Life after leaving California

 Terry Paulding:

Last week, I wrote about the beginning of my journey, driving to Boise, Idaho from the San Francisco Bay Area in California.  I subsequently spent most of the week exploring the city, where I enjoyed myself very much.  I think I would have liked Boise in any event, but what made the trip so eye-opening was being reminded what life is like in a state that hasn't destroyed itself by embracing squalor and crime while imposing totalitarian restrictions on its law-abiding citizens.

My first impression was that Boise, compared to California, is incredibly clean.  I didn't see any random garbage.  The streets weren't full of potholes.  I didn't see even one homeless person — maybe because the weather is cold this time of year, but also, I suspect, because Boise doesn't cater to them.

California embraces having indigent addicts running rampant; pays them $600 a month in assistance; and now, in San Francisco, is also planning on giving them their chosen set of drugs and a "safe" place to shoot them up in a "navigation center."

Stores in Boise are clean and, obviously, have not been picked through by emboldened shoplifters, as is the case in the Bay Area.  I didn't see anyone with an open car trunk, selling random packaged goods lifted from the local grocery or pharmacy, which is, again, a common sight at home.

People were friendly, not wary, in Boise.  What a contrast to home!  It actually took some getting used to.

And then there was the whole masking issue.  Every time I left my cottage, I felt as if, maybe, I'd forgotten to put on some crucial item of clothing.  I eventually got used to that bare-faced feeling, and, I must say, not once in the whole trip did I put on a mask.

People smiled everywhere I went, and they engaged in friendly conversations, too.  I could tell they were smiling because, for the most part, I could see their faces.  Some stores and businesses enforced a policy making their workers wear masks, but that was it.  Nobody drove with a mask on, and few walked around wearing them.

...

California now embraces crime and squalor.  Liberals have ruined several aspects of life in California and seem incapable of comprehending how to make things better.