"...California is a place in which a boom mentality and a sense of Chekhovian loss meet in uneasy suspension; in which the mind is troubled by some buried but ineradicable suspicion that things had better work here, because here, beneath the immense bleached sky, is where we run out of continent."

-Joan Didion, from "Notes from a Native Daughter," Slouching Towards Bethlehem, 1965

Sigh, California. I think it's safe to say that the Golden State has recently acquired a tarnished image. With the recent budget implosion and an uncertain fiscal future looming large on the horizon, you can now add constitutional discrimination to the growing list of reasons why California is no longer the promised land of the American imagination. Long gone are the days of Joan Didion's California, a romantic, albeit dysfunctional, picture of late twentieth century hope, prosperity and glut. Goodbye prospect. Goodbye afternoon martinis. Goodbye pioneer spirit. Hello Apocalypse!

In many ways, California is paying for the decadence of its past. Decadence, the word itself meaning self-indulgence to the point of decay, is exactly what California is guilty of. This, I believe, is the root cause of why California is now the ungovernable state.

Sorry California, your freewheeling days are over.

However, I don't think it's safe to continue the assumption of "as California goes, so goes the Nation." What is truly hilarious in this comedy of errors is that California ceases to be the trendsetting, young bastion of socio-economic fashion that it was in the 1990s. In fact, quite the opposite. In certain regards, California is getting its rear-end handed to it by the likes of Massachusetts and Iowa. Where California was once driving in the fast lane with the top down, it is now stranded in the breakdown lane with a burnt transmission and a bunch of cranky children in the backseat. Meanwhile Massachusetts, Iowa and a number of other states, continue on in their bumper-to-bumper rat race towards stability.

Okay, okay. Enough hyperbole.

The fact of the matter is that California is betting against itself in a game of craps. This is true for both the issue of Prop 8 and the issue of resolving the budget. Both situations, although seemingly unrelated, are leaving the entire state (politicians, constituents, visitors, even plants and animals) in a deadlock of failure. Cut services and the people will lose. Raise taxes and the people lose. Uphold Prop 8 and the people (who voted against it, 47% of the electorate) will lose. Reverse Prop 8 and the people (who voted for it, 52% of the electorate, hardly a majority I might add) will lose. The people lose. The people lose. The people, you got it, lose.

Specifically with regard to Prop H8te, California seems to be regressing as far back in time as the 1950s. Wait, I'm sorry, I thought the US Supreme Court already decided that separate was not in fact equal? California, snap out of it! We already had this fight, remember? And for those who are opposed to marriage because it represents a 1950s model of "normalcy," well I have one thing to say to you: the right to marriage has very little to do with "normalcy" and everything to do with equality under the law. This is not about marriage as an institution, this is about equal rights. Besides, this ain't 1950!

And as for the budget, pffft, beats me! Your guess is as good as mine as to how the state will dig itself out of this hole without burying its citizenry under a mountain of deprivation in the process. I just hope I'm not in the way when the landslide comes a tumblin'.