Customer Reviews

What's the Matter with California?: Cultural Rumbles from the Golden State and Why the Rest of Us Should Be Shaking

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

The Publisher's Weekly reviewer gives so little indication of having read the book that he embarrasses the good name of Publisher's Weekly. As I count it, for instance, Cashill speaks of eight movies in some depth and only one does he attack, Pleasantville. Six of the eight-including Crash, Thirteen, and Boyz 'N The Hood- he praises. Did the reviewer not see Cashill's list of the best 20 movies about California??
Cashill talks about how he consciously counted flags during long walks through Berkeley and the Castro. This isn't "anecdotal." It is observational and important. As to Charles Manson, Cashill writes, "The concept of 'Susan Atkins' has considerably more explanatory potential than 'Charles Manson," which is an answer to no particularly useful question." And then he moves on to talk about Atkins and the other women because they are relevant.
As to James Jones, I never knew he was a communist, and that is Cashill's point: Jones' story has been purposefully mistold. If these are "familiar right-wing talking points," they come as news to this right winger. So much of this book is fresh and new and insightful I was constantly taken aback. Plus, Cashill's amiable style is so unlike Ann Coulter's that the comparison makes NO SENSE AT ALL! Read the book next time, Mac! Save your left-wing boilerplate for books that you did more than thumb through.

Very good book describing the root cause of the tremendous social problems in california and why exactly people who don't live in california should be concerned to the extent this phenomenon spreads to the rest of the country. Every liberal should read this book so that they understand the real world consequences of their beliefs and behaviors. As a former liberal myself, I can attest firsthand about what Jack Cashill is getting at with his book. I can also tell you how effective books like this are at getting liberals to abandon liberalism. My one criticism is that Cashill does not make this point strongly enough. 90% of liberals are well meaning people who don't know the truth about liberalism. They've been manipulated by evil people into supporting a fascist (and I don't mean this as a euphemism....the manipulators are specifically national socialist in their bent and their association) agenda. Once a liberal realizes this, especially when exposed to the real world consequences, he immediately abandons the cause. This is starting to happen in california. Witness how one of the strongest anti-liberal presidential candidates, Duncan Hunter, is from california. How did he get that way? Specifically, by having to find solutions to the horrible problems foisted on the community by liberals. For example, the San Diego border fence. Huge problems with crime, drugs, and even paramilitary thugs because of the open borders lobby. Hunter sees what is going on, understands the issue thoroughly, because he has to deal INTIMATELY with the consequences. He successfully lobbys for a realistic solution and makes sure it is implemented. And it works. More, Hunter knows what Cashill knows....that california is measure of things to come for the rest of the country. But also, it is a measure of the SOLUTIONS that will work for the rest of the country (hence his platform of building the same fence over much of the US border).

This also is something Cashill doesn't make clear enough in his book. California is the vanguard of the problems facing the US in the near future. But, it is also the crucible in which the solutions to those problems will come to be.

Jack hit this one squarely with one phrase... Fatherlessness. The Golden State has attracted millions for decades who visit or stay. Many abandon traditional views held in their former habitats, and embrace many diverse ideas or movements not found elsewhere.

Summertime energy twelve months of the year may seem like heaven to some, but reality soon jars one to a sense of polarized diversity similar to a tossed salad rather than a melting pot. Divorce, Drugs, Gangs, Infidelity, Alternative lifestyles, etc. may be found elsewhere, but nowhere is it more enhanced or accepted. The old 1970 mantra of "Mr Natural Sez" is alive and well and dragging the Golden to a tarnished Brass. Read this and open your eyes. Great Job Jack Cashill!!

Cashill gives a brilliant response to Thomas Frank's hate letter to Middle America, "What's the Matter with Kansas?". This witty, insightful, and prophetic book, "What's the Matter with California?" is a must-read! The leftist goons at Publisher's Weekly, who can rarely see past their own bias, would love nothing more than to sneer at Cashill's meticulous research (check out the extensive footnoting) and clear-eyed insights in order to stifle this book and its message. Despite the best efforts of those who cherish the bankrupt values that this book exposes, many good Californians and Americans are discovering - and loving - this book.

Author Cashill is ingeneous in his usage of the tectonic plate metaphor to describe the cultural earthquakes that have rumbled across the California landscape over the past 50 years. I read this book immediately after having read Simon Winchester's intriguing "A Crack in the Edge of the World," and found the two books to be fascinating bookends on California's natural and social history.

Looking back at "What's the Matter with Kansas?" we can see that the gist of that book was that people in predominantly conservative, "traditional values" states such as Kansas were too stupid to understand that they were "voting against their own self-interests" whenever they failed to vote for secularist or left-leaning candidates.

Frank's sneering and elitist prose indicated that issues such as faith, values, family, or Second Amendment rights were the refuge of people too unsophisticated to grasp the "real causes" of their economic or social pain. This idea, long an article of faith among many secularist academics, social engineers, media elites, and entertainers, has gained further currency via Frank's book.

Jack Cashill blows Frank's feeble assertions out of the water. He starts by exploding Frank's own presumptions about Kansas and moves quickly into a compelling narrative that manages somehow to be both sprawling and coherent.

In the same vein as Ben Stein's documentary film, "Expelled", Cashill challenges the new "conventional wisdom" and the strangling political correctness that has covered up root causes of so much chaos and destruction. A colorful parade of characters such as Charles Manson, Anton LaVey, Gavin Newsome, and Jim Jones populate and provide context for some of these massive cultural battles ... and their outcomes.

For millions of good Californians and Americans who wonder at the sometimes bizarre direction that "official" California politics and society seem to take, the book offers clear understanding and answers that are guaranteed to be controversial and deeply angering in many high places.

The book closes with a very moving and encouraging picture of one California town that is successfully swimming against the tide of decadence and corruption.

It's a very important read ... if you dare! The intellectually lazy and cultural cowards need not apply.

As a Californian I was fully prepared to dislike this book. Over the years California has become a target too easy to resist for too many authors. But I found that the book wasn't just another exercise in California bashing. While the book does focus on much of what is wrong in CA culture, it is interesting, thoughtful, and sometimes humorous.

Cashill focuses on selected cultural trends begun in the late 1960s. He details the unfortunate, and damaging effects of social movements such as the human potential movement, multculturalism, and the "eco-warriors," that seemed to have taken a wrong turn into intellectual, moral and political dysfunction. The issues he discusses are not limited to the Golden State, but California in all of its homegrown weirdness does provide a perfect canvas for Cashill's discussion. And let's face it, books that appear to bash CA will sell better than books that appear to bash Missouri.

I recommend this book because the subject is important. The breakdown of the family, the growth of a culture of entitlement, the erosion of our moral baseline, and the decline in eductional standards are having a corrosive effect on American culture. Too often angry, fatherless young men find their heroes and father figures in a maximum-security prison. Ignorant, undeducated young people who lack the ability to think critically are excellent candidates for indoctrination whether they are in prison or college. Blurring the lines between liberalism and licentiousness is not progressive. It is moral corruption.

I recommend this book to anyone interested in the state of American culture.

I live in California ad I can tell you it is on a decline and I am sorry to see a beautiful state ruined. We will be bankrupt before long. It is state run by Democrats and I have yet to see them improve anything.

I am not one of the conservative faithful, but I bought and read this book. I thought it might be thought-provoking. I was not disappointed, the book did provoke thoughts, which I will share (besides, the book was in the remainder bin and priced at two bucks). But I was not entirely without trepidation while considering reading it. A thinking person attempting to read anything by a modern talk radio internet age conservative must, after all, manfully gird his loins and be prepared to encounter exhortation (language intended to incite), harangue (ranting speech addressed to a multitude), tirade (windy speech marked by intemperate language), diatribe (bitter or abusive harangue), and jeremiad (lamenting, denunciatory, dolorous complaint or tirade), as these things often appear to constitute the entire being of the modern talk radio internet age conservative, and, it seems, they like it that way.

Happily, I can report that "What's the Matter with California?" occupies a higher plane. Jack Cashill demonstrates that he is capable of expressing himself without recourse to intemperate or abusive language. He is a witty fellow, given to banter and teasing rather than purple-faced bombast. Even readers who are not among the conservative faithful should be able to read this book without having their stomachs turned, and so may have some thoughts provoked.

While it provides a good read, the book does not rise to the level of a rational discourse on the subject matter. It is an unabashed, if relatively civil, conservative polemic (google it) (oh, what the hey, an aggressive attack on the opinions or principles of others). Mr. Cashill argues that various groups are the matter with California, and the groups are not allowed to reply. Environmentalist, for example, are fingered (along with the Crips and Bloods) as being the matter with California, since they (the environmentalists) have occasionally succeeded in impeding the efforts of real estate developers (but not enough; the end of the speculative development boom has left California with an oversupply of residential and commercial construction that apparently nobody has any use for, even at public auction prices). Rational people are probably aware that there are environmentalists who are perfectly capable of making reasoned, strong, perhaps insurmountable arguments for their positions, but no such arguments appear in Mr. Cashill's book. Environmentalists are simply described as weird, clueless air-heads and shoved off the stage.

The real problem with California, Mr. Cashill explains, is married couples who get divorced even though they have children. This is the ultimate source of all the evil that is spreading across California like a giant oil spill engulfing a salt marsh. Married couples with children should definitely stop doing this. Also, everyone should practice a religion. Mr. Cashill is clear that by this he means some variety of Christian religion, although he leaves the impression that Jewish or even Mormon religion might do in a pinch, while Hindu or Buddhist religion is probably out, discussion of Islam is avoided, and I was left uncertain as to whether Scientology would do.

This book did provoke thoughts, and thinking them produced an improved understanding of some human behavior that until now seemed inexplicable and irrational. Reading Mr. Cashill's book, I learned conservatives are the hope of California because conservatives have strong, firmly-held beliefs that they do not change. Liberals are the matter with California because liberals have no beliefs, or, if they do, these beliefs are so wishy-washy that they change with any breeze: on Monday a liberal might be a follower of Obama, on Tuesday he is studying with the Dalai Lama, and by Wednesday he has fallen under the sway of Jim Jones or Anton LaVey of the First Church of Satan. I followed Mr. Cashill, but he failed to convince me that unyielding beliefs would be a cure-all.

Encountering, becoming aware of, grasping, one or more facts may cause a person to question, even to change, his beliefs. If a conservative, as described by Mr. Cashill, were to do this, he would no longer be a conservative (a person unwilling or unable to change his beliefs) but a liberal (a person with no beliefs worth mentioning). So a meeting of such a conservative and a fact would be a potentially explosive situation. Evidence suggests that this problem is real. It appears that some modern conservatives are driven to deal with this problem of facts by inventing facts that act to strengthen strongly held beliefs rather than to weaken them - recall that Al Franken got himself elected to the senate by writing books that demonstrated through tedious research that Rush Limbaugh simply invented the facts he mentioned on his radio program. Rush aimed to strengthen belief in his listeners (Any invented fact, that is meant to be substituted for a fact that might weaken a conservative belief, should be referred to as a "Limbaughfact," in recognition of Rush's efforts).

After thinking these provoked thoughts, I feel I actually understand modern conservatives who spend their time loading Limbaughfacts into chain e-mails and sending them to all their acquaintances or anyone who does not have a sufficiently good spam filter. I owe this new insight entirely to having been open-minded and brave enough to read Mr. Cashill's thought-provoking book "What's the Matter with California?" Taken with more than a grain of salt, and possibly some lime and tequila, this book could be an interesting, even enlightening, read for coolheaded liberal thinkers, high-volume conservative believers, fans of Mark Twain's "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County," or folks who just like gory, naughty stories about the crazy people in California. I definitely got my two dollars worth.

Like another reviewer, I was prepared to not like the book, because often those outside California who write about this state tend to focus on the outer trappings of the place, rather than the inner lives of the people here. Jack Cashill, to his credit, does go deeper, and he raises insights that a lot of California natives, like myself, overlooked.

Perhaps this is because the book was clearly written as a response to leftist Thomas Frank's "What's The Matter With Kansas?" Frank basically scorns those in "flyover country" who are in Frank's view so hung up on "traditional values" and "the social issues" that they are too stupid to understand that they are "voting against their own self-interests" whenever they fail to vote for Leftists. Of course, Frank's presumption that people ought to want to become dependent and compliant wards of a socialist nanny welfare state, without any freedom to choose a destiny for themselves, is itself disgusting.

Cashill brilliantly responds to this tendentious leftist dogma by examining what has happened to California, a state that has in large part abandoned traditional values. He points out again and again how "the social issues" have very real bottom-line economic implications. The now bankrupt, moribund state of California, with excessive taxation, excessive costs of living and doing business, and an unemployment rate well above the national average, is seeing the proverbial chickens come home to roost. After all, to quote the author, "If Mom has a nest, and Dad has another nest, California needs a lot more nests than it otherwise would, not to mention more resources to heat, cool, light and water those nests and more gas to ferry the baby birds between them."

And what would happen if more Californians were more traditional in their values and lifestyles? "AIDS and STD clinics could shift their attention to unavoidable diseases. Emergency Room staffers could focus on victims of accidents and illnesses; shootings, stabbings and overdoses would consume them no more. The police and rescue people could do the same. Drug cartels would have to take their business elsewhere." Like Alcatraz, many prisons could close, "and the prison unions would no longer run the state. Pimps and pornographers would just about close up shop....So would most divorce lawyers and most personal injury lawyers as well. The Crips could shift from larceny and other louche behavior to lawn care and cut the need for illegal immigration along with the grass. The LA school district could sell off its fences for scrap iron....Taxes could fall, and still there would be additional revenue for infrastructure, schools, universities, and, yes, even new green technologies." So yes, Tommy Frankie, personal behaviors do have very real economic consequences.

Like another reviewer mentioned, Jack Cashill is a political and sociological version of James Burke, making his own "Connections" that are thought provoking. We learn that the girls who followed Charles Manson in the late 1960's, and the gangbangers of Oakland and South Central Los Angeles today, have something very much in common. We also learn that O.J. Simpson and John Walker Lindh had something in common besides growing up in the Greater San Francisco area. This is what happens to a state where divorce is rampant and family breakdown all too prevalent. Indeed, taking out California, the statistics for the rest of the USA look much less alarming in these respects.

I give it four stars rather than five because of the ending chapter, where Jack Cashill hopes for a "Red-State" values revival that he thinks could spread out from the enclaves of the state where such values exist. Sorry, but while such enclaves are more present in California than one might think, there are not enough of them to make a difference.

What possibly *can* save the state, as it has many times before, is a "Revolt Of The Beige", namely, a revolt of the middle class homeowners. (Mr. Cashill has a color-coding system to identify the various socioeconomic groups in California, and a "plate tectonics" earthquake metaphor to describe when one color coded plate pushes up or back against others). This "Beige Plate" has yanked the state away from Leftist decline before, from the Proposition 13 tax revolt to the removal of Leftist state judges like Rose Bird to Ronald Reagan himself. Sadly, there is some question of whether this Beige Plate hasn't been smothered or driven to other states.

Jack Cashill has become the conservative movement's great sociologist, and this is perhaps his best work. Amazing detail.

Interesting book at a really great delivered price. Worth a good read. Maybe you will learn something.