疯狂的加州:从未有这么多人如此愿意离开一个自然的天堂

万得福

按：作者维克多·戴维斯·汉森，胡佛研究所高级研究员。本文译自《国家评论》，英文标题“It's Still a Mad, Mad California ierra”。

局外人唐纳德·川普之所以脱颖而出，一个原因便是：精英们受意识形态驱动制定议程，却让别人承担后果，人们对此愤怒已久。

在人类的诸罪中，虚伪和假冒为善尤其为人不齿：巴拉克·奥巴马反对在内城贫民区建立特许学校（译注：由政府投资独立运作的学校，旨在为上不起私立学校的学生提供选择），却把女儿送进华盛顿最好的预科学校。（旧金山）湾区的环保人士起诉要求中止从Sierra水库引水灌溉的合同，尽管他们依赖约塞米蒂的赫奇赫奇水库（Hetch hetchy project）把清澈的山泉水送到旧金山的水龙头。

美国的进步主义精英凭借自身的影响力、教育背景、财力、文化特权，得以摆脱糟糕的学校、未被同化的移民社区、危险的邻居、犯罪潮以及普遍的贫穷，这些都是他们的政策带来的必然后果——别人承受的后果。遥不可及的抽象完美主义是一剂强大的心理鸦片，可以填补进步主义者对其特权和财富的负罪感。

这种荒谬在加州尤为真实，在一个功能失调的自然天堂里，一群沿海的显要人物在世界上最独特美丽的飞地中炫耀自己的美德。加州正在经历一场“完美风暴”：犯罪在增加，囚犯在减少，非法移民仍在涌入，还有破纪录的贫困。困境中的中产阶层正在逃离这个过度监管和超额负税的州，情况就更糟糕了。新来的穷人怀着对高额福利，为精英服务的工作以及政府雇用的希望来填补了他们的位置。

圆石海滩或拉荷亚（译注：均为海滨度假胜地）离马德拉或门多塔（译注：均为加州中部城市）就像火星离地球那么远。沿海的精英欣赏加州两个阶层的现状，就像中世纪的领主珍视当时僵化的阶级那样。庄园制度确保农民永远是服从、依赖、有用的仆人，同时，领主称赞他们所谓的开明封建制度，即使他们向中世纪教会寻求赦免自己的罪。没有中产阶级，领主们就不用害怕那些粗人想要自己的小城堡和护城河。

随便找一家加州的U-Haul（注：美国最大的卡车出租公司）分店，租车进入加州的频率只是离开的一个零头。在文明史上，从未有这么多人如此愿意离开一个自然的天堂。

然而400英里长的海岸线上，随着旺盛的需求房价飙涨。将这两个事实放在一起就不难解释这个矛盾了：沮丧的加州内地人（整个非沿海中产阶级）没有钱，也没有能力搬到圣莫妮卡或圣芭芭拉的沿海社区，只好离开加州去低税的地方，“如果我住不起沿海，就去爱达荷州”。在斯托克顿和图拉尔这样的地方，经济和房市都是奄奄一息了，统治阶层的政策必然带来停滞，但他们永远不会住那里。与此同时，沿海信条告诉我们脸书、苹果、好莱坞和斯坦福会真的可以供养我们，用3D打印出汽油，或者开发应用软件来提供木材和石头给我盖房子。

加州的犯罪率再次上升，有时甚至很显著。2015年洛杉矶各类抢劫、袭击、凶杀案件上升了5到10个百分点。自2014年以来，暴力犯罪猛增了38%。去年5月，加州警察局长协会抱怨说自从47号提案（此提案将所谓“非严重”罪行重新归类为轻罪）通过以后，数十万被定罪的罪犯逍遥法外，人口超过10万的中心地区犯罪率上升了超过15%。州长杰里·布朗是释放假释犯（包括两千多名终生监禁犯人）最多的加州州长。

远离布伦特伍德或阿瑟顿的街道成了什么样？

让我描述一下在弗雷斯诺（译注：加州中西部城市），最近两周发生的事情。几天前邻居在路上问我，是否将任何往外寄的邮件放进过镇上的蓝色联邦邮箱，就在邮局的边上。我放过。他也放了，几个小时后信件被撕成碎片又送回他家，里面的支票不见了。一个好撒马利亚女人把沿街散落的破碎信封拼起来找到了他的回信地址。我还不知道在小偷光顾邮箱之前，我的账单有没有被取走。

我们加州乡下人大都进城里寄信件，因为我们乡村的邮箱经常被帮派照顾，以至于从家里寄东西无异于自杀（对于进来的邮件我们有防弹的装甲箱）。

上周同一天，我正在农场外面开车，我看见一辆商用房车停在我路旁的私人土地上，车上印着家具和地毯清洁公司的标志。司机正有条不紊地把一天的废水往果园里排。当我靠近他，他用结巴的英语对我保证：没问题的——都是有机的。当我坚持让他停止下来，因为废水闻起来像溶剂，他礼貌的回答：好的，我已经差不多弄完了。在事态可能更一步恶化时，这个非常礼貌的排污者才同意收手。

在加利福尼亚的内地农场里，请求别人不要把他们的溶剂水排在路旁被认为是粗鲁的。在路边，我看见早晨的新垃圾堆在路边——装着纸尿布和垃圾邮件的袋子还开着。而加州禁止使用不正确的塑料购物袋（而且居然禁止免费的纸质购物袋），显然加州新式的后现代法律并不能使我们前现代的路边干净。记住：加州知道它不敢在乡村执行法律禁止丢垃圾，因为那样太政治不正确了而且也没有办法实施。相反，它对店主的购物袋收费。在加利福尼亚，忽视重罪需要严格起诉轻罪。

坐在我的卡车里——突然因为拥有它而感到幸运。去年夏天，这辆车在弗雷斯诺的餐厅停车场被偷了，当时我儿子借车去赴宴。四天后车子找到了，还能发动，但是点火器坏了，内饰也被毁了，在成堆的垃圾中，有大麻烟头，啤酒瓶，废物，还有装满臭饭的纸盘。

还是在那14天时间里，我妻子把车停在弗雷斯诺她的办公楼外去打印一份文件。她没关上车库门，离开了约有十分钟。十分钟对一桩加州盗窃案已经是绰绰有余了。她的新混合动力自行车就被偷走了。我告诉她最近保释犯经常在街上闲逛，直到他们能买得或者偷一辆车——像她的自行车有时候就不能幸免了。同一周，银行通知她信用卡被取消了——因为无数的快餐消费记录在得克萨斯出现。加州的基本规则：用信用卡支付任何费用时都要小心，因为号码会经常被盗窃并售出。

一直到这糟糕的两周之前，我还认为情况在变好。至少在最近的24个月里，特警队捣毁了一个隐藏在果园里的贩毒／卖淫／拳击据点，离我家只有三分之一英里远。那个据点沿街的房子都被警察包围，根除了帮派成员。非法移民引起的森林大火被扑灭了。这两年我也没有丢铜线了。

我也曾认为美国文明的证据基于以下三个假设：人们可以自信地在街上的联邦邮政信箱里寄信；一处于关头的人可以在急诊室得到安全优质的照顾；并且可以去当地的车管局轻松清除一个错误状态（a state error）。

这三点都不成立了。我绝不会再往联邦邮政信箱里放一封信，除非我在加州其他地方，如卡梅尔或阿瑟顿（译注：均为海滨城市）。

两年前，我遭遇一起严重的自行车事故被救护车送进当地急诊室，完全醒来后，我看见一个穿制服的警察站在我的床边保护急诊病人，因为旁边的隔间里是一个重刑犯——在企图偷窃失败以后用拳头打碎了车窗，他的黑帮亲戚正在探访。

不久前，车管局没有把必须的驾照贴纸寄给我。在线咨询都被预定了。然后我犯了个错误，没有预约直接去当地的办公室，还是我47年前首次拿驾照的地方——当时这个办公室是效率和专业的典范。半个世纪后，弯弯曲曲几十米长的队一直排到了门外，这个办公室被指定为非法移民发证的车辆管理中心。整个办公室，在语言和操作意义上，被重新调整以帮助非法人群，以至于合法公民困难到几乎不可能像我们以前那样办事。20分钟后，长队几乎没有移动，我离开了。

使守法良民离开加州的不仅是伪善、高税收或者犯罪。还有加在伤口上的侮辱。我们不仅忍受全国最高的收入筐（译注：根据美国税收法规分配各种收入来源的类别），商品价格以及汽油税，还有几乎最差的学校和公共设施。我们有最昂贵的福利系统和最多享受福利的人。我们有最多的亿万富翁和最多的贫困人口。无论是实际数字还是所占全州人口百分比。

加州的犯罪同样折射出两个矛盾的加州：海岸精英的加州和其他人的加州。加州是全国最具竞争力，最过度管控，最后现代的州，同时也是最野蛮最像19世纪的州。

我乡村的街道上有两户人家相隔不远。其中一家，家徒四壁。十几个移动厕所，报废汽车，以及无证也未接种疫苗的狗——全都不受政府监管这个章鱼的巨大触角的影响。

附近，另一家正被管控的喘不过气来，当他试图重建一个烧毁的小屋时：他的水井在打了三十年后突然被政府发现违章了，根据一条新的法规，他的井到过滤道之间超过了规定距离。所以他另打了一口昂贵的井。然后突然又被监管部门发现离他邻居的农用井靠的太近了，他只好把昂贵的新过滤道打破一部分。一家有许可证的承包商建了一个新的污水处理系统，一个有钻井许可证的人钻了一口新井，这样他一年花了40000美元之后，仍然不被允许开始重建他900平方英尺的房子。

前一个例子里，移动厕所和茅屋的主人显然付不起钱，属于免除责任的一类人。后者则是一个罕见的守法的加州人，他也就成了管控的靶子——因为他是消失的中产阶级中的一员，他们能够而且会按照命令付钱。他是一个濒危物种，只有征他们的税才能养得起那些吃福利者。

在野蛮的加州，我们不仅要忍受太多且很少得以应用的法律，而且受到不公平的执行，这两方面都使我们苦不堪言。当一个州有四分之一的人口出生于外国，数十个被联邦法律豁免的保留城市，以及数百万人在此非法定居，它会做出符合政治成本收益的选择。

野蛮的加州是一个相互宽容，互不干扰的地方，自由主义者的梦想（或噩梦）。为不法者支付的惊人费用是由日益稀少的守法者提供的，他们向来遵守一切法律，尽管现在的法律令人生畏。

沿海的富人可不理会。即将离任的芭芭拉·鲍克赛参议员指责输水工程，而她所安居的兰乔米拉（Rancho Mirage），却是一个由昂贵的输水工程创造的沙漠绿洲。杰里·布朗州长离任后，不会住在贝克斯菲尔德，但很可能住在格拉斯谷。高犯罪率，小企业的逃离以及水资源短缺不会限制南希·佩洛西（译注：资深国会众议员）的帕拉迪奥别墅的栅栏，或是马克·扎克伯格以及其他硅谷亿万富豪的安保墙——他们推动更多的监管，高高在上的同情受压迫者，依照中世纪的假定，就是财富和特权能使他们摆脱他们理想主义的后果。对于扎克伯格先生和佩洛西女士的邻居来说，可没有开放边界这回事。

加州病态的最后一扇窗：谴责川普建墙提议声音最尖锐的人中，大多数都坚持在自己的住所建墙。

by VICTOR DAVIS HANSON        January 3, 2017 4:00 AM @VDHANSON Coastal elites set rules for others, exempt themselves, and tolerate rampant lawlessness from illegal aliens. One reason for the emergence of outsider Donald Trump is the old outrage that elites seldom experience the consequences of their own ideologically driven agendas. Hypocrisy, when coupled with sanctimoniousness, grates people like few other human transgressions: Barack Obama opposing charter schools for the inner city as he puts his own children in Washington’s toniest prep schools, or Bay Area greens suing to stop contracted irrigation water from Sierra reservoirs, even as they count on the Yosemite’s Hetch Hetchy project to deliver crystal-clear mountain water to their San Francisco taps.

The American progressive elite relies on its influence, education, money, and cultural privilege to exempt itself from the bad schools, unassimilated immigrant communities, dangerous neighborhoods, crime waves, and general impoverishment that are so often the logical consequences of its own policies — consequences for others, that is. Abstract idealism on behalf of the distant is a powerful psychological narcotic that allows caring progressives to dull the guilt they feel about their own privilege and riches. Nowhere is this paradox truer than in California, a dysfunctional natural paradise in which a group of coastal and governing magnificoes virtue-signal from the world’s most exclusive and beautiful enclaves. The state is currently experiencing another perfect storm of increased crime, decreased incarceration, still ongoing illegal immigration, and record poverty. All that is energized by a strapped middle class that is still fleeing the overregulated and overtaxed state, while the arriving poor take their places in hopes of generous entitlements, jobs servicing the elite, and government employment.   

Pebble Beach or La Jolla is as far from Madera or Mendota as Mars is from Earth. The elite coastal strip appreciates California’s bifurcated two-class reality, at least in the way that the lords of the Middle Ages treasured their era’s fossilized divisions. Manoralism ensured that peasants remained obedient, dependent, and useful serfs; meanwhile, the masters praised their supposedly enlightened feudal system even as they sought exemptions for their sins from the medieval Church. And without a middle class, the masters had no fear that uncouth others would want their own scaled-down versions of castles and moats. Go to a U-Haul trailer franchise in the state. The rental-trailer-return rates of going into California are a fraction of those going out. Surely never in civilization’s history have so many been so willing to leave a natural paradise. Yet collate that fact with the skyrocketing cost of high-demand housing along a 400-mile coastal corridor. The apparent paradox is no paradox: Frustrated Californians of the interior of the state without money and who cannot afford to move to the coastal communities of Santa Monica or Santa Barbara (the entire middle class of the non-coast) are leaving for low-tax refuges out of state — in “if I cannot afford the coast, then on to Idaho” fashion.

The state’s economy and housing are moribund in places like Stockton and Tulare, the stagnation being the logical result of the policies of the governing class that would never live there. Meanwhile, the coastal creed is that Facebook, Apple, Hollywood, and Stanford will virtually feed us, 3-D print our gas, or discover apps to provide wood and stone for our homes. Crime rates are going up again in California, sometimes dramatically so. In Los Angeles, various sorts of robberies, assaults, and homicide rose between 5 and 10 percent over 2015; since 2014, violent crime has skyrocketed by 38 percent. This May, California’s association of police chiefs complained that since the passage of Proposition 47 — which reclassified supposedly “nonserious” crimes as misdemeanors and kept hundreds of thousands of convicted criminals out of jail — crime rates in population centers of more than 100,000 have increased more than 15 percent. California governor Jerry Brown has let out more parolees — including over 2,000 serving life sentences — than any recent governor. How does that translate to the streets far distant from Brentwood or Atherton?

Let me narrate a recent two-week period in navigating the outlands of Fresno County. A few days ago my neighbor down the road asked whether I had put any outgoing mail in our town’s drive-by blue federal mailbox, adjacent to the downtown Post Office. I had. And he had, too —to have it delivered a few hours later to his home in scraps, with the checks missing, by a good Samaritan. She had collected the torn envelopes with his return address scattered along the street. I’m still waiting to see whether my own bills got collected before the thieves struck the box. Most of us in rural California go into town to mail our letters, because our rural boxes have been vandalized by gangs so frequently that it is suicidal to mail anything from home. Most of us in rural California go into town to mail our letters, because our rural boxes have been vandalized by gangs so frequently that it is suicidal to mail anything from home. (Many of us now have armored, bullet-proof locked boxes for incoming mail).

On the same day last week, when I was driving outside our farm, I saw a commercial van stopped on the side of the road on the family property, with the logo of a furniture- and carpet-cleaner company emblazoned on the side. The driver was methodically pumping out the day’s effluvia into the orchard. When I approached him, he assured me in broken English that there was “no problem — all organic.” When I insisted he stop the pumping, given that the waste water smelled of solvents, he politely replied, “Okay, already, I’m almost done.” When it looked as if things might further deteriorate, the nice-enough polluter agreed to stop. In the interior of green California, it is considered rude or worse to ask otherwise pleasant people not to pump out their solvent water on the side of the road. Down the road, I saw the morning’s new trash littered on the roadway — open bags of diapers and junk mail. Apparently California’s new postmodern law barring incorrect plastic grocery bags (and indeed barring free paper grocery bags) has not yet cleaned up our premodern roadsides. Remember: California knows it dare not enforce laws against trash-throwing in rural California; that’s too politically incorrect and would be impossible to enforce anyway. Instead, it charges shoppers for their bags.

In California, the neglect of the felony requires the rigid prosecution of the misdemeanor. I was in my truck — and suddenly I felt blessed that I was lucky enough to have it. Last summer it was stolen from a restaurant parking lot in Fresno when my son borrowed it to go to dinner. The truck was found four days later, still operable but with the ignition console torn apart and the interior ruined, amid the stench of trash, marijuana butts, beer bottles, waste, and paper plates still full of stale rice.   During this same recent 14-day period, my wife stopped at her office condo in Fresno to print out a document. She left the garage door open to the driveway for ten minutes. Ten minutes is a lifetime in the calculus of California thievery. Her relatively new hybrid bicycle was immediately stolen by a fleet-footed thief. I noted to her that recent parolees often walk around the streets until they can afford to buy or manage to steal a car — and therefore for a time like bikes like hers. That same week, her bank notified her that her credit card was canceled — after numerous charges at fast-food franchises showed up in Texas. Cardinal rule in California: Be careful in paying for anything with a credit card, because the number is often stolen and sold off.  Cardinal rule in California: Be careful in paying for anything with a credit card, because the number is often stolen and sold off. I thought things had been getting better until these awful two weeks. One-third of a mile down my rural street, in the last 24 months, at least the swat team crashed a drug/prostitution/fencing operation hidden in a persimmon orchard. The house across the street from that operation was later surrounded by law enforcement to root out gang members. Forest fires started by undocumented-alien pot growers were down in the nearby Sierra. I hadn’t lost copper wire from a pump in two years. I once also thought the proof of American civilization was predicated on three assumptions: One could confidently mail a letter in a federal postal box on the street; one in extremis could find safe, excellent care in an emergency room; and one could visit a local DMV office to easily clear up a state error.  None are any longer true. I’ll never put another letter in a U.S. postal box, unless I’m in places like Carmel or Atherton that are in the Other California. Two years ago, I was delivered by ambulance to a local emergency room after a severe bike accident; on fully waking up, I saw a uniformed police officer standing next to my bed to protect fellow ER patients from the patient in the next cubicle — a felon who had punched his fist through a car window in a failed burglary attempt and who was now being visited by his gang-member relatives. Not long ago, the DMV did not send me the necessary license sticker. Online reservations were booked up. So I made the mistake of visiting the local regional office without an appointment, where I first got my license 47 years ago — the office then was a model of efficiency and professionalism. A half-century later, a line hundreds of feet long snaked out the door. The office is designated as a DMV center for licensing illegal aliens. The entire office, in the linguistic and operational sense, is recalibrated to assist those who are here illegally and to make it difficult if not impossible for citizens to use it as we did in the past. After 20 minutes, when the line had hardly moved, I left. What makes the law-abiding leave California is not just the sanctimoniousness, the high taxes, or the criminality. It is always the insult added to injury. We suffer not only from the highest basket of income, sales, and gas taxes in the nation, but also from nearly the worst schools and infrastructure. We have the costliest entitlements and the most entitled. We have the largest number of billionaires and the largest number of impoverished, both in real numbers and as a percentage of the state population. California crime likewise reflects the California paradox of two states: a coastal elite and everyone else. California is the most contentious, overregulated, and postmodern state in the Union, and also the most feral and 19th-century. On my rural street are two residences not far apart. In one, shacks dot the lot. There are dozens of port-a-potties, wrecked cars, and unlicensed and unvaccinated dogs — all untouched by the huge tentacles of the state’s regulatory octopus. Nearby, another owner is being regulated to death, as he tries to rebuild a small burned house: His well, after 30 years, is suddenly discovered by the state to be in violation, under a new regulation governing the allowed distance between his well and his leach line; so he drills another costly well. Then his neighbor’s agricultural well is suddenly discovered by the state regulators to be too close as well, so he breaks up sections of his expensive new leach line. After a new septic system was built by a licensed contractor and a new well was drilled by a licensed well-driller, he has after a year — $40,000 poorer — still not been permitted to even start to rebuild his 900-square-foot house. From her nest in Rancho Mirage, a desert oasis created by costly water transfers, outgoing senator Barbara Boxer rails about water transfers. In the former case, the owner of port-a-potties and shacks clearly cannot pay and belongs to an exempt class of the Other. The latter owner is a rare law-abiding Californian, and so he has a regulatory target on his back — because he is someone of the vanishing middle class who can and will do and pay as ordered. He is an endangered species whose revenue-raising torment is necessary to exempt others from the same ordeal. In feral California, we suffer not just from too many and too few applications of the law, but from the unequal enforcement of it. When the state has one-fourth of its population born in another country, dozens of sanctuary cities exempt from federal law, and millions residing here illegally, it makes politicized cost-benefit choices. Feral California out here is a live-and-let-live place, a libertarian’s dream (or nightmare). The staggering costs for its illegality are made up by the shrinking few who nod as they always have and follow the law in all its now-scary manifestations.

MORE CALIFORNIA CALIFORNIA SHOULDN’T SECEDE FROM THE U.S. CALIFORNIA’S HIGH-SPEED RAIL: SLOW, EXPENSIVE, AND BOUND FOR CANCELLATION THE UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCE OF CALIFORNIA'S GUN-CONTROL LAWS The rich on the coast tune out. From her nest in Rancho Mirage, a desert oasis created by costly water transfers, outgoing senator Barbara Boxer rails about water transfers. When Jerry Brown leaves his governorship, he will not live in Bakersfield but probably in hip Grass Valley. High crime, the flight of small businesses, and water shortages cannot bound the fences of Nancy Pelosi’s Palladian villa or the security barriers and walls of Mark Zuckerberg and other Silicon Valley billionaires — who press for more regulation, and for more compassion for the oppressed, but always from a distance and always from the medieval assumption that their money and privilege exempt them from the consequences of their idealism. There is no such thing as an open border for a neighbor of Mr. Zuckerberg or of Ms. Pelosi. A final window into the California pathology: Most of the most strident Californians who decry Trump’s various proposed walls insist on them for their own residences. — NRO contributor Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the author, most recently, of The Savior Generals.