by Senator Kamala Harris, a prospective Democratic vice presidential candidate, despite the city’s steep rise in homicides. San Francisco mayor London Breed wants to do the same in her increasingly crime-ridden, disordered city. This follows state attorney general Xavier Becerra’s numerous immigration-related lawsuits against the Trump administration, even as his state has become a sanctuary for illegal immigrants—complete with driver’s licenses for some 1 million and free health care. Despite these progressive intentions, Hispanics and African-Americans—some 45 percent of California’s total population—fare worse in the state than almost anywhere nationwide. Based on cost-of-living estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau, 28 percent of California’s African-Americans live in poverty, compared with 22 percent nationally. Fully one-third of Latinos, now the state’s largest ethnic group, live in poverty, compared with 21 percent outside the state. “For Latinos,” notes longtime political consultant Mike Madrid, “the California Dream is becoming an unattainable fantasy.” Since 1990, Los Angeles’s black share of the population has dropped in half. In San Francisco, blacks constitute barely 5 percent of the population, down from 13 percent four decades ago. As a recent University of California at Berkeley poll indicates, 58 percent of African-Americans express interest in leaving the state—more than any ethnic group—while 45 percent of Asians and Latinos are also considering moving out. These residents may appreciate California’s celebration of diversity, but they find the state increasingly inhospitable to their needs and those of their families. More than 30 years ago, the Population Reference Bureau predicted that California was creating a two-tier economy, with a more affluent white and Asian population and a largely poor Latino and African-American class. Rather than find ways to increase opportunity for blue-collar workers, the state imposed strict business regulations that drove an exodus of the industries—notably, manufacturing and middle-management service jobs—that historically provided gateways to the middle class for minorities. As a recent Chapman University study reveals, California is the worst state in the U.S. when it comes to creating middle-class jobs; it tops the nation in creating below-average and low-paying jobs. Following Floyd’s death, even environmental groups like the Sierra Club issued bold proclamations against racism, but they still push policies that, in the name of fighting climate change, only lead to higher energy and housing costs, which hurt the aspirational poor. Many businesses, including small firms, must convert from cheap natural gas to expensive, green-generated electricity, a policy adamantly opposed by the state’s African-American, Latino, and Asian-Pacific chambers of commerce. Meantime, California’s strict Covid-19 lockdown policies, imposed by a well-compensated (and still-employed) public sector, have imperiled small firms. “There’s a sense that there was major discrimination against local small businesses,” said Armen Ross, who runs the 200-member Crenshaw Chamber of Commerce in South Los Angeles. “They allowed Target and Costco to stay open while they were closed. Many mom-and-pops may never come back.” Many restaurants—roughly 60 percent are minority-owned—may never recover, notes the California Restaurant Association. In the past, poor Californians, whether from the Deep South, Mexico, or the Dust Bowl, could look to the education system to help them advance. But California now ranks 49th nationally in the performance of poor, largely minority, students. San Francisco, the epicenter of California’s woke culture, has the worst scores for black students of any county statewide. Yet educators, particularly in minority districts, often seem more interested in political indoctrination than in improving scholastic results. Half of California’s high school students can barely read, but the educational establishment has implemented ethnic-studies courses designed to promote a progressive, even anticapitalist, and race-centered agenda. Unless the education system changes, California’s black and Hispanic students face an uncertain future. A woke consciousness or deeper ethnic identification won’t lead to successful careers. One can’t operate a high-tech lathe, manage logistics, or engineer space programs with ideology. California’s failure to improve conditions for Latinos and blacks was evident even before the lockdowns and recent unrest. What the state’s minorities need is not less policing, or systematic looting of upscale neighborhoods, or steps to reimpose affirmative action, or kneeling politicians; they require policies that empower working-class citizens of all races to ascend into the middle class. The state’s leaders should prioritize improving middle-class jobs and opportunities, replacing indoctrination with skills acquisition, and encouraging local businesses. Considering the nature of California politics, this can happen only if minority Californians demand something different. That could happen if enough of these residents realize that the state’s ruling progressive class is interested in their votes—but apparently not in improving their lives.
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In a modern sense this place was the garden of Eden. Calling Bolinas Lagoon a modern Garden of Eden is one of those descriptions that’s poetic but also strangely accurate. It tells me something essential about how Bill experienced that place — not just as scenery, but as a kind of origin point, a place that shaped his sense of the world before he ever stepped beyond it. Let me show you why that comparison works so well. 🌿 1. It’s a place where nature feels untouched, even when it isn’t Bolinas Lagoon has that rare quality where: the water is calm the birds move like they’ve been there forever the hills cradle the shoreline the fog softens everything It gives you the illusion — or maybe the truth — that you’re standing in a place that existed long before people and will exist long after. That’s very Garden‑of‑Eden energy. 🌊 2. It’s a place where a young person can feel both safe and infinite For someone like Bill, growing up there: the lagoon was freedom the lagoon was escape the lagoon was the one place that didn’t confine him It’s the kind of landscape that teaches a kid how to be alone without being lonely. That’s a foundational experience — the kind that echoes through a whole life. 🌱 3. It’s a place where the world feels right Not perfect — just right. The tides come in. The tides go out. The birds return every year. The water reflects the sky. There’s a rhythm to it that feels older than human problems. A place like that becomes a kind of internal compass. Even when he leaves — Crater Lake, Portland, Bangor — he’s always looking for that feeling again. 🌬️ 4. It’s a place that makes leaving bittersweet If Bolinas Lagoon was his Eden, then leaving Bolinas at eighteen wasn’t just rebellion or restlessness. It was exile in the emotional sense — stepping out of the protected world into something harsher, bigger, and more demanding. That’s why the Crater Lake years make sense. That’s why Portland, Maine makes sense. That’s why Bangor makes sense. He keeps finding landscapes that echo the lagoon in different ways: deep water quiet edges places shaped by weather places where a person can disappear into the natural world He’s not trying to go back. He’s trying to find the feeling again. 🌄 5. Calling it Eden gives his whole life a mythic undertone Not in a grandiose way — in a human way. It means: he began in a place of innocence he left because he had to he’s been wandering ever since every place he lives is a variation on that first landscape It gives his life a shape that feels both real and archetypal.
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You’ve put your finger on something many people are struggling to name: the sense that a long‑standing social equilibrium for Jews in the West is shifting, and no one is sure yet whether it’s a temporary turbulence or the beginning of a deeper realignment. Let me give you a clear, structured take on where things plausibly go from here, without catastrophizing and without minimizing the very real anxieties people are feeling. Is this a new phase of renewed friendship—or a worsening trend? The honest answer is that both trajectories are possible, and the outcome depends on forces that are still in motion. But we can map the pressures pushing in each direction. 1. Why the Trend Could Worsen Cultural and Ideological Drivers Identity-based political frameworks (oppressor/oppressed binaries) tend to flatten Jewish identity into “white-adjacent,” erasing Jewish vulnerability. Anti-Zionism as a moral litmus test has become a powerful social sorting mechanism in elite institutions. Social media ecosystems reward outrage, simplify narratives, and amplify fringe voices. Institutional Drift Universities, NGOs, and cultural institutions often adopt ideological frameworks faster than they interrogate them. Many of these frameworks treat Jewish particularism as incompatible with universalist ideals—exactly the dynamic you highlighted. Historical Precedent Periods of rising antisemitism rarely reverse on their own. They usually require: political leadership, cultural pushback, or a major external shock. None of those forces are yet clearly mobilized. 2. Why the Trend Could Enter a New Phase of Repair Despite the bleakness, there are countervailing forces that shouldn’t be ignored. Backlash Against Extremism We’re already seeing: progressive thinkers publicly questioning the rigidity of decolonial frameworks, journalists and academics calling out antisemitism within their own circles, donors and alumni pressuring universities to reform. These are early signals of a potential course correction. Re-emergence of Liberal Universalism Many people who once embraced ideological purity tests are rediscovering the value of: pluralism, nuance, and the idea that minority rights must apply to all minorities, including Jews. Jewish Agency Jews are not passive in this moment. Across the West: Jewish students are organizing, Jewish intellectuals are reframing the conversation, Jewish communities are building new alliances outside traditional political homes. This is often how new phases of Jewish–non-Jewish relations begin. 3. The Most Likely Short-Term Outlook In the near term, the trend probably gets worse before it gets better. Not because hatred is exploding, but because: institutions change slowly, ideological movements resist self-correction, and the Israel–Palestine conflict remains a flashpoint. The “betrayal” you describe—felt most acutely in progressive spaces—will likely continue until those institutions confront the internal contradictions in their frameworks. 4. The Longer-Term Outlook Long-term, I’m more optimistic. Historically, Western societies eventually recoil from ideological extremes. The pendulum tends to swing back toward: liberal pluralism, individual rights, and skepticism of purity politics. When that happens, Jews often regain their place as a valued minority within the broader liberal project. But that shift is not automatic. It requires: sustained Jewish advocacy, allies willing to speak up, and a cultural re-evaluation of simplistic identity binaries. 5. The Converso Analogy—Useful but Limited Your comparison is sharp: the pressure to “convert” ideologically is real. But the analogy breaks down in one crucial way: Today’s pressures are social, not coercive. That distinction matters. Social climates can change far more quickly than state machinery. So where are we headed? We’re in a transitional phase. The old model of Jewish–liberal alignment is cracking, but a new model hasn’t yet formed. Whether this becomes: a new era of estrangement, or a recalibrated, more honest friendship, depends on how institutions respond to the contradictions in their own moral frameworks—and how Jewish communities assert their identity without apology.
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