It’s 5 AM in Victorville, California, and I haven’t slept in 48 hours. Outside my second-story window, the sun is rising up over the jagged mountains across the desert. In the three months I’ve lived here, I’ve seen more sunrises than I have in my 28 years. There is something about living in a barren house in a half-empty suburb out in the middle of a sun-baked nowhere that brings out the tweaker in me—and judging by daily news reports, most of my neighbors, too.
It’s a perfect lifestyle for a subprime city. Located on the edge of the Mojave Desert 100 miles east of LA, Victorville got higher and crashed harder, in terms of real estate, than almost any other place in California. In less than ten years, this place grew from an isolated hick outpost into a booming commuter suburb filled with the cheapest McMansions south of Fresno. It doubled its size to 100,000 in just eight short years.
But the boom is gone. A quarter of the houses on my street stand empty and most strip malls around me are vacant, too. I can go for weeks without saying more than, “Hey, how are you,” “Paper, please,” “No cash back,” and “Thanks,” to the fat kid with the greasy face who mans the check-out machine at my local megamarket during the late-night shift. Sometimes the isolation gets too strong, though, and I start craving human contact. When that happens, a bout of public drunkenness at some grimy local dive is sure to follow. And so is some sinister realization. This is Victorville, after all, the taint of the High Desert.
That’s exactly what happened tonight. About five hours ago, I decided to meet up with CJ, a Victorville native I sorta know, at a seedy lounge located in a motel lobby a few miles from my house. I was expecting it to be the same depressing redneck dive bar atmosphere I saw not too long ago: shriveled old men in trucker hats and saggy white women nursing gin and tonics praying for a lay. But I walked into a scene straight outta Hustle and Flow. As it turned out, Sunday nights at the lounge were “old-skool hip-hop dance party nights,” featuring two dance-floors, two DJs mixing rap and R&B classics, and a mini swap meet.
We paid the $15 entrance fee, got patted down by a security guard dressed in all-black full-combat fatigues, and started making our way over to the bar. We shouldered our way through a hot, dark, sweaty room filled with ass-jiggling and grinding, past a hallway where vendors had set up an upscale and scaled-down version of a flea market with assorted bags, shoes, shirts, skirts, canes, jewelry, and other assorted shit for sale, all laid out on tables and squeezed in at the bar right next to a guy in a pimp-white three-piece suit, white shirt, white tie, and thick gold chain who was leaning on his cane and hitting on a chick.
The bar was packed. Two old barmaids struggled to keep up with demand. The DJ was playing some soulful slow-grind tune I couldn’t place. To my left, two beautiful black girls in short summer dresses were ignoring my underdressed white ass. Behind me, the dance floor was filled with couples getting their freak on. Looking around, I suddenly realized I was the only white patron in the place.
“What, you scared, white boy?” CJ said, laughing at me when he saw me swiveling my head to take in the room.
“No, not scared,” I replied. “Just fucking shocked.” A hick bar filled with black folk—it’s not a scene I expected to find out in an isolated desert city historically known for its military bases, angry white people, and meth labs. But there it was anyway, a reminder that there are two sides to Victorville: the old and the new.
Before its stint as a dirt-cheap suburban paradise, Victorville was a tiny God-fearing community populated by white conservatives living an isolated frontier lifestyle. But these days, Victorville is more ethnically diverse than nearby Los Angeles. In 2008, African Americans made up about 12% of Victorville’s population compared to LA’s 9%. The racial mix has been growing every year, and that has not been going over too well with local old-timers who bitch and moan about the “race problem” any chance they get. They restrict their hatred for their new, non-white residents on Internet forums and comment sections—for now.
But I couldn’t be happier. There are three outside-the-house activities I have quickly come to enjoy here: shooting my gun, sucking down Vietnamese Pho soup, and eating amazingly authentic 99-cent tacos from the 24-hour drive thru. And now I could add a fourth: getting plastered at the Sunday night R&B party.
Looking around, it was clear that the lounge was the most happening spot in town. All the other bars and clubs here were grandma’s house compared to this. I could spot a half-dozen, seemingly available babes in hot pants, short shorts, or tight jeans. It was obvious that in a hundred-mile radius a guy couldn’t find better chick action than what was assembled in front of me. This night was going to be a bright spot on my calendar, I thought. But then, 15 minutes later, I noticed the club had beefed up its security.
For no apparent reason at all, about five security guards stormed onto the patio where CJ and I were enjoying a smoke. Most of them were white, and all were decked out in SWAT-like uniforms with lace-up army boots and flak jackets. A few of them had pistols strapped to their chests like they were in the Navy Seals. It seemed a bit much to guard such a small crowd of no more than a 100 people.
And these dicks were pushy, too. Outside on the patio, people stood around drinking and smoking cigarettes. A few clusters were tokin’ on blunts. All in all, people seemed peaceful enough. But the guards moved as if they were conducting surprise cell searches in a federal penitentiary, scouring every nook and cranny, staring people down for a sign of guilt. One of them, a beefy white guy, got a whiff of some weed and started sniffing around the patio like a scent dog, retreating only when a couple of girls started giggling and pointing at him.
I asked CJ what the hell was going on. “These guys? Shit, most of ’em are ex-military,” he said. “Yeah, they try too hard. But the cops are no better. Last time I was here, there was a fight. A bunch of squad cars barricaded the entrance in the parking lot, arrested a bunch of guys. But the cops overreacted. That’s a fact.”
Cops tend to do that over here. Just last week, cops shot and killed a suspected child molester when they found him hiding in a closet, suicidal and cutting himself. Hey, he was holding a knife—that’s threat enough for them.
The few times I had been to this lounge during regular, mostly-white-folk nights, the security wasn’t like this… it wasn’t just lighter with only white people around, security was non-existent. This didn’t seem to bother CJ too much but was starting to make me a bit uncomfortable. Race was just too obvious a factor. It was happening only because they were black.
I was starting to get paranoid, so CJ and I moved back to the bar for another round of drinks and some more babe watching. “You should go dance with her,” said CJ, pointing to a girl in tight jeans dancing by herself in the corner. “She all alone, she won’t mind.”
I shook my head. “No man, I’m too drunk right now. I can barely stand up. Besides, I’m a white boy—I got no moves. And that makes me too self-conscious around black chicks. I feel like I got no game.”
“Yeah, I know how you feel. I don’t know how to pick up black chicks either,” he said. “When I was growing up here, I was pretty much the only black kid in my school. No black friends, no black chicks to hit on. I’m way better at picking up white women.” CJ, who works at the nearby army base fixing humvees, is somewhat of an oddity by Victorville standards. He’s a local, born and raised right here in the High Desert. His parents were in the army, now retired, and stationed at a nearby base ever since before he was born. But most of the people at the lounge that night hadn’t lived in Victorville for very long, CJ said. “They moved here recently because it’s cheaper.”
It is tempting to think of Victorville as the budding New York of the desert, an inviting “melting pot” where home ownership was accessible to all Americans, regardless of color or creed. At the height of the real estate boom, Victorville had some of the cheapest house prices in California and catered exclusively to low-income families and bottom-of-the-barrel speculators looking to rent their properties until they could flip them for a profit.
In 2007, the average Victorville home sold for nearly $400,000. Now banks are lucky if they get a quarter of that for the massive number of foreclosed properties. Some of the properties are so worthless that some banks have taken the wrecking ball to them. In some cases, paying for upkeep and property taxes was no longer worth it. And these homes had never even been lived in. Yep, Victorville is a glimpse into the American Dream, built on speculation, suckers and fraud, and now it is in full self-destruction mode.
That’s why I moved out here, to see the carnage with my own eyes. I wanted to rent a house in a foreclosure nightmare, one of those brand new neighborhoods that have sprouted from cabbage patches and rocky desert landscapes all across the country in the past few years. I wanted to get in on the debacle, to walk on the freshly paved deserted streets and breathe in the raspy dryness of blocks and blocks worth of yellow lawns, to check out abandoned homes, some of them ransacked by looters, others turned into prime real estate for squatters and all sorts of critters. But not all of the destruction took the shape I expected. The lounge’s all-black patronage was part of it.
The real estate boom here was a money-making machine built to enrich bank executives and land developers, but it is also a resettlement of lower-income Americans, a forced migration that takes the poor out of cities and isolates them in the middle of nowhere, safely out of view. Victorville is built on gentrification. Its newer—and mostly non-white—residents weren’t really moving here by choice. They were here because they were priced out of their homes by rising living costs and real estate prices.
If we were more honest, we’d call gentrification what it really is: segregation by exile to Buttfuckville. It is the redistribution of prime inner-city real estate back to the wealthy, while everyone else is forced to suck on sand, to eke out a living at the edges of civilization in a system of suburban GULAGS window-dressed with spacious, cheap homes and the promise of quality suburban living.
But Victorville is a step beyond, quickly on its way to becoming a prison city, a ghetto in the middle of the desert. There are no jobs and only shitty education. Crime is on the rise, and so are ethnic tensions. There is no need for fences. Victorville is set up to make sure it is nearly impossible to leave.
CJ shrugged his shoulders when I started drunkenly babbling something about people being re-segregated out here. He wasn’t really listening—but he knows better than to make Victorville his permanent home. CJ’s trying to get outta here as fast as he possibly can. He’s looking at two options for the immediate future: either get transferred to Afghanistan for better pay or, failing that, move up to the Bay Area, where’s he’s got some family. Either way, it’s out—forever. Choosing Kabul over Victorville… Hell, why not?
This article first appeared on Vice’s blog.
Yasha Levine is a McMansion-inhabitin’ editor of The eXiled. He is currently stationed in Victorville, California. You can contact him at levine@exiledonline.com.
Read more: desert, economy, gentrification, real estate, resegregation, segregation, subprime cities, victorville, Yasha Levine, Class War For Idiots, Dispatch
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66 Comments
Add your own1. Mr. Wiggles | July 21st, 2009 at 11:45 am
Get a band-aid for that bleeding heart, Yasha. There was no master plan to concentrate black people in city centers; there is no conspiracy to move them to the desert “safely out of view” (bullshit snark).
The value of land is dynamic, corresponding to the wealth of the people who want to live there. There are racists here and there, but what you’re talking about is just a function of the marketplace.
Fun article tho, keep up the good work, I look forward to each new dispatch.
2. Sublime Oblivion | July 21st, 2009 at 11:46 am
You should make a living off bank heists and grand theft auto with CJ, I heard he’s a pro.
3. Mx?pm | July 21st, 2009 at 11:49 am
great article yasha, makes me wanna experience the american dream-turned-nightmare too..this is it, this is the beggining of the US loosing its sole superpower status
4. Homer Erotic | July 21st, 2009 at 11:57 am
I can see what you mean about resegregating the poor. I live in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and rent here for “poor-person” apartments is high relative to the wages that “poor-person” jobs pay. And when you’re looking for jobs, the application often demands to know all of your work-history for the past ten years in addition to everywhere you’ve lived for the past ten years, and God help you if you have anything less than a thoroughly stellar work history. Even then, you often have to know somebody who works at the place or know somebody who knows the boss to get a job.
All this makes me wonder how the fuck do single unskilled wage-earners manage to eek out a living here? It is an effective mechanism for strongly compelling outsiders, especially poor outsiders, to leave the city shortly after they’ve arrived because they can’t get a job.
5. terry | July 21st, 2009 at 12:16 pm
Great writing, very vivid depiction.
6. star child get the fix | July 21st, 2009 at 2:41 pm
mr. wiggles in the mix, can we say poor people of color have just been getting the same invisible hand job for the last few hundred years?
7. campy the babe magnet | July 21st, 2009 at 2:43 pm
Yeah, right smokin reefer and bangin hotties = gulag. What a douchebag lefty you are. You should love NYC – all the prime real estate is full of public housing projects – the working stiffs that pay for it all have to take the fucking train two and a half hours a day.
What a friggin citrull’ you are. Mildly amusing article otherwise though.
8. Mica | July 21st, 2009 at 3:13 pm
Wow, you think Victorville is bad… I grew up in Lucerne Valley . Now that is bumfuck egypt. Victorville, and ‘Hysteria’ were the big cities by comparison.
I spent the last 7 years in SF, and now I’m in Portland, OR. It’s interesting reading about how things have changed since I’ve been there. I can’t remember much diversity; there was only 1 black kid in my junior high school. Everyone was poor, white, and most on welfare.
You couldn’t pay me to move back. Sadly, my family still lives there, and yes, they are poor, and kind of got stuck. I also lived in East Oakland for a year; poor people always get shoved into the least desirable places to live. That is indeed a ‘function of the marketplace’, mr wiggles.
9. Casey Jones | July 21st, 2009 at 3:23 pm
Mr. Wiggles ever hear of the term redlining?
10. aleke | July 21st, 2009 at 4:49 pm
@Mr. Wiggles
Lmao, “the marketplace”. Almost as funny as “There was no master plan to concentrate black people in city centers; there is no conspiracy to move them to the desert “safely out of view” (bullshit snark).”
Keep dreaming kid. Looks like you got a bleeding brain.
11. Peter | July 21st, 2009 at 6:44 pm
Think you’re on the wrong site for “it’s just the market” like it’s a natural force bullshit, Wiggles. I live in Brooklyn, I know a thing or two about what Levine is talking about. The market works according to quick profit. You can make a quick profit obeying the social quirks of the wealthy, and they want a city they see as “clean” i.e. “white” to act like they’re on an indie-scored version of “Friends” in.
12. geo8rge | July 21st, 2009 at 8:54 pm
“before its stint as a dirt-cheap suburban paradise”
Victorville is home to the Southern California Logistics Airport, a fairly significant airport and logistics center. The economy is not just prison guards and people who cannot afford LA, or were chased out by gang bangers.
13. Billy Mays | July 21st, 2009 at 9:00 pm
What in hell are you whining about? You got it made there! Tehachapis to the west, San Gabriel/San Berdoos to the south, a prime-time jornada del muerto to the east, and lubricious, pneumatic snow bunnies ready and willing to go a few klicks north at Hot Creek. That may sound like a GULAG perimeter to you, but you’re not getting the big picture. It’s nothing more or less than a gated community on a grand scale: McDesert 3000! Get out to the back yard ASAP and start tilling the sand. Find a hose bib. Crank up some H2O. Grow watermelons, raise Africanized bees or fireant bots. Do something, but stop the hell whining!
14. captain america | July 21st, 2009 at 9:39 pm
http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/2008/02/20/71-being-the-only-white-person-around/
15. aleke | July 22nd, 2009 at 12:23 am
here, here’s a good place to read stupid bullshit http://www.amazon.com/Stuff-White-People-Like-Definitive/dp/0812979915 give him his commodity-profit
OOoo a Bourgeois drives like THIS
16. Mike Gogulski | July 22nd, 2009 at 5:29 am
That photo is pretty bleak. At least it’s shelter for some, I guess. Wow.
17. TulsaTime | July 22nd, 2009 at 6:32 am
Great update man. I’ve been reading your stuff since the move out there, and it’s been nuthin but good. It’s gonna be hell when gas prices hit new highs next time. Is that other subdivision you wrote about still filling up, the one with the nicer mcboxes?
At least CA might legalize soon, could take some of the edge off.
18. Gaucho | July 22nd, 2009 at 9:30 am
Did you get laid?
19. Joe Blow | July 22nd, 2009 at 9:58 am
no he did not.
20. Karel | July 22nd, 2009 at 10:20 am
Yea I would also like to suck my gun and shoot Pho soup if I could reach
21. star child get the fix | July 22nd, 2009 at 10:36 am
@12, Yeah Southern California Logistics Airport! I have worked there unloading cargo 747 full of cheap Chinese electronics into Mexican owner operator tractor-trailers, all for minimum wage!
Or unloading luggage for solders on their way to do a training rotation at Ft. Irwin. That paid slightly more than minimum wage from what I hear. I never got called to do that job.
It is an economic power house – that airport.
22. FOARP | July 22nd, 2009 at 12:15 pm
First you couldn’t actually find the depression, then you didn’t see the Predator (although kudos for the title bait n’ switch) and now you can’t get laid at an R&B joint where from what you’re saying there was a ready supply of honeys. But don’t worry, you’ll hit gold one of these days. And that reminds me, can I pay for your rent? And your gas? I’ll give you all I got. As my pimply fat brit ex girlfriend told me, I’m useless and my life isn’t worth shit. I agree.
23. Candide | July 22nd, 2009 at 1:11 pm
There are two ways to dispel the author’s despair in the Victorville GULag:
1. Fill up your car and drive visit GULag Las Vegas or GULag San Diego;
2. Let’s fix the “evil” marketplace once and for all. Of corse the catch is, once you start a command economy, you’ll find out what the real GULag is, real quick.
24. Realist | July 22nd, 2009 at 2:43 pm
V-Ville is among my top priorities in this years vacation in the US. Misery tourism, better than a trip to Lagos.
25. AR | July 22nd, 2009 at 3:25 pm
Those damn whities! When will they accept their “diverse”, third-world future? After all, the “new” Victorville provides ethnic food, law-breaking black people, and fodder for snarky articles by urban transplants! The old America is so boringly competent and productive.
26. Zoner | July 22nd, 2009 at 3:35 pm
Well-written, I like these Victorville articles. Anyone else think Yasha’s original plan was to eventually make this series into a book? Flesh out the articles a bit, slap some chapter headings on, then stick in an intro and an afterword and you’ve got yourself “Living in Buttfuck, USA” (maybe someone can come up with a better title).
27. badnewswade | July 22nd, 2009 at 4:20 pm
Sounds like a free-market version of what the French have been doing with their banlieues and us Brits with our Council Estates for decades.
Keep up the good work, dude!
28. adolphhitler | July 22nd, 2009 at 4:47 pm
i’d give advice on how to get laid but then i’m not into getting laid. i get off by posting anonymous comments
29. adolphhitler | July 22nd, 2009 at 5:09 pm
well, well,..i guess you do read this stuff…sounds to me like you’ve become a local…nothing wrong with that
30. az | July 22nd, 2009 at 6:03 pm
I really hate the racist idiots in the comments here thinking they’ve got it all figured out that when we kill all the niggers, spics, leftists, &c. &c. everything will magically start working again and we’ll be living in some Objectivist paradise that is in reality both an economic and a political impossibility.
@27. It was projects and suburbs here. That plan (along with urban ethnic cleansing a.k.a. ‘urban renewal’ and all those glories) was actually thought up by GM and all their friends before WWII even began: ( http://www.archive.org/details/ToNewHor1940 ) Kinda creepy watching that.
31. Tony | July 22nd, 2009 at 7:05 pm
I always look forward to the dispatches from our fearless correspondent in Victorville. But, Yasha, you must give us your user name for the Victorville Daily Press, so we can help you troll the locals.
32. Sin Fronteras | July 22nd, 2009 at 8:31 pm
Tony, Just troll’em already.
[BTW I am Not Yasha]
But yeah it would be interesting to know who all was there from the eXiled.
33. Epicman | July 23rd, 2009 at 1:32 am
The whole concept of The Invisible Hand is faulty, as it assumes that the wealthy companies won’t lobby the government for a multi-trillion dollar bailout. It’s so hilarious, even after banks robbed Americans blind in the bailout, there’s always an idiot or two arguing for the “Free Market”.
Deregulation occurs
There is a boom
There is a depression deeper than the boom
The rich get wealthier
Regulation follows
The rich lobby
Dergulation occurs
There is a boom
There is a depression deepre than the boom
The rich get wealthier
Regulation follows
The rich lobby…
Really not complicated. No one will argue against that, but watch me get called a Socialist. I’m not. I like Keynesian economics.
34. heinz von sauerkraut-selchknoedel | July 23rd, 2009 at 4:09 am
thx man, very interesting to read. here in the heart of europe i usually don’t get that type of information what’s going on across the ocean.
35. az | July 23rd, 2009 at 5:27 am
It’s different gangs of the rich that are for and against different kinds of regulatory capture, Epicman. That’s why if you watch Fox News carefully, they rail not as much against the american left (except ideologically) as they do against the rich they don’t like – George Soros, Goldman Sachs, GM, etc. Same with all the other gangs with majority control of the other networks who might rail against oil companies and military contractors. The point is not to make you worship the bourgeoisie but to make you think that those who are not them are Lex Luthors while they are the Bruce Waynes. And all the lefties are just Jokers who think they’re Superman I guess…
36. Gaucho | July 23rd, 2009 at 10:04 am
“The whole concept of The Invisible Hand is faulty, as it assumes that the wealthy companies won’t lobby the government for a multi-trillion dollar bailout.”
Yes why waste any time just give rich people everything you have already. Government lobbying is just an inefficient part of the process.
37. aleke | July 23rd, 2009 at 12:19 pm
Epicman,
You’d think Keynesian economics is a good alternative, but it is not. It’s got all the rules and legacy benefits to keep the rich rich and the middle class only better off if they increase productivity. Keynesianism actually broke at the hands of agitating middle class, as well as the poor and disenfranchised groups such as homemakers, minorities, and immigrants. They just wouldn’t accept that increasing profits should be devied up to big business and labour in the same corrupt percentages indefinitely. That’s when you had Nixon and Kissinger begin a neoliberal revolution in the Keynesian world system (Bretton Woods etc.) that culminated in Reagan’s neoclassical/neoliberal agenda, which still continues to this day in Larry Summers, Goldman Sachs, and crew.
Going back to Keynesianism means we’ll just do a little better for a decade or two until it breaks again because people want a better standard of living. Then we can expect to return to deregulation and laissez faire/Gilded Age economics.
Keynesianism, unfortunately, is not the way out. We have to be rational, and use all the scientific inquiry (psychology, biology, etc) that pertains to our society to construct a better economic model. Hell, look at the state socialism of Scandinavia, or the prosperous economic democracy based on cooperation in Northern Italy (Emilio Romagna)
38. erik | July 23rd, 2009 at 4:49 pm
Victorville would not be the first california desert-ghetto, there’s Palmdale, there’s Lancaster – both approx the same distance from LA itself. The Mojave is an eyesore to begin with… the whole region is a ghastly horror except for Palm Springs
39. adolphhitler | July 24th, 2009 at 8:36 am
eric@38…you nailed it buddy, but don’t forget moreno valley and perris
40. Epicman | July 24th, 2009 at 10:56 am
The Problem with Fox News, is that they’re sponsored by the rich. The Tea Parties were intended to bring down Obama, and when the Tea Parties started focusing on local concerns, Fox News instantly acted to shut them down.
Also, oil companies are generally evil, have their own armies of lobbyists, and should be regulated by the government. No one should be making a profit, raping their own nation’s natural resources, or those of other nations, and preventing renewable energy sources, such as Solar Power and Wind Power. Not to mention the oil lobby killing off California’s mass transit system, so more people would buy cars and oil prices, and traffic would go up.
The problem is that the majority isn’t educated well enough to realize that one must participate in the government process, in order to have government regulation. If you study the New Deal, Aleke, you’ll notice that education quality increased, but after the Neoliberals took over, education quality decreased. If you keep the people dumb, you can get away with anything, and they’ll still support you. If Keynesian Economics were given a real chance, our quality of life today would be radically different. And we’d be colonizing the moon by now.
41. Sin Fronteras | July 24th, 2009 at 2:25 pm
@40 “No one should be making a profit, raping their own nation’s natural resources, or those of other nations,”
If it is so evil to rape the natural resources of your own nation, or another nation, wouldn’t it follow that natural resources, ideally, should just be globally socialized? What am I missing here? (Other than the nightmare of figuring out how we get there from here.)
42. aleke | July 24th, 2009 at 4:10 pm
I don’t really believe in Keynesian economics anymore because it will not function indefinitely. You are basically freezing in time a distribution of wealth, with people at the time earning this much slice of profit, and the middle class/workers/whatever earning a much smaller slice of the profit as increased wage that they go about creating. As I pointed out, the reason that Keynesianism broke was not because Nixon and the Neoliberals broke it but because people wanted a more equitable slice of the incoming profit
, it just did not satisfy the needs of the people. IF the Keynesian state did NOT break down, yes we would have better lives. But it did collapse for a reason. (there is some good overview of the issue from an economic crises class here http://www.eco.utexas.edu/facstaff/Cleaver/357Lfall.html )
The answer is not Keynesianism, because it still works in a *very* unequal system. Actually, I think it may very well work in an economic democracy, but I’d have to look more into that. The truth is that the Scandinavian state socialism is working really well (“Denmark, Sweden top list of hardest-working countries” etc.), and also the more cooperative, very prosperous economic democracy in the Emilia Romagna region in North Italy is doing quite well ( http://www.commonground.ca/iss/0306143/coop.shtml ). So, actually, I may be wrong about Keynesianism as a concept, but our problem lies in the inequality of the economy, which completely degrades and inverts our political democracy.
43. Epicman | July 24th, 2009 at 5:22 pm
@41 – you are correct, they should be. But such a thing is not possible. You learn to crawl before you learn to walk. You have to take natural resources out of the hands of greedy corporations first, then you can distribute the wealth generated, more globally. We’d also have to be a lot more technologically advanced in order to do that. However in both cases, nationalizing the nation’s natural resources, and sharing them globally, you are taking the wealth that belongs to everyone from the few clever thieves and give it to the many. And then you take it from the many, and give it to the World. But in both cases, you’re expanding the group that’s benefiting from the Earth’s natural resources, as it should be done.
The problem is similar to the problem of “you put the gun down first”. No nation will start it. However, as technology advances, starting it would be more affordable and possible. But it would be decades at least, before that World is realized.
44. RT Carpenter | July 24th, 2009 at 10:02 pm
You and the other people who expose themselves here seem pissed-off. You are on the logical track. We are all screwed. Our government has let itself be looted for trillions of $$$ that will have to be borrowed or printed. Goldman Sachs and the rest of Wall Street cleaned out the safe at Treasury and the Fed before leaving. The unimaginable war bills have yet to be tooted. Half the vets coming back are brain dead–thanks to IEDs and multiple deployments.
45. Jim Suley | July 25th, 2009 at 3:55 pm
The author is neurotic about black folks, and it’s pathetic to read. Note to the author: when your black friends care less about supposed “oppression by the man,” than YOU… then you MIGHT be neurotic!
Stop trying to shore up your lack of a sense of personal identity, and self-esteem, by casting yourself as the “I’m not worthy” protector of blacks. It’s cliche, and you’re pathetic, which I’m sure your black friends would tell you, if they had the heart.
For christssake, quite bothering blacks people with your ever growing sense of worthlessness, and lack of purpose. They have enough problems without your “help.”
46. aleke | July 25th, 2009 at 10:37 pm
@45
Sieg Heil, White Brother!
47. erik | July 26th, 2009 at 3:35 am
“…segregation by exile to Buttfuckville. It is the redistribution of prime inner-city real estate back to the wealthy”
You must be from back East, the whole concept of “prime inner-city real estate” could never apply to LA county. Fraud, bait-and-switch — yes, these are long-established traditions in California. However suggesting that the goal is to grab inner-city real estate, lol…. dubious assertion.
48. Sin Fronteras | July 26th, 2009 at 7:00 pm
I understand that the Tongva will never be recognized by the federal government as a legitimate indigenous tribe because if were ever recognized as such the Tongva would be able to lay historic claim to Beverly Hills, and demand enough reservation land to equal the value of Rodeo drive, etc… At least that was they way an old Tongva elder explained it to me once. Who knows, we were pretty drunk at the time. And good those were times, while I was doing my part to help with the gentrification process in the Oakwood area of Venice beach.
49. Jyp | July 27th, 2009 at 7:43 am
Hmm. All the commenters are right (in their own way, in their own corner) but if Yashnik listened to ’em, why hell, there’d be no story! And ain’t that why we come here?
50. pablovski | July 28th, 2009 at 3:19 am
Victorville, Lancaster, Tehachapi, Ridgecrest… Weekend getaways in Bakersfield are particularly good this time of year.
nice one Yashiko.
you may like to check out camerawars.tv sometime…
51. Mish | July 30th, 2009 at 6:13 am
California and Florida is, apparently, where it’s poppin: http://www.nationaljournal.com/congressdaily/cda_20090729_2876_image_0.jpg
52. az | July 31st, 2009 at 7:27 am
@47
Apparently not: http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/4558/home_sweet_skid_row
53. erik | August 1st, 2009 at 5:28 am
@52
I dont think downtown lofts displaced anyone, they were just old 5-10 storey buildings that were once carpet stores, or furniture stores, etc., and it’s walking distance of Hope St. Every city in the USA did something similar when banks were still lending. It’s a huge stretch to say the whole subprime scam was a trick to get people out of Central LA, so the wealthy could move in. Such a concept is way out there in never-never land
Some investment banking people who work downtown are living downtown, sure – otherwise it’s a HIGHLY undesireable idea, dreadful location
54. Mike | August 2nd, 2009 at 5:19 am
You have the fat fuck hillbillies wrong pal.
Most of them have been on some kind of welfare for 2 or 3 generations. The overwhelming majority love Obama and his nazi/Brave New World healthcare plan.
They’re too slovenly, fat and stupid to read it and see how it would screw them. Evidently you are too.
55. teh football gambler | August 2nd, 2009 at 4:24 pm
Hey, anyone who thinks prosperity in Northern Italy has anything to do with “economic democracy based on cooperation” is utterly clueless about Northern Italy. If you’d been there you’d know that the social welfare rhetoric masks a reality of mass tax evasion and noncompliance with every law and rule they have, enabled by a highly efficient corruption market, which is probably cheaper overall than the “honest” US tax and political bribe system.
56. Carpenter | August 2nd, 2009 at 5:23 pm
Yasha Levine making a story about how much better it is when a town gets less White, more Black. Because Whites are saggy and racist, while Black women are young and beautiful and Blacks are cool. As proof that he is right, Yasha presents himself as White, showing he wouldn’t talk crap about other Whites unless it was true. Except you aren’t White, are you, Yasha? You are a Jew. “I couldn’t be happier,” you write about a town dominated by Blacks. Of course you couldn’t. You don’t care that Blacks, 12 percent of the population, commit 50 percent of murders in the U.S., and more than 90 percent of interracial rapes. It all serves to shock and demoralize Whites in your book. Not just an America, but a West where everyone is a minority like you Jews, that’s the goal, am I right, Yasha?
57. Sin Fronteras | August 3rd, 2009 at 7:37 am
@56, Again cite the sources for your statistics or STFU.
58. adolphhitler | August 3rd, 2009 at 8:38 am
@56…wow, yasha’s being called out
59. Markus Wolf | August 3rd, 2009 at 10:01 pm
@56: your lab test is ready for pickup. You might just go for a mix of C8H17N and Everclear (shaken, not stirred). Jesus loves you. Don Black loves you. The ADL loves you, ёбаная сука.
60. aleke | August 4th, 2009 at 3:32 pm
@teh football gambler
Let me just quote your idiotic, rambling, irrational diatribe in its full dumb glory:
“Hey, anyone who thinks prosperity in Northern Italy has anything to do with “economic democracy based on cooperation” is utterly clueless about Northern Italy. If you’d been there you’d know that the social welfare rhetoric masks a reality of mass tax evasion and noncompliance with every law and rule they have, enabled by a highly efficient corruption market, which is probably cheaper overall than the “honest” US tax and political bribe system.”
Okay now cite your sources, and it can’t be Randian braying or the dumb fascist apologism of Friedman.
Guess ya can’t. 😛
61. Mario | August 8th, 2009 at 1:47 am
i’m italian , the football gambler is partly right , here the tax evasion , others book-keeping tricks are the norm, and only the assholes respects every rules and law .
look here 300 billions of unpayed taxes every fucking year !
http://www.corriere.it/economia/08_settembre_20/evasione_fiscale_ac39d4b0-8701-11dd-bd39-00144f02aabc.shtml
anyway here the health care and education ( even the college ) it’ s essentially free, a
strong trade unions and left wing parties , and lots of charity work
bye and sorry for my bad english
62. Free Leonard Peltier! | August 14th, 2009 at 1:23 pm
Despite Yasha’s tentative tone on this topic, the relocation of Black people to places like Victorville is indeed part of an ongoing trend in the USA. 2005 was the first year since the Civil War that New York City’s Black population decreased, and look what has happened to the Black population of New Orleans!
Yasha’s comparison to Stalin’s gulags is more a tip of the hat to the prevailing foul winds of anticommunism than an apt comparison, however. For one thing, the mission of the gulags was not genocide, but the defense of a bureaucracy which had betrayed the revolutionary workers whom it claimed to represent. Though I am not a prison expert, I would guess that if Yasha paid a visit to Pelican Bay or one of California’s other notorious prison hell holes, he might well find that the brutality of the gulags paled in comparison.
63. Nebish Mutzvah | January 6th, 2010 at 11:50 pm
Do you eat scorpions, Mr. Levine? If not, why not? Does your nose bleed around noon on some days? Are the tacos you eat for 99 cents gritty like there was sand in them? Did the person who sold them to you wash his hands after using the bathroom just before you drove up to the window of the drive-thru? It’s just these sorts of question that need to be answered in any article about life in the devils sandbox. At least, I need to know. Don’t you?
64. oh please | February 8th, 2010 at 7:58 pm
This isn’t an article, its an irritatingly pretentious blog of a boring anecdote. The beginnings of a gulag archipelago, really? Or is it just the tinny, pointless whining of a jewish ‘white boy’ posing as some kind of righteous self-hating white underground journalist.
You come off as a completely degenerate slimeball. If you are going to foam at the mouth with hate at big bad whitey you might as well do it honestly and not write as if you are white yourself.
65. Swapped Bond | October 21st, 2012 at 4:41 am
Anyone notice how all the criticism from the peanut gallery trolls comes out months after the fact, when the AEC’s moved on to other things?
Time for the AEC to crack open a can of Raid and fumigate the troll roaches.
66. Friendly Coward | November 9th, 2012 at 11:23 am
Gettin sort of Stormfronty up in here eh?
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