The Merchants of Venice Beach

By now, almost everyone but the cardio-hemophilic liberal is aware that California is crashing and burning. Businesses are closing, families leaving and tourists abstaining. A sanctuary state for some and a failed state for others—the net population loss certainly suggests more of the latter. Now for the first time, crime and destitution are on the doorstep of previously untouchable parts of the Californian riviera, which would at least deliver some poetic justice for the liberal elite.

Fox News and CBS report that Venice Beach is the latest casualty of the state’s Third-Worldization, thanks to a permanent tent-city of homeless people bringing a different sort of vibe to the surfing Shangri-la. Open drug use, nudity and public defecation aren’t included in any of the reality TV productions still filmed in the area, though the Mail Online assures us that these are part of the daily motion.

At last count, a record 41,290 people were homeless in the city of Los Angeles. The bureau tasked with tabulating this figure cited the “legacy of systemic racism” as a key reason why homelessness is getting worse, and even has a special “Committee on Black People Experiencing Homelessness.” Their report, however, did not explain why Asians and Hispanics were significantly underrepresented among homeless persons, while (putatively privileged) Whites were not.

The tent-city at Venice Beach is but a splinter colony of the long-established Skid Row of downtown LA, itself now bleeding onto freeway ramp areas and Long Beach. Dan Fleming of the Economic Roundtable forecasts that the problem is going to get even worse: as much as 86% more homelessness over the next four years. It’s a dire outlook, but, not to worry, in just seven years’ time Los Angeles will host the Summer Olympics to immense counterpropaganda fanfare. Venice Beach has been assigned to host the ancient Hellenic disciplines of skateboarding and 3×3 basketball. At least Venice’s public nudity won’t be out of place.

City council and the government of California have already thrown billions of dollars at the homelessness problem, and now Governor Newsom is plunging another $12 billion down the golden drain of liberal bureaucracy. Much of the funneled money goes to administrative soft costs like consultants and contractors that make up the homeless-industrial complex. But fiscal carpet-bombing is all that’s left to do when the underlying causes of a malaise are politically incorrect. America’s failing schools, the huge spike in urban crime, and crumbling inner cities have been honored with the same tribute for decades.

Some observers consider the homelessness crisis to be a function of the substance abuse and mental health crises. While this may be partly true, such proximate antecedents obscure the cultural and moral rot coming from upstream.

The non-profit organization Invisible People offers some fascinating insight into the caliber of people currently homeless. What may surprise many is the number of homeless people who previously led completely normal lives. Well-spoken, sober and emotionally stable—some have tertiary degrees, others used to be bankers and even millionaires. There are those who work full-time and still can’t afford housing. In many cases, the catalyst for their descent into homelessness leavened with financial volatility not exactly of their own doing: market crashes, exorbitant medical costs, or their financial institution went bankrupt overnight. Then, add to the mix the slow grind of unscrupulous economic policy that has been squeezing the working class: massive job losses due to outsourcing, unbridled inflation and the dearth of affordable housing.

To make matters worse, a good chunk of the homeless are being evicted by way of legal technicalities and lawfare, which swoop on the vulnerable at the right moment rather than restructuring and reforming salvageable agreements with the customers from whom they profited for years. American enterprise may have developed out of the Western libertarian tradition, but the country was also once a high-trust society from the top down. Far too many Whites appear hopelessly naïve to the Svengalis of their modern surrounds, perhaps because they evolved for a society where if you worked hard and stayed in your lane, you would be looked after by the community. Socioeconomic justice anchored in common sense and fairness has been assailed by a kind of Talmudic economism in which the Shylocks will come for their pound of flesh and more if they have legal recourse to do it.

The situation in the social sphere is almost concentric with that of the economic. Individual culpability remains a staple of the Western social contract on the one hand, but on the other hand, elites and social engineers conspire to tip the scales in favor of more social and moral decay. Drug addiction is the biggest gateway to homelessness and yet its recent passage through the culture has been to first destigmatize, then medicalize, then legalize, and now glorify through Hollywood. Party drugs for the youth and painkillers for the proletariat, mendaciously legalized through the conniving exploits like those of the Sacklers. Meanwhile, California’s attempt to empty overcrowded prisons through criminal reform is another boost for drug culture. Ever since theft up to $950 in value was decriminalized through Proposition 47, the incentive for junkies to get clean has effectively gone, as they can now feed their habit with the five-finger discount.

Children as young as nine have been found living on the streets, and while drug-addicted parents are often the cause of abuse and neglect at home, one should not omit the proliferation of illegitimacy, non-biological parenting, and radicalized adolescents. One would think that the validity of these forces would be clear from the number of children who flee foster homes, and yet the response from the liberal academic-media complex is to keep pushing euphemistic ploys like rainbow families and Modern Family. A well-kept secret among felons is that they can avoid registering as a sex offender if they are technically homeless.

In less than a century, America has gone from Fitter Family contests to the Kardashian-Jenner clan taking center stage. Sexual intimacy has never been lower and yet STDs are skyrocketing. There is no politically correct spin that can stabilize historical norms so badly off their axis. And yet the chaos and confusion spiral on into fresh terrain.

Racial dysphoria is the trendy new psychosis that California is a hotbed for. While the state is famous for its White flight problem there is also what Steve Sailer terms “flight from white.” In this case, the majority of the White student body in an ultra-liberal San Francisco Bay Area school unexplainedly disappeared in 2019 and subsequently reappeared/reidentified as being “two or more races.” In a just world, White liberals wouldn’t be allowed to seek asylum in red states, as this is as principled as fleeing the scene of a crime, but it’s only slightly more odious than attempting flight from White though internalized blackface or POC-face. Now more than ever White Americans are politically polarized, and when you interlace social and moral affiliation, they’re basically bipolarized.

This brings us to the next category of Shylocks whose services endow America with net loss and harm: the political class. In California, politicians are an entrenched breed of tenured and sinecured lackeys in service of the Democrat plutocracy. The problem is that those who aren’t consciously corrupt still have far-advanced ideological cataracts that distort their view of the world. California’s politicians cannot even keep their premier sponsors and clients happy: Oracle, HP and Tesla have left for Texas. Meanwhile Venice Beach could not even hold on to its Ben & Jerry’s—just desserts some might say for the social justice-flavored ice cream company.

The government of Venice currently comprises “model-American” Ted Lieu, Autumn Burke, Mike Bonin and Ben Allen—the four seasons of diversity that ensures at least Asians, Blacks, gays and Jews have someone that looks like them in parliament. One resident of Venice Beach notably not represented by this team of rainbow all-stars is 1980s film star Paul Hogan. The Australian-born actor recently told media that Venice Beach is “an unlivable zoo,” which is an interesting choice of words for someone made famous by Crocodile Dundee.

In the nearby ritzy suburb of Venice Canals, another famous tenant has reason to be needled by the encroaching tent-city. None other than the President’s son Hunter Biden has his quarters there for $17,500-a-month rent. As a self-professed hard drug user, Hunter could probably relate quite well to the folks down on skid row, if it wasn’t for his strenuous job as a Ukraine hydrocarbons expert.

Wheeling and dealing is of course the Biden and Sons family trade, but few could have known that foul-mouthed stepmom Jill Biden is higher qualified still. In 2007, Jill was granted a mickey-mouse doctorate from a community college in Delaware. All in all, there doesn’t appear to be a single decent member in the Biden household—and that includes the family dog recently removed from the White House because of a biting problem.

The Bidens’ other pet is of course Kamala Harris—politically adopted as though there was a melanin quota to fill, because it certainly wasn’t for her charisma or record as a public official. In terms of popularity and visibility, Harris trails Biden like a Muslim wife. And yet it’s ironic that it’s Harris who now breathes down Biden’s neck for the top job. Biden may not have the legs to complete his term—he certainly doesn’t for an airplane staircase. His lizard-brain can’t help blurting out awkward inner monologue. He is 78 after all, and to be fair, having an establishment mouthpiece who often speaks with no filter has its advantages. And calling him Sleepy Joe kind of lost its bite once Kamala Harris joined the ticket, the very person most notorious for having slept her way to the top.

Harris’ underdog story never quite resonated with the public. She is, after all, descendent of academics and slave owners, grew up as a pampered minority, and matured into a sly careerist and overpromoted doge. This multi-racial, multi-millionaire child of Californication has made virtually every life decision a maneuver of self-aggrandizement—and that includes her marriage at age 49 to prominent Californian-Jewish lawyer Douglas Emhoff.

Jews on the west coast naturally have their own inimitable history of semi-integration at the civil level, while being politically alien and quite ahead of the cultural curve downward. Jews did not come to enrich surfing culture in Huntington Beach or grow citrus in Orange County. They came for Hollywood and Sacramento, with New York values in their breast pocket. Among California’s Jewish politicians, one can recall such exemplary cultural pioneers as Dianne Feinstein, Harvey Milk and Roberta Achtenberg.

Just as California was America’s cultural bellwether for the better part of the modern era, so shall its current plight be the omen of the republic’s festive unraveling. California has been the gold tooth in America’s smile for years. And America is only smiling because it’s high on its own supply—from monetary policy to state ideology. Biden may yet be the perfect mascot for these mortal throes; a cognitively declining president leading a populace suffering cognitive dissonance. His electoral victory, much like his campaign, was made in a Hollywood basement—and yet he’s still the political dinosaur that America deserves to have. Perhaps he’ll be America’s last before the meteorite.