Wednesday Morning Rant

The unprecedented peacetime migration that kicked off in earnest when the world ended in 2020 is not without consequence. Initially, the coverage of the migration was largely centered around changes in employment and consequences for "the future of work." A lot of people quit their jobs from 2020-2022 and moved on - so many that this period has been dubbed "The Great Resignation" by Anthony Klotz of the University College (London) - a term immediately glommed onto by the press. Setting aside the huge churn in the employment market, the real consequence was not the moving on from jobs, but the moving away from home.

Starting last year, the effects of our great migration have finally started to pick up some press notice. Newsweek covered the internal trends of declines in California and New York. On Independence Day, Legal Insurrection covered the demographic trend of Illinois' decline, noting that it's the young who are fleeing more than other groups. The states experiencing the greatest outflows are in for a rough time if the trend doesn't reverse - and it doesn't look to be reversing.

There is, however, a flip side to outflow: inflow. It's not necessarily a picnic for those on the receiving end of the migratory flows. Where I live today is an example, and I am part of the phenomenon (or, if you were to ask the natives here, part of the problem - a position they are not unjustified in holding). I am a blue state refugee. I pulled up stakes and fled Colorado for saner, much redder pastures during the migratory surge. Many view me with suspicion by default. Nobody likes interlopers who come in screw around with what's working. That is a trepidation I share, because it's what made me a blue state refugee in the first place. The colonization of Colorado by California makes me view former blue staters with, at best, extreme suspicion - even though I am one of them myself.

I was surprised to learn that there is an entire reason for suspicion that I never knew about before. Among the non-politically-inclined, the reasons are fairly obvious: those damn out-of-towners are flooding in and making things expensive, the traffic is worse, accents are unfamiliar, etc. There's certainly some truth to that. Among the politically-inclined of the conservative persuasion, the fear is more existential. Having seen the effects of progressive raveners on the Interior West, they have a mixture of terror and hatred for former blue state interlopers. Nobody wants to have what happened to Colorado and New Mexico happen to them.

It was at a recent social event that I learned of a third. It turns out - to my great surprise - that the progs fear it, too. I figured they would be thrilled with the massive inflow of people from places like California and New York, but they also feel trepidation. I met a number of people of the progressive persuasion and the topic of "new people" came up. These are natives of my area, and leftists. They were conversing passionately about the risks of inflow from California in particular, as I stood there listening with fascination. They fear "conservative Californians" flooding in and making the state permanently unattainable for progressives. They see no future for local progressive politics if the new arrivals are non-leftists who will create an even greater headwind against "progress" than there already is.

I have long asserted - and I still believe - that whether the destinations favored by the fleeing blue staters survive depends entirely on whether those fleeing are colonists looking to "improve" their new homes, or whether they are refugees looking to hold the line after seeing their former homes destroyed by progressive politics. My fear, since day zero, has been that there are too many colonists coming in. I was astounded to learn that the progs fear the opposite, that there are too many regressive knuckle-draggers coming in for them to achieve the utopia denied to them by the regressive knuckle-dragging natives.

The jury is very much still out. Whether the net inflow in any given place is colonist or refugee is yet to be determined, but it was very interesting to learn that - at least in some of those places - the progs are afraid of it, too. They fear the inflow will put their ambitions permanently out of reach. For perhaps the first time in my life, I hope that the progs are right.

posted by Joe Mannix at 11:00 AM

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