![T]()
he pop-culture pastime of predicting the future through science
fiction goes back at least as far as Jules Verne, the 19th-century novelist
who foresaw space travel and cities beneath the sea. His view of the future
is a picnic compared with the apocalyptic scenarios that dominate science
fiction today. Civilization lies in ruins and what remains of the human race
is enslaved by the murderous computer from the "Matrix" series or stalked by
bone-crushing cyborgs like the one made famous by Arnold Schwarzenegger, the
next California governor, in the first "Terminator" film.
Los Angeles in the movies is regularly blown up, burned down or pillaged
by aliens. (Life in Southern California recently must have been very much
like a fiery disaster film.) But when Californians talk seriously about the
future, they inevitably focus on "Blade Runner," the 1982 cult movie that
made a star of its director Ridley Scott. It depicts the future of the
Golden State as a civil liberties catastrophe where "replicants" (synthetic
people) are mass produced as slaves, assassins and prostitutes. The
replicants have disappeared from the discussion in real-world California,
which tends to focus on the overall civic disaster depicted in the film.
The pollution is horrendous. The rich have withdrawn into fortress-style
towers. The avenues teem with unruly, eccentrically dressed immigrants who
speak a rough street language instead of English. References to these scenes
show up everywhere, from books about politics to civic-planning documents
like "L.A. 2000," a look at the future commissioned by Tom Bradley, when he
was mayor of the city in the 1980's. The report warned that the region might
deteriorate into a scene from "Blade Runner": a featureless sprawl seething
with class and ethnic hostilities. In "A California State of Mind," the
public-opinion analyst Mark Baldassare writes that Californians who were
asked about the future "presented an image more like a nightmare than a
utopia" — descriptions that recalled a certain science-fiction movie.
"Blade Runner" exploits two primordial California fears. It depicts the
state becoming part of an undifferentiated sprawl. It also plays into the
fears of those Californians who think that the state will someday be
dominated by immigrants who usurp the national language. Disquiet about the
rising immigrant tide has been an undercurrent in California politics for at
least 30 years. It was this sentiment that energized the ballot initiatives
that outlawed affirmative action in public universities and bilingual
education in public schools.
Fear of Blade Runnerization and the belief that the affluent should spend
their tax dollars only on themselves have generated a pattern of civic
secession. Wealthy and middle-class Californians have increasingly withdrawn
into gated communities that thrive while the older, poorer counties they
have fled struggle along on a diminished tax base. The people in the new,
homogenous communities tend to be extreme localists who drop out of the
broader civic life. When they do engage statewide politics, they tend to do
it with ballot initiatives that slash tax revenues, hamstring the
Legislature and generally cut the civic ties that bind citizens in one place
to those at the far end of the state.
This secessionist impulse is as old as California. Proposals for breaking
up the state have surfaced and resurfaced like clockwork but have mainly
gone nowhere. The secessionists discovered a powerful tool with the passage
of Proposition 13, which fueled the tax revolt when it capped property taxes
in 1978. Proposition 13 was a secessionary act by homeowners and corporate
landowners who were essentially saying that they wished to withdraw from the
traditional system in which affluent citizens underwrite schools, social
services and infrastructure used by the poor and working class.
Proposition-style campaigns proved the perfect tool for affluent
communities to break off from older, poorer counties — taking with them
revenue-producing malls and businesses. The breakaway communities further
impoverished the counties they left behind by expanding into land the
counties had set aside for revenue-generating development that was all the
more crucial after Proposition 13 made it nearly impossible to raise taxes.
As the California writer Peter Schrag noted in "Paradise Lost," the new
cities used planning and zoning authority to "keep poor and low-income
housing out."
More than 60 communities have broken away since the 1970's. Many more
attempted to do so. The Legislature slowed the defections by requiring that
incorporations be revenue neutral, but the urge to secede continues, most
notably in the San Fernando Valley, which is seeking to leave Los Angeles,
taking with it a huge chunk of the city's population.
California's response to the pessimistic future in "Blade Runner" is a
clear indication of what Californians fear and what might be in store for
the rest of us if the appetite for secession spreads across the country.
Bear in mind, however, that the breakaway communities in California have
deepened the civic problems they hoped to flee. The barriers they erect
destroy the ebb and flow through which newcomers have historically become
part of the mainstream and moved into the middle class. The fortress-style
villages — with affluent whites shut up inside and immigrants outside the
gates — are hastening the development of the science-fiction scenario that
terrified Californians in the first place.
