Jun
2025
I’m so bored with the USA: Californication
DIY Investor
17 June 2025
“It’s the edge of the world and all of Western civilization
The sun may rise in the East, at least it settled in a final location
It’s understood that Hollywood sells Californication”
As London enjoyed the nostalgia and old-world glamour of Trooping the Colour, Americans were subjected to a somewhat half-hearted attempt at a show of military might.
Aside from Trump few appeared to want to be there, and, despite the impressive hardware on display, there was something limp about the whole thing. All it seemed to achieved was confirmation of the growing division in the US. As 200,000 loyalists donned their MAGA-hats, elsewhere over 4- million of their countrymen were on “No-Kings”.
Trump’s show of military might came a week after he ordered thousands of national guard troops and marines to quell protests against immigration raids in LA. Opponents draw a direct line from that crackdown to Saturday’s authoritarian display of dominance.
Rick Wilson, a political strategist and co-founder of the Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump group, said: “He’s adopted not only the signifiers of dictator chic but the actual articles of its faith. North Korea: military parades. China: military parades. Russia: military parades.
“These aren’t parades to celebrate a victory and it’s certainly not to celebrate the United States army’s birthday. This is a parade to aggrandise Donald Trump’s ego. No one who knows either Trump or his pattern of behaviour would think for a minute this is anything else.”
Parades aside, other events that just show how the situation is deteriorating and invoking the Insurrection Act seems inevitable.
“He’s adopted not only the signifiers of dictator chic but the actual articles of its faith. North Korea: military parades. China: military parades. Russia: military parades”
Firstly, there was the situation with Alex Padilla, a Democratic California senator and vocal critic of the Trump administration’s immigration policies, who was forcibly removed and handcuffed as he attempted to ask a question at a press conference held by Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, in LA.
“I’m Senator Alex Padilla. I have questions for the secretary”, Padilla shouts, as he struggles to move past against the men pushing him back toward the exit.
“Hands off!” Padilla says at least three times. Outside the room, he is pinned to the floor and placed in handcuffs.
Secondly, there was the assassination of Minnesota representative Melissa Hortman, and her husband, Mark in the early hours of Saturday.
Hortman was the top Democrat in the Minnesota house and the former speaker. The Democratic state senator John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, were both shot multiple times although both are expected to survive.
The state’s governor, Tim Walz said the shooting “appears to be a politically motivated assassination”.
The police have arrested Vance Luther Boelter, 57, security contractor and religious missionary and former political appointee who was once a member of the same state workforce development board as Hoffman.
California is the obvious flashpoint for both resistance to Trump, and for somewhere for Trump to make his stand.
It is also of huge economic importance. There is Hollywood, Silicon Valley, and an agricultural sector that grows more than 75% of fruits and nuts in America. In April, California officially overtook Japan to become the world’s fourth biggest economy, its GDP of $4.1tn only bettered by the entirety of the US, China and Germany.
This is a fight long in the making, for Trump and his “MAGA” mob California has become a cultural signifier for coastal elitism, illegal immigration and “wokeness”; the $4tn enemy within.
As Bob Shrum, an LA-based Democratic strategist, said: “California, in a way, stands for the opposite of Trumpism. It stands for tolerance. It stands for diversity, the word that’s now verboten in the administration. It stands for helping poor people and people who’ve been left out. And it stands for giving a fair hearing, unpopular as it may be, to people who applied for asylum.”
‘California has become a cultural signifier for coastal elitism, illegal immigration and “wokeness”; the $4tn enemy within’
Immigration is in California’s cultural DNA, former governor Ronald Reagan, a diehard conservative, championed America’s status as a nation of immigrants when he was president. In 2018 California became the first “sanctuary state” in the nation when its legislature enacted a law limiting local and state officials from cooperating with federal immigration authorities.
Unsurprisingly, Trump has never won California, and the state led the “resistance” during Trump’s first-term, filing more than a hundred lawsuits to challenge the administration’s policies on immigration, environmental regulations, healthcare and other issues.
This time around, Governor Newsom has secured $25m to fund legal fights and “Trump-proof” the state. California sued the administration 16 times in the first 100 days, nearly double the pace of Trump’s first term, over issues including birthright citizenship, healthcare, education, federal job cuts and tariffs.
The duel has highlighted a shift from traditional conservative defences of states’ rights towards a more centralised approach under Trump, who has sought to expand executive power and enforce a right-wing agenda through federal coercion.
Drexel Heard, a Democratic strategist who lives in Los Angeles, said: “California represents everything that is the United States: 39 million people from all over the place, different ethnicities, different religions, different socioeconomic backgrounds.
“We are the antithesis to the Stephen Miller – ironically, from Santa Monica – view of what America should be. We are the immigration state of the country. We are the socioeconomic state of the country with the fourth largest economy in the world. And Donald Trump doesn’t like the fact that nobody in California gives a shit about him.”
‘Donald Trump doesn’t like the fact that nobody in California gives a shit about him’
Whilst all of this might seem a long way off, and un-British, it’s very relevant. America is still the world’s dominant power, where they go others follow. If the US can fall under the jackboot of Trump and descend into totalitarianism, then so can other countries/
Domestically, the last 12-months has seen our own ersatz-Trump surge in the polls, to the point where they are now the biggest party.
To combat the seemingly inexorable rise of Reform, the government needs to start delivering jam today not tomorrow. Unfortunately, when you look at last week’s spending plan is was largely all about tomorrow.
One part of those plans that slipped under the radar was the perennial mistake known as HS2. It appears that the government will be spending another £25.3bn “to address longstanding delivery challenges” for HS2. This represent between a fifth and a quarter of the government’s entire investment budget of £113bn.
Chancellor Reeves is now funding a railway from Birmingham to Euston at a price that is more than double the £39bn that she wants to spend over the same decade, 2025-2035, on social housing, and significantly more than the outlay on prisons and new classrooms.
By the next election, HS2 will have received £25.3bn, while two east-west railways, in the Midlands and the north, will have received £6bn between them and poor Wales just £300m.
That HS2 escaped mention is no surprise, it is an embarrassment, little more than a vanity project, that principally benefit commuters into London.
The whole of Whitehall now knows HS2 makes no sense. Starmer could still kill it and recoup some billions from selling HS2 land. The chancellor seems to have gone missing, does she really believe we need a new railway to Birmingham, over spending on hospitals, schools and prisons?
‘does she really believe we need a new railway to Birmingham, over spending on hospitals, schools and prisons?‘
These are weak, misguided decisions, that serve only to highlight how flabby our traditional parties have become, which allows them to be continually outflanked by Reform.
Whilst both Labour and Conservatives can seemingly do no right, Reform seems blessed with the Midas Touch, turning everything they touch into gold.
The electorates patience of yesteryear is history, todays voters are impatient and often contemptuous of politicians. Mistakes are rarely forgiven, promises are treated with scepticism, and the costs of these promises are subject to scrutiny and resentment.
Many MPs have outside interests, which sees them regarded as greedy and uncommitted. You can add to this that many seem to have a 12-yrs shelf life before we are bored with them.
Nigel Farage, the Reform leader, seems to be the exception to the rule, having first been elected in 1999, and with numerous outside interests.
And, ever more bizarrely, an electorate, that we are told has had enough of metropolitan privilege, he is a wealthy, privately educated southern Englishman who used to work in the City. And he doesn’t do either modesty or apologies, his stock-in-trade is mor self-satisfied and unrepentant.
Yet, both he and Reform enjoy an importance that belies the 5-seats they hold. However, there is the very real possibility they will at least be a part of our next government.
‘Reform seems blessed with the Midas Touch, turning everything they touch into gold‘
The usual explanation is that they have benefitted from the troubled state of the country, the main parties’ inadequacies and Farage’s talent for exploiting political and social crises. But, there are other reasons.
Reform has no history, and therefore no legacy issues, they are not the “official opposition”, therefore they have no Commons roles. Also, Farage isn’t involved in PMQ’s, meaning he avoids the potential fall-out of the debate, and takes the moral high-ground whilst the PM and Leader of the Opposition squabbles.
All of this leaves Reform free to appear as an alternative the hopes and fantasies of a wide range of voters, seeking a radically different government.
Even the newly created Social Democratic party (“SDP”) of the early 1980s, had the handicap of being founded by familiar Commons figures, all former Labour ministers, and this connection to the mainstream meant that its fresh, insurgent feel could not be sustained, and its popularity faded.
Outside of Westminster, Reform and Farage enjoy strong support from a predominantly right-wing media. With the Tories’ deep unpopularity, poor current leadership and terrible recent record in government, Reform is their new darling. While it presents itself as a revolt against the established order, in reality its anti-immigration and anti-diversity policies seek to protect or restore traditional social structures.
‘the every opportunistic Chris Philp, the Tories latest gob on legs desperately trying to be relevant’
Now that Reform’s recent successes mean they are running a number of local councils, the general shortage of funds available for spending might impact them. However, there is every likelihood that these problems will be blamed on central government instead.
Although his political career is long, much of it was as an MEP, and Reform is a new party although it bares the history and traits of its predecessors. Perhaps, as a domestic politician, he could become overexposed. A recent YouGov poll suggests Reform have been flatlining at 29% in recent weeks.
For PM Starmer to rely on Farage and his party losing their novelty value is foolish.
Equally, trying to out-reform Reform is a mistake, as it alienates more left leaning voters, pushing them toward the Greens and Liberal Democrats, and possibly the nationalist partis of Plaid Cymru and the SNP.
If Reform are to be seen off, then it s new to be with progressive government, aided by modern messaging, with the promise of jam today not tomorrow.
One of the areas that all politicians should do better in is dealing with issues such as grooming gangs. This is very clearly a dreadful situation, and reducing it to level of a political football misses the point totally.
One of the prime miscreants here is the every opportunistic Chris Philp, the Tories latest gob on legs desperately trying to be relevant. Today, he took the airwaves telling anyone who would listen that it is has taken Starmer 11-months to order a national inquiry, whilst seemingly oblivious to the fact that the Tories did not order one during their 14 years in office.
People in glasshouses……
“And in the master’s chambers, they gathered for the feast
They stab it with their steely knives, but they just can’t kill the beast”
‘The narrative is all about Trump, which is just as he wants it.
Only, the story that’s building is that of animosity towards him, and the realisation that he is destroying American democracy in favour of a totalitarian state.
If proof of this was necessary, then the words of Prof Marci Shore should be heeded, as warns that what had happened then, in Germany, could happen now in Trump’s America.
“The lesson of 1933 is: you get out sooner rather than later. My colleagues and friends, they were walking around and saying, ‘We have checks and balances. So let’s inhale, checks and balances, exhale, checks and balances.’ I thought, my God, we’re like people on the Titanic saying, ‘Our ship can’t sink. We’ve got the best ship. We’ve got the strongest ship. We’ve got the biggest ship.’ And what you know as a historian is that there is no such thing as a ship that can’t sink.”
More on this can be found at: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jun/16/why-a-professor-of-fascism-left-the-us-the-lesson-of-1933-is-you-get-out
As with the situation in Gaza, I have deliberately overlooked this week’s events in Iran.
That Israel is out-of-control is now beyond doubt, what is equally obvious is that Trump either doesn’t care or doesn’t know what to do.
None of the protagonists can be described as “good guys”, however the level of suffering inflicted on those in Gaza should clearly be investigated.
Perhaps overlooked were this week’s anti-tourism demonstrations in Spain and Italy. Both have sold their soul to the tourist dollar and are now desperately trying to regulate the situation.
Having had to endure multitudes of Americans dumped into the tiny towns of Cinq a Terre by giant cruise ships last summer, one good thing about Trump is that Americans might be too embarrassed to travel!
One who won’t be is Jeff Bezos, who, this week celebrates his nuptials in Venice. Such a shame that La Serenissima” should be subjected to such vulgarity.
Lyrically, we continue the California theme, starting with “Califorication” by the Red Hot Chilli Peppers, and ending with the Eagles “Hotel California.
Enjoy! Philip.
@coldwarsteve
Philip Gilbert is a city-based corporate financier, and former investment banker.
Philip is a great believer in meritocracy, and in the belief that if you want something enough you can make it happen. These beliefs were formed in his formative years, of the late 1970s and 80s
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.