The Great Satan

I write to you from the bowels of The Great Satan. That's right, I'm in California. You know, that awful place that Arizona doesn't want to become?

On the drive over we passed a few thousand wind turbines. Of course none of them was in Arizona. Because we certainly wouldn't want those monstrosities cluttering up our pristine desert. Oh sure, we'll probably have to get them some day. But only after every other state runs out of room. Anyway, I have it on good authority that the wind only blows on the California side of the border. Besides, our desert is reserved solely for land fraud.

Who needs a diversified economy? We'd rather rely on a boom and bust real estate market and a few hundred thousand low paying service jobs.

Cleaner air and better fuel economy? Sounds like government interference with the marketplace. And that just reeks of socialism.

We don't want train service between our major cities either. That's so old fashioned! I mean we're not in Europe, you know?

Multiculturalism? We don't need no stinkin' multiculturalism. The Grand Imperial Wizard of Mesa and his friends don't play that game. Arizona is for Arizonans. And Arizonans are by definition white.

Well, what about education? Arizona universities raise their tuition every year. That must result in better schools, right? Sure. Stanford, Cal, USC, UCLA, UCSD, Cal Arts and all the rest are scared to death of the competition from ASU, UofA and NAU.

So don't worry too much about becoming California. We're much more like Bull Connor's Alabama.

(By the way, I'm sure California has its own share of racist thug sheriffs playing crime buster for the nearest camera crew. But they're out in the sticks somewhere where they can't do too much harm, and not running around L.A. busting a bunch of cooks and dishwashers. And yes the traffic here can be brutal. But at least when you finally get to where you're going, to paraphrase Gertrude Stein, "there's a there, there.")