I have to say reading these threads make me believe there aren't many positives about California (Orange: low crime, vacation home)
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no i guess not, but the ones they got are huge
no winter mild summer
jobs
real estate opportunity
you can be anybody you want to, and nobody cares who you really are
if you survive your spouse trying to devour you
you will retire early alone & and live like a king forever
Blend in, don't blend in. Partially blend in. Whatever. I couldn't careless about the level of blending in an immigrant does. We are all different people. That's the beauty of the US, you can lead a highly independent or a highly collectivist lifestyle. Also, there are many different shades of types of Americans. There isn't one specific type of American culture.
You're obviously young and have been well indoctrinated.
For over 200 years there was a pronounced national character. I guess those of us who are old enough to remember and attempt to cling to it are passe to the current generation. But we sure did a bang-up job before know-it-all youth declared us obsolete.
Wake me up in 30 years (I'll likely have assumed room temperature by then), if you still speak English, and let me know which other country your generation has sold this one out to.
Interestingly and tellingly enough, it's people like you, Happ and Mach50 who see nothing wrong with diluting our (that's America's) culture which, in keeping with the original subject of this thread, is precisely why so many disdain what is often referred to as "The Land of Fruits and Nuts," and with good reason.
Now, I'll cheerfully and gratefully leave you to your own destruction. My country will survive in spite of you.
Last edited by Curmudgeon; 04-24-2009 at 12:42 AM..
Reason: Adding
Blend in, don't blend in. Partially blend in. Whatever. I couldn't careless about the level of blending in an immigrant does. We are all different people. That's the beauty of the US, you can lead a highly independent or a highly collectivist lifestyle. Also, there are many different shades of types of Americans. There isn't one specific type of American culture.
American culture defined by the anti-immigrant crowd:
Baseball
Hamburgers
Apple Pie
Strip malls
Gun racks
Walmart
English only
That is truly a ridiculous comment, some wacko with an agenda. As far as English only is concerned,
Rasmussen Reports™: The Most Comprehensive Public Opinion Data Anywhere (http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/current_events/general_current_events/85_support_english_as_official_language_of_u_s - broken link)
You're obviously young and have been well indoctrinated.
For over 200 years there was a pronounced national character. I guess those of us who are old enough to remember and attempt to cling to it are passe to the current generation. But we sure did a bang-up job before know-it-all youth declared us obsolete.
There was more real actual diversity in America's past than today. For example, the Northeast, the South, and the West Coast all had distinctly different cultures (Midwest culture overlapped with Northeastern culture in some areas and Southern culture in others, but did have its own identity.) Americans shopped at different stores, drank different beers, had more distinct local customs, etc. It may not have been ETHNIC diversity but it was diversity all the same. You didn't have Southern college towns who culturally adhered to the norms of California back then, nor did you have standardized radio playlists nationwide, nor did you have the same stores in similar looking malls nationwide, etc..
Of the conservatives here, BayAreaHillbilly makes the most sense as he seems to have an awareness of how California used to be different and had its own identity (obviously overlapping with that of Arizona and Oregon, or even non-contiguous Western states like New Mexico, Colorado, and Washington - even West Texas to a lesser extent) and how the West truly felt different from other parts of the country. Yes, in the old days we were all Americans first, but we also felt a sense of regional identity. My grandparents told me that when they stopped off in pre-WW2 Arizona to visit relatives on the way out to Hollywood on Route 66 they definitely felt like they'd entered a different culture from what they were used to in Ohio, even though the culture of the Great Lakes and the culture of AZ and CA were definitely part of American culture as a whole. (Oddly, they didn't feel that San Francisco was so culturally different from the America they were used to - but the rest of the state was definitely quite different from the East and Midwest. Things like country music, Mexican food, and (in L.A.) the presence of and influence of the film industry were things that didn't exist back home.
America has become more racially and ethnically diverse, but in some other ways it is less diverse than in the past. A mall in Virginia is no different from a mall in California - that's something that didn't exist in the old days.
Cupertino is not an example of assimilation. It's an example of colonization. Assimilation is when you end up with someone like me, who is culturally Anglo Saxon without a single drop of Anglo Saxon blood.
Define colonization in the context of Cupertino. As far as I know, the Asian kids who attend and excel in Cupertino schools learn English and master science and math. Or is Anglo Saxon culture now supposed to be anti-science and anti-math?
How can you assume immigrants, such as the Vietnamese in Westminster, aren't assimilating and/or have a preference of their mother country over the US?
Wasn't desegregation an attempt to assimilate minorities into Anglo Saxon culture? Who opposed desegregation? Why is it that when minorities move into a white neighborhood, the whites flee? The people here who accuse minorities and immigrants of not assimilating into the domnant (ie white) American culture are purposely distorting the history of this country. It is the white majority that refuses to allow immigrants and minorities to assimilate, hence the resulting formation of ethnic enclaves.
This thread is funny. The OP asked for people to essentially make lists of "pros/cons" and he/she got more of the same!
To the OP:
California is an odd place, in many respects California use to be much different in the past. You'll notice that the people most unhappy with California are younger middle-class folks who are often just starting a family and things of that nature. For these people California has a lot of disadvantages mostly related to financial matters. But California is also a very beautiful state, even with all the development. As a result the people that either have a lot of money or purchased homes decades ago do not have suffer the same disadvantages and they are usually the ones that speak highly of the state.
The wealthy folks do not bother me so much, they at times just do not understand what its like for the guys with less money. Its the older residents (45+ or so) that bother me as they are in many senses responsible for the current state of affairs and are often dumbfounded about matters. In fact, just the other day an older relative (purchased a home in LA 50 years ago) stated how great prop 13 was (She only pays $700/year in property tax). I stated that prop 13 tends to extract taxes from the newer/younger residents to benefit the older and she stated "Well, I don't care". And that is precisely the problem. In this particular case only one of her kids still is in the state, all the others have left.
It is sort of sad in a way because families that have a lot of roots in California are getting torn apart because the younger generations can't afford to say.
Sooner or later things should improve in the state, pyramid schemes always collapse sooner or later. But the damage is already done.
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