The national editor of the Atlantic takes a look at Kevin Starr’s latest volume on California.
“California, as he’s argued in earlier volumes, promised “the highest possible life for the middle classes.” It wasn’t a paradise for world-beaters; rather, it offered “a better place for ordinary people.”
Yet, it’s certainly not what it was…:
“Today, reflecting our intensely stratified, increasingly mobile society, California affords the Good Life only to the most gifted and ambitious, regardless of their background. That’s a deeply undemocratic betrayal of California’s dream—and of the promise of American life.”
California certainly has its problems, but I’m not so sure about the analysis here. Too much fatalism. Even if true, I don’t think it’s a problem that couldn’t be solved by reasonable people working hard in a democracy. Perhaps California’s “golden age” and its current decline is merely the first and most idealized westward push…manifest destiny?
It’s almost without history in many ways…or still on the leading edge of it.
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