Dear Dirty America

A Republican investor from Silicon Valley is opening up his pocketbook in an attempt to break California into pieces. Imagine six chunks. Two in Northern California. One to fence in the Silicon Valley and San Francisco. Another in the Central Valley. The last two in the south.

There is something ominous about this plan, yet I can’t quite put my finger on it.

When venture capitalists try to sweep their mighty hands over the west coast and split it into regions of their choice, so that the sandaled ones can not so easily traverse the land, I get an unsettled feeling. After all, nobody in the Silicon Valley and San Francisco state is going to tolerate migrants from states of the Central Valley or Los Angeles. “No more shitheads,” they’ll proclaim, and close their iron gates. “We’re tinkering with gadgets behind these walls.”

You could spend useless hours rummaging around in Revelations or Isaiah, Daniel or Joel, searching for snippets of prophesy about the splitting of the land of fornication and fire, but I think this is more of a Nostradamus type of prediction. Described something like the “synthetic West teetering near the ocean,” and, “we shall tell the End, only when it be split and broken.”

I wonder what those saints, sitting in caves surrounded by crisp manuscripts containing prophecies collected from untold numbers of generations of holy men before them, thousands of years ago, would have thought about a venture capitalist. “Beware of moneyed interests planning new state lines,” was probably a line used more than once.

Venture capitalists are our soothsayers in the 21st century. They see the trends. They anticipate the markets. We worship them. We plop the successful ones somewhere near the top of the socioeconomic pyramid and let the money flow upward. In return, they give us a shot at buying their used designer underwear for cheap.

Like Tim Draper, the man who is petitioning to make California six states. Of course he wants to isolate the Silicon Valley and San Francisco, and keep his home away from people who are living in Los Angeles, the Slum by the Sea. While he’s at it, he might as well get a little public support behind removing the grizzly bear as the state animal and instating a new beast to represent California. Something more fitting. Like the Maserati. She purrs. She’s healthier-looking than any bear.

It is people like Draper who now predict the future. They are the ones with the rattles, sitting around the fires, shaking their way into the next dimension to gather information on blockbuster deals and if they should invest in Twitter or Bitcoin, in Whatsapp or Tesla. Or maybe in biofuels. Or maybe that’s for fools. How should I know?

The only thing I can afford to invest in is the homeless man standing near the bank in Larchmont Village. I give him a dollar after I deposit my paycheck. I feel I have to, after putting a few fresh ones in the bank. “You spend that on something healthy,” I tell him every time. Yet, he stays a wreck. Boozy and broken.

The rest of us stand in line to apply for unemployment benefits while wearing our Sunday best. Some of us don’t dress up at all. What’s the point? they say. Why should we show respect? It’s just government welfare that’s been compiled from rich citizens in Silicon Valley and San Francisco and handed out to the SoCal bums with their grimy fingernails and partial belief in the Law of Attraction to get them through.

Ultimately there’s not enough money for all the poor fucks in California, and especially not enough money to educate their children. If Draper’s new state of Silicon Valley and San Francisco could be freed of the overall burden plaguing an impoverished, declining state of California, his people, his fellow venture capitalists and tech start-up founders, would be free to continue making shitloads of money and unburden their citizens from state taxes. They could have the most libertarian state in the country overnight.

Also, everybody in the state of Silicon Valley will wear Google Glasses. It’s not the law, per se, but it’s highly, highly encouraged. The state, once Draper’s plan goes through, will announce it is not taking any new citizens, but rather buying one-way bus tickets for anybody who doesn’t earn 150k a year. “They’ll have better luck in the Central Valley! Where all low-class dreams come true!”

California as six states? “Why not?” somebody recently said to me when I asked for her opinion. “It’s not working the way it is. Maybe we should try something new.”

What’s not working? I asked. The sun seems to always be shining in California. There is agriculture, tech development, shitty entertainment, scientific research, a fabulous university system, international trade, and tourism. We’ve got the Hollywood Walk of Fame and the Charles Manson murders, all the way to the redwood forests and mountainous beauty of the north. California is the complete package.

There are a few problems, sure, I admitted. Over a thirteen percent unemployment rate. Severe water shortages as all the H2O is being sucked up by Los Angeles. But when Draper’s petition goes through and isolates Los Angeles County as a state, they’ll cut the water flow and we’ll be drinking our own urine — and you can only do that up to 3 time before it becomes toxic. That means we’ll have to think fast. But it buys us a little time.

Did you know that? I asked her. About urine?

Of course she said she had not heard of that before.

We’d better hope venture capitalists don’t get their way with this state or this country. It won’t be pretty for the rest of us. A venture capitalist sees a state as a business. When business isn’t so hot, there are a lot of people who are instantly disposable. Under Draper’s plan, the Central Valley will dry up and wither away.

There’ll be nothing but the chipped yellow bones of prostitutes scattered alongside the corpses of farmers who’d wandered into Fresno and Stockton looking for work because their land had dried up and nobody wants to support the landlocked state of Central Valley. Which would be the poorest state in the nation as soon as it became one.