Observations of the Fourth of July

Something Extra This Sunday

I know I was not going to post on Sunday, but here is some random thoughts about the Fourth in my SoCal area.

Just a short and sweet report of what I saw today at my neighborhood’s Fourth of July Parade. First, its organized like most neighborhood things by nice White Ladies™ (Steve Sailer) who are generally married and have kids. It is a good thing for us to have them organizing neighborhood events like this instead of BLM marches. There are a couple of married with kids ladies who organize it, as much a dual party for themselves as it is for their kids. I observed a bunch of socializing among both groups, among the kids and among the moms. That was the purpose I suppose.

Second, the gathering was significantly smaller, in fact about half the size of last years and the year before that. Anecdotally, people were on vacation taking advantage of the three day weekend to go to Hawaii, or the beach, or the River (Colorado) or up the Coast to Santa Barbara or even Big Sur (from what I overheard). It seems there was more money or just delayed opportunity for people to take off and have a vacation.

Third, from observing the Huntington Beach Fourth of July Parade, it seemed that the Orange County Bastion of Trump-dom (the City has been fighting the State over: Pride and Transgenderism in schools, ICE enforcement, and other issues; it is a reliable center of Trump support and expressive support) remains the typical Americana. Tellingly, even the various non-White County Supervisors were eager to ride on floats waving the flag; there seemed to few takers for the Zohran Mamdami ("we are taking over") approach.

Fourth, there seems to be a mini-baby boom among my neighbors. It seems the older people have either died or moved out, and there are a lot more families around, with a lot of fairly young kids (ages 5-11 or so). Almost all White too in case you are wondering, though we have various non-Whites in the neighborhood (mostly Asian). There are a spate of some fairly major remodels of houses, which takes forever because labor and materials are scarce. Skilled labor does not just wash up on "Pangas" (the often preferred way to put illegals into SoCal, they are lightweight open skiffs). Electricians, plumbers, carpenters, etc. who can meet code are not in infinite supply. Lumber anecdotally, is still in tight supply and quality is still down, compared to pre-Covid. At least, this is what I garnered from chatting up the neighbors. A fairly modest house in my neighborhood, at most 3,000 square feet, just sold for 2.1 million dollars. So appreciation has been very, very rapid. There is another two houses in my neighborhood that have been in remodeling for five years and are still not done. FWIW.

Shopping for food on July 3, the local supermarket was packed. Prices were sky high, and we in California are now "blessed" with a 65 cents gas tax increase because so many people are driving electric cars. I wondered about that and my boss told me it was because Tesla is having these insane leasing deals. Three years for about $350 a month, with very little credit checks. His view was the Musk was trying to stuff the books with "revenue" as real sales to people paying real money for the cars had drastically fallen off. He leases one, he takes advantage of the car pool lane (electric cars can use it with one occupant), but thinks a lot of Musk’s tantrums are related to his insider knowledge that Tesla is not sustainable. Everyone who can buy a Telsa for a real profit by the company has done so; they are basically "channel stuffing" to keep phony revenue up even though they are losing money. It beats having the cars just sit in storage. Other car companies do this, both Stellantis and Ford are notorious for forcing dealers to take vehicles they don’t want just to get them off the manufacturer’s books.

At any rate, if you see various videos of lots and lots of Teslas in California, particularly, this is why. With the follow-on effect of even more taxes on gas/diesel cars.

The Fireworks TV Wars

As recently as twelve years ago, CBS and NBC battled it out with the Fourth of July Fireworks broadcasts. CBS had the Boston Pops, and NBC the big New York City Macy’s broadcast. TV broadcasts are of interest to me, as they are a way to calm down my dogs who do not like at all the neighborhood fireworks, which were less than in previous years. Suggesting again that a lot of people went away for the Fourth Holiday. I keep the broadcast on loud to calm them down. In years past it resembled a war zone, but it was lesser this year. Also, the local TV news reported fewer massive illegal fireworks, perhaps also a function of illegals keeping a lower profile (a non-reported issue is that illegals make extra money selling smuggled fireworks out of their rented houses – one blew up a few days ago in LA County doing just that, burning down four additional homes and killing at least one). Fewer illegals out and about and selling illegal fireworks, fewer fireworks. In Southern California counties at least, almost all fireworks even the "safe and sane" are illegal, so naturally people head to Mexico or illegal vendors for the hard stuff.

At any rate, in Southern California my firework choices were: NBC Macy’s New York, PBS Capitol Fourth, and CW broadcasting an abbreviated Boston Pops. PBS’s big headliner was the Beach Boys, by which it meant Mike Love, looking and sounding like he was 117 years old, backed by some session musicians. The Boston Pops had the Temptations, with the same dynamic. NBC had 61 year old Lenny Kravitz, who looked good. He did not look 61, decades younger. Out of all the performers, his songs were actually OK (not excellent, just OK and entertaining). He had Guns and Roses’s guitarist Slash on stage as well, you cannot miss Slash which I guess is the point of his distinctive hairstyle and flying V guitar. The tone of the show was basketball Americana, basketball Americans everywhere, including the songs mostly during the fireworks themselves which were impressive. It was not however a jeremiad against the Color Orange, so there was that. The PBS show featured a country duo I had never heard of, Corporate Nashville Country, and lots of military. The attendees were mostly White shit-libs, by the looks of them. Fairly numerous they/thems as well. NYC, well it was a melange of non-Whites, one had to look hard to find White people, as befits a city only 33% if that White.

The local CW affiliate used to run the "Big Bay Boom" co-broadcasting with a San Diego station to show the fireworks and local musical talent in the run up to the fireworks, but that was canceled. It was apparently a money thing. This is indicative of the de-massification of American society. Donald Trump would not have succeeded in say, 2000, because America was still mostly a land of Network TV: ABC, CBS, NBC, and FOX. None would have allowed him any publicity, and would have smothered his run out of existence. But he leveraged online media in 2015, and won despite the media’s abhorrence of his existence and that of his voters existence. The media might have held on longer, had they actually liked their viewers and made stuff that their viewers liked entertainment wise, giving their new outlets the halo of legitimacy that popular stuff in the 1980s conferred. Tom Brokaw was trusted because the same network running his half hour news show ran the A-Team, and Miami Vice, and Hill Street Blues, and so the affection for the entertainment spilled over to the news organization. People don’t compartmentalize very well, and are often emotional and sentimental, so that worked in the Media’s favor in the 1980s. And the reverse in the woke morality plays that started to creep in around 2006 or so and chased away viewers and their attachment to the media.

CBS dropped the Boston Pops because it lost them money, NBC had won the Firework broadcast wars. Locally, the CW did the same thing. PBS uses your money so they don’t care – they make broadcasts for Chuck Schumer and Lindsay Graham. Not you.

And the Fireworks shows and New Years Eve Shows are a bit "weird" but somehow uniquely American. The performers don’t get paid to appear. Rather, its free publicity for their upcoming tours and album releases. The New Years Eve shows are where talent would rather appear. Most of their tours kick off in January, usually timed in support of a new album release. Mostly the talent is like last year’s PBS performer Smokey Robinson. Elderly performers who are far past their prime, still needing/wanting to perform. Often (not always) sad looking, and a reminder to many that they are older than they think. The Fourth of July shows get those with not enough pull or fortunate timing to appear on New Years Eve. Some of the performers still enjoy performing, generally if they have lasted that long they are not drug dependent like Tom Petty, Prince, or Scott Weiland. The deadly age for rockers seems to be the late fifties and early sixties. When the lifetime of abuse tends to catch up to them.

The dudes pushing eighty have already won that battle, the rest is just with Father Time.

The other performers are those nobody ever heard of, wanting a large stage to get people to sample them. Saturday Night Live and the late shows used to provide that coverage, but no more. [There is fascinating video of the band Devo performing on Letterman around 1978-1981. It was clear they had an idea, MoTown synchronized performances like the Temptations, with the Whitest music they could create. There is nothing like that now.] In that sense the Critical Drinker and pals are correct, we live in an endless now, where there has been nothing new and exciting in entertainment for over twenty years. When was the last time you heard of a new band or singer who created real excitement over a sound and style that was not just a repetition of older forms done better by the original?

And that is another reason why audiences are fracturing. CBS, NBC, ABC/ESPN, and Amazon all compete over the NFL, and College Football, the last big cultural institution that lots of people watch together. They all make money. The Fireworks shows, and their essential abandonment to the one dominant corporate, and one dominant Communist broadcast, are indicators of a collapsing public cultural sphere. Some of it is technology, some of it bad management, but a lot of it is the collapse of public trust and emotions that Chris Zander used to talk about.

A country cannot operate as a group of strangers each staying in a separate room in the Global Holiday Inn Express. Something has to give.