Like a homeowner noticing termite shavings on the floor at the bottom of a wall, the urban folk of the metropolitan west coast might be awakening to the manufactured decay that is beginning to overtake them. The rot is “manufactured” (man-created) because of the bewildering decisions by public officials of their own choosing. Schools aren’t preparing the young for adulthood but are fermenting as radical indoctrination centers. The urban public square is littered with the homeless, the psychotic, needles and feces, roving gangs of thieves and extremist goons, boarded up store fronts, and no one in office seems to care, at least care enough to do anything about it, other than make it worse.
The dégringolade (decline) ranges up and down the coastal plain. Nearly 60% of United Van Lines’s California hauls in 2021 were outbound, and it’s a poor metric due to its high cost. The more affordable U-Haul has become less affordable – 4 times the price for inboud – when trying to load up and skedaddle the Bear Flag Republic. Portlanders have acquired an affection for Boise, Idaho, according to UVL and Business Insider. The situation is summed up quite nicely by Greg Goodman, the co-president of the Portland Downtown Development Group: “If you know a retail or office broker, give them a call and ask them how many clients they have are trying to leave.” The exodus is palpable wherever progressivism reigns.
The east coast fares even worse by United’s numbers. New Jersey (69.5%) and New York (67%) rank #1 and #2 for the Great Migration out.
Is the decline and flight observable in organized athletic prowess? Is this trait a new canary in the coal mine alongside UVL and U-Haul numbers? As of now, in 2021/22, the PAC-12 is winless in bowl games for the second straight year. The last best hope for the conference, Utah, went down to Ohio State in the Rose Bowl on a last second field goal. Even the fact that Utah came close could be an additional sign of the new dynamism of people fleeing the coastal blight. The PAC-12 might have to switch its status ranking with the Mid-Atlantic Conference. It’s the “Conference of Champions” for volleyball or softball, but apparently not for anything exuding testosterone, which ironically is then forced to subsidize the former two.
UCLA lost its chance to break the losing streak by cancelling its appearance in the Sun Bowl after an outbreak of COVID on the team. COVID still raked the team after some of the most heavy-handed, authoritarian edicts by California’s recall-surviving governor and some of the most fear-paralyzed school administrations in the country. Remember “bend the curve” and “stop the spread”? The only thing “bent” or “stopped” was the hopes and dreams of the young men in shoulder pads. Try that as a recruitment angle.
Last year’s performance, the notorious year of COVID, was explained away, like the election laws, as a byproduct of the pandemic. Once again, nothing the prelates of the conference did changed a thing in regards to the rampage of the disease. It mutated and the crisis-too-good-to-waste registered as a wild-eyed panic to end athletic futures. Such overwrought reactions have a home in the same places that sanction violence and filth.
Another little-noticed and unremarked factoid is the appearance of four-star recruits from California showing up on the team rosters in the real power conferences. I tuned into the Georgia/Michigan game in time to watch Georgia’s tight end, Bowers, from northern California, receive a touchdown pass. Bryce Young, Alabama’s QB, and alumni of Mater Dei in Los Angeles, earned a 106 quarterback rating against Cincinnati. Ohio State/Utah was a battle between two California quarterbacks: Stroud and Rising. Are these mere anecdotes or a trend that has many similarities to prior demographic shifts in the country’s history?
California’s loss of one congressional seat after the last census understates the seriousness of its self-immolation. The state made strenuous efforts to hide the flight of its middle class and businesses with campaigns to count every soul, living and non-living and legal and illegal. But everyone knows what is happening, and it’s now appearing on the playing fields.
Think about it.
RogerG