California Dreamin'

Shorter lives, bigger jails and a nation of fear and loathing...

(Source: Getty Images)

Bill Bonner, reckoning today from London, England...

All the leaves are brown
And the sky is gray
I've been for a walk
On a winter's day
I'd be safe and warm
If I was in L.A. 

~ John and Michelle Phillips

We travel. We keep our ears open. Here’s what we are hearing now:

“I can remember the first time I went to California,” said a middle-aged man at a dinner in France. “It was the 1970s. I was so impressed. I wanted to stay there for the rest of my life.  

“It just seemed like paradise….the music…the beaches…the cars…I was ‘California dreaming’ all year round. Most of all, I just loved the feeling that I got back then, that I could do anything. It just seemed so open.

“I never lived in the US. But I went back almost every year.  

“But after 9/11 America changed. I got to the border, and they didn’t seem to want me to come in. Everybody was suspicious of foreigners. And by then, the highways in California were clogged with traffic. And people seemed angry. Or cynical. Or maybe just fearful. It wasn’t the same. It wasn’t as much fun. Even the good music seemed to disappear. All they had was ‘boom boom’ music. You couldn’t get away from it. You go to breakfast in a decent hotel…and they’re screaming out some awful music. Hip Hop. Rap. I don’t know what they call it, but it is awful.  

“Excuse me for sounding so critical. But I only say these things because I like America so much…I hate to see what it is becoming.

“I didn’t go for a few years…not while Covid shut down travel…but I went back last year. I went to New York and San Francisco. It was depressing.  Shocking, actually…the way the places have gotten drab…dull…dangerous…

“Americans are in their own little world. They seem to be obsessed by racism. A big waste of the nation’s energy, in my opinion.

“I’m never going back.”

Decline and Fall

The US has been slipping in the international ratings for at least 20 years…and by some measures, for more than 50 years. The US share of world GDP, for example, has been cut in half, from around 40% in 1960 to barely 25% today.

America’s share of prison inmates, on the other hand, has risen. With more than 2 million people in jail, statistically, you’re more likely to be locked up in America than in any other country. No other country comes close. China and Russia, said to be ‘repressive’ regimes, actually leave many more of their citizens at liberty than the US. China has more than three times as many people as the US, but only half as many behind bars. 

And Americans, alone among people in developed nations, are living shorter lives.  The US is now in 58^th place, after China, Kuwait and Albania, in average life expectancy. MSN:

Life Expectancy In The U.S. Is Declining at a Rapid Rate - It Began Much Earlier Than We Thought

According to Dr. Steven Woolf, the author of the study and the Virginia Commonwealth University’s Center on Society and Health director, the issue of declining life expectancy is more extensive and longstanding than previously believed.

The recent report illustrates the continuation of this upward trend in life expectancy until the 1950s when the United States held the 12th highest ranking globally. However, starting from 1955, the growth rate hit a decline, and in 1968, the United States dropped to the 29th position.

No Love Lost

Peter Hitchens, a British commentator writing in the American Conservative, told the story of his own love affair with the USA:

After I visited the USA for the first time, in 1977, I could not sleep properly for a month. As soon as I got home, I wanted to go back… 

And then it all changed. It was of course 9/11 that signaled the alteration and darkened the sky, the growing mistrust, the boot-faced bureaucracy. This was bad enough for Americans, but perhaps even more dismaying for foreign admirers. Bit by bit, the glitter came off. 

On my last visit, a change of planes at a major mid-western hub was so dingy and exhausting, and the airport itself so tired, crowded, and unwelcoming…Everywhere there were long lines of dispirited people, looking like a defeated army. Even some years ago the growing state-sponsored squalor of San Francisco was becoming evident in some parts of the city. Now I dread to go back at all. But behind it lay a feeling of a country in decline. I do not just mean that the country seems poorer and shabbier, a sensation that has grown stronger and stronger since the Iraq War. I no longer have that sensation of sunny liberation I had back in the 1970s and 1980s whenever I set foot there.

The last few times I have been, I have been glad to depart… I have fallen out of love with America. 

Don’t worry, Peter; it’s us…it’s not you.

Regards,

Bill Bonner