California

My gut instinct is that the state functioned mostly well through the 1990s from the massive investments in infrastructure and education from the 40s-60s. There are obvious exceptions, particularly the LAPD, but the state as a whole worked. But now? Total and complete dysfunction. We have politicians who all "believe" in global warming, promote electric cars, and yet, none of them can think two steps ahead and update and reinforce our electrical grid? To the point where we are supposed to cut back on AC and not charge cars during this massive heat wave? What is the point of being an environmentalist if you have no plan for dealing with such the weather changes? We have a huge number of politicians who want to shut down - I believe - our last nuclear power plant. And somehow Gavin Newsom made the one good decision of his tenure to keep it open because he realized - shit, the grid going out isn't gonna be good for my Presidential nomination. 

But this is a pattern far beyond just this grid thing. We are in the midst of a huge drought. And we are canceling plans to build a desalination plant?

We are experiencing major forest fires year after year because we can't manage the forests.

We can't build housing to make living affordable because we can't build the infrastructure to make it possible for people to travel to and from work in a reasonable time.

We can't educate our students because the unions and schools don't care (and we have low standards). I mean, when I was growing up, it was common to see public school teachers who had attended UC Berkeley, UCLA, Stanford, places like that. Is anyone seeing this in our public schools right now?

I dunno man, something has broke in the brains of people here. We've always had kooks. They used to mind their business and want to be left alone to smoke weed, surf, or go to Dead shows and sell burritos. Now, these people run for public office. They teach grade school. They are on the city council. They make COVID policy. We let the inmates control the asylum.