Ronald Reagan is a symbol of how far this country has fallen in terms of humanitarianism in just few decades.

As a conservative, Reagan did many things, too many to list, that upset the bejeepers out of progressives like me. But at least he wasn’t a twisted, hateful, unAmerican madman like the Republicans of today.

Think for a minute how miserably unsuccessful you’d be running as a GOP candidate on the platform that Reagan articulated at left.

Now it’s, “Unless you’re a wealthy white guy, say, from Sweden, we don’t want you anywhere near the United States.”

Ronald Reagan on America’s Greatness

In a recent post, California IS Different, But It’s Not TOO Different, I drew the distinction between the urbane sophistication of the state’s coastal region and the rural regions in its interior.

As one may expect, there is a huge chasm in terms of politics between the two areas.  Yes, California is a blue state, and Trump lost the 2024 presidential election to Harris by about 20%, but 20 points is actually fairly close compared to the thumping he gave Harris in the red states that he won by considerable landslides (see map).

Fortunately, California has masses of well-educated people in the counties adjacent to the Pacific Ocean who are generally quite liberal in their thinking.  Yes, there are a growing number of ranchers in the state’s eastern parts, but, for now at least, they’re far outnumbered by the folks fighting the traffic jams and ridiculous real estate prices in IT, entertainment, defense, insurance, professional services, manufacturing, healthcare, and banking.

California Has More Republican Voters than One May Suspect

When my friends and I were growing up in the suburbs of Philadelphia, we regarded California as if it were a foreign country–if not another planet.  The widespread speculation was that California was one big movie/TV studio, that had beaches for the thousands of blond-haired surfers who spoke some extremely hip language, and had adoring, bikini-clad girls clinging to them.

Yet living here soon taught me that, though this perception of the Golden State was in some measure true for the cities and towns on the Pacific, a trip 30 – 40 miles inland exposed a culture that wasn’t altogether different than that of Central Pennsylvania, or Central Alabama for that matter.

I bring this up because of the recent announcement (see above) that the University of California, with its 10 campuses, won five Nobel Prizes recently.   UC Santa Barbara alone has 11 Nobel laureates, nine of which are in physics and materials science.  That’s a lot of intelligence floating around in a city whose population is only about 89,000.

Per my point, however, 2GreenEnergy “headquarters” is about 30 miles inland from Santa Barbara.  Where they have people speaking French and discussing quantum physics, we have saloons and rodeos.

I’m not complaining (too much).  It’s still a great place to live, and if I want to find someone to converse with on the subject of quarks and neutrinos, they’re only a short drive away.

California IS Different, But It’s Not TOO Different