BUT THE MOBOCRACY WAS SUPPOSED TO BE PROGRESSIVE

Days of the Locust: Yet another of California?s middle-class riots is upon us (Harold Meyerson, AUGUST 15 - 21, 2003 , LA Weekly)

California's most distinctive social upheavals...are neither those of the working class nor those of the lumpens, but those that the broader, unanchored white middle class supports on Election Day. They've included tax revolts, like Howard Jarvis? Proposition 13, and somewhat veiled moves for racial separation, like last year's failed campaign for San Fernando Valley secession from Los Angeles. There have also been the Perotoid revolts against the state?s political class, which have led to term limits so severe that most state Assembly members are still learning how a bill becomes a law as they're being shown the door.

The recall circus into which the state has now plunged is the reductio ad absurdum of these middle-class eruptions. Though it began more simply, as Darrell Issa's new-age coup d'etat, it quickly took on all the symptoms of a classic California convulsion, in which the state's problem (supposedly, Gray Davis) and its solution (supposedly, Arnold Schwarzenegger) are characteristically misidentified. But in a state where television news coverage of politics and government is nonexistent and where the entertainment industry is covered (actually, hyped) constantly, the emergence of Arnold as the political savior of the month should come as no surprise.

The sheer abundance of fruitcake and exhibitionist candidates, the treatment of politics as tabloid entertainment, the touting of Schwarzenegger's "leadership" capacities (as evidenced by what? Conan's rescue of the princess?) and his quick embrace (according to the polls) by a quarter of the California electorate--all these seem to come straight out of Nathanael West's 1939 comic-grotesque novel of L.A.?s embittered and sensation-seeking lower-middle class, The Day of the Locust. "Their boredom becomes more and more terrible," West wrote of his anomic Angelenos. "They realize they've been tricked and burn with resentment. Every day of their lives they read the newspapers and watched the movies. Both fed them on lynchings, murder, sex crimes, explosions, wrecks, love nests, fires, miracles, revolutions, wars. This daily diet made sophisticates of them." How West was able to anticipate a typical Channel 7 newscast is anyone's guess.

West's novel ends with a deadly riot at a Hollywood premiere. A bit hyperbolic, that; when the Golden State?s white middle class riots, it normally happens at the ballot box. And so we get the California that votes against desegregated housing and for sending immigrants back to Mexico.

Which brings us up to October 7, Election Day, which may turn out to be one more Day of the Locust after all, with Gray Davis devoured by an angry mob.

The best part of California's disastrous experiment with direct democracy is that it's brought the Left face to face with the fact that they hate the
demos. The intellectualized version of "the people" is supposed to be a social animal, eager to share and get along with his fellow man. In fact, they are brutally selfish. Of course, the Founders could have told them that, if only they'd listen to anything other than the sweet reason of their own intellects. Posted by Orrin Judd at August 16, 2003 7:19 AM