Being Special
Last week, I had an issue with Part I in which Didion seemed to address a homogenous "white" Californian identity that didn't include the endless variations of diversity in the picture. In the beginning of Part II, Didion (thankfully) explains herself. The reason why I, also a Californian, felt so left out of the so-called Californian experience that was rather exclusive was because I am the second type of Californian, a member of the "new people." I couldn't identify with any of the supposedly intrinsic traits simply because I was part of the later group: my ancestors didn't cross the Oregon Trail; my parents didn't teach me "the code of the West" or the responsibility to kill rattlesnakes for our neighbors' safety; and because of this, I wasn't able to understand this Californian exceptionalism that the "old people" would proudly like to point to. And sure, since I didn't have the same familial and historical ties deeply rooted to Californian soil, of course, I wouldn't be able to understand without having learned it in my 4th grade textbook. However, it was this type of dichotomy, the new versus the old, that the 'original' Californians tended to draw and this desire to 'exceptionalize' themselves that ultimately deluded many generations of having a special identity.
The contradictions that Didion identifies highlights the other ways old Californians tended to dichotomize society in order to maintain the illusion of Californian exceptionalism. Here are some that she mentions: the new middle-class "ownership" class that was funded entirely by the "good will of the federal government" and "on defense contracts" (110, 129); all-American "sound American citizens" stubbornly holding onto new traditions of the new community when their jobs are in retrospect, temporal (143); Californian society being seen as the "average national culture and character" when clearly Californians had a very different experience that the rest of the country (189); and Californians thinking themselves to be relatively "loose, less socially rigid" despite having an obsession with prisons and asylums (195). A question posed in Henry George' "What the Railroad Will Bring Us" strikes the heart of it all: "Can we have one thing without the other?" (146).
Although I expect less people to struggle with Didion's same search for identity in the midst of discovering all of these contradictions since even less people are familiar with her Californian experience, I appreciate her demythifying the Californian illusion because it might help explain the historical context of the problems we face today, such as on continuing financial dependency on the fed.