The following piece is satire.
Tuesday, January 29th, 2013,
(Santa Monica, CA) — It has been 34 years of marriage, three children, two grandchildren, two homes and three jobs, and Mary and Joseph Peterson have had enough. The two Sacramento natives and college sweethearts have lived in California their entire lives. Now their lifelong stay in the Sunshine state is sadly coming to an end.
Mary Peterson, 56, and husband Joseph, 57, lament being only an estimated 250,000 people who are now leaving California annually, in comparison to the hordes more that are storming in (mainly illegally). They also lament not having fully experienced the hippie heyday of the state, being only in their pre-teen years at the time California began officially transforming from a self-sustaining state into the basket case of welfare–driven, tax and regulation-plagued, socialist, Iraq-sized, insane dung pile it is today.
With Joseph being the CEO of a 180-employee shipping company, and Mary, co-founder and vice president of Ancient Attributes, Inc., a 34-employee company that produces catheters for the elderly, the couple has decided it is time to close their businesses and move out of the state they once proudly called home. Two-hundred and four people will be left without jobs in their wake. But in leaving California the duo are now faced with a new dilemma: which state to ruin next?
“It’s like, so trippy,” said Mary Peterson, while packing her favorite 18-inch statue of Buddha she bought in Mexico in 2006 while their U-Haul truck hums in the driveway. “We’ve voted as progressively as possible in every election since our twenties, and yet things are worse than ever. It’s, like, so bizarre.”
The Petersons are not alone.
Dale and Rania Hussein-Scatman, who immigrated to Los Angeles from Iran in 1990, have voted strictly Democrat ever since. Now, like the Petersons, they are looking to move. “With all of the regulations, all of the bans on virtually everything, and the oppressive tax rates, we’re left with no choice,” said Mr. Hussein, while searching on-line for housing prospects in Texas.
Like the Petersons, the Hussein-Scatmans are not just eyeing Texas, but also Alabama, Louisiana, Arizona, Florida, Mississippi, and North Dakota — i.e. any state that has not yet been destroyed by the likes of none other than themselves, as Californians seek to flee the state they helped to ruin, only to relocate to a freer state and/or city they will ruin all over again, given time.
“I hear the tax rates and house prices are low (in North Dakota),” said Dale, Tuesday. “And they also still allow smoking in bars. Now that’s something we certainly have to move there to stop, all while pretending to be simple ’podunk’ residents who want to mind own business … Yes, we have to move there and introduce our values to that state. I think North Dakota may be the perfect fit for us.”
The Hussein-Scatmans, Petersons, and thousands of other residents fleeing California may not agree on everything, such as what amount of fine one should face if they do not recycle their glass, plastic, and paper goods ($200 vs. $300 per infraction), or what state income tax rate is suitable for a “family” of two or more making $60,000 or above (59% vs. 65%).
However they do agree on one thing: the California they helped ruin must be brought to other states, the “redder” the better, and that they must seek refuge from the dystopia they helped create and thus will no doubt leave their decedents clamoring to escape from again.
“We’re thinking Florida,” said Joseph Peterson. “We hear they don’t charge 10-cents per plastic shopping bag there to prevent dolphins from choking to death. How insensitive! We should move there and help completely turn their lives into nightmares, too, like in California.”
Added Peterson, “We have no choice – we must move to other locations and make them ‘blue’ too, so years from now people will have to flee from them as well. That’s what people like us do.”
But bringing about the ruination of one’s own existence from state to state can be quite a quandary, according to Dr. Nicholas Kimos, professor of Political Science and Psychology at Stanford University.
Although not implying that liberalism, and thereby liberal people, are/do suffer from a mental disorder, Dr. Kimos said that “blue state people” who can no longer tolerate living under the laws, and bans, fines, provisions, and ordinances they have imposed upon themselves, commonly feel nothing left to do but spread to the rest of America the very attitudes from which they are essentially fleeing to begin with.
Said Dr. Kimos to Duh Progressive Tuesday, “It’s not exactly like ‘locusts,’ but they’re pretty darn close. People like the Petersons move to a state, breed, and in time vote for people who raise their taxes and enact a litany of regulations and ridiculous bans. And after they come to suffer from the very politicians who enact these choking laws, they decide it’s too much for them, and so move elsewhere.”
Continued Dr. Kimos, “But they carry their values with them, and so, again, vote for the same horrid environments they created. It’s something we in the psychology field call ‘repetitive masochism.’ …They hate themselves for whatever reason and wish to project their self-hatred on others, so other humble unsuspecting people can be just as miserable as they.”
Added Dr. Kimos to Duh Progressive, as he produced a 12-ounce hammer from his office desk, “Oh, and by the way, could you please beat me over the head with this mercilessly? After all, I am from California.”
The preceding piece is satire.
Image: Courtesy of John Thomson (1837-1921); public domain
