Dan Moen

Close your eyes. Imagine a place where ocean, mountains, deserts, and lakes meet — paired with some of the most forgiving, life-giving weather on Earth. A place where almost anything grows. A place so attractive that this era’s greatest builders and innovators chose to gather there to shape the future. And they did. They turned it into the fifth-largest economy in the world. An Elysium on Earth. A place so extraordinarily fortunate that many of its people were spared the anxieties that dominate most of human life. And when survival is no longer the concern, attention drifts elsewhere. Toward injustices far away. Toward suffering not personally experienced. Toward a desire to cleanse immense good fortune by shouldering everyone else’s pain. That impulse was put into action. The people elected leaders who promised to right all the wrongs of the world. These leaders were not builders — those were too busy building. Instead, they were specialists in rhetoric: masters of moral language, of verbal combat, of channeling abstract ideals of justice and equity. Suicidal empathy finally found its weapon. Meanwhile, the builders — optimistic, competitive, forward-looking — kept building. They ignored the slow erosion of common sense metastasizing around them. Years passed. Things worsened. The cancer took hold. Zombies appeared. Not monsters from fiction, but human beings hollowed out — addicted, untreated, unaccountable — wandering through once-beautiful streets. Downtowns decayed. Public spaces emptied. The social contract dissolved in plain sight. The people who wanted to fix the world now felt unsafe in their own neighborhoods. But they blamed themselves. They rejected self-will and agency. They believed that when individuals collapse, society must have failed first. So they doubled down. More years passed. On top of zombies and collapsing public order came an exploding cost of living. The place became unaffordable for most. People began to leave. That’s when those in power panicked. If the people who kept them in office were leaving, how would they remain in power? After all, this was not just their job — it was the only thing they were capable of doing. They could not build, create, or compete in any environment that rewards real output. Outside of politics, they would have nothing to offer and nowhere to hide. So they adapted — not by fixing what was broken, but by rigging the system to ensure they would never have to face a world that measures value by results. They imported voters. They diluted standards. They stretched rules past recognition. Ballot harvesting. Voting without identification. Endless “emergency” justifications. They let cities burn — sometimes metaphorically, sometimes literally. Eventually, the builders noticed. Too late. And they began to leave as well. The place that once held every advantage any society could dream of — the place where the future was being built — started to collapse. The cancer and its caregivers transformed Elysium into Tartarus. This is the path California is on. Whether this paradise becomes hell is still within our control — but not indefinitely. The window is closing. Let’s fight back and make it Elysium again.