Despite it being seen as a “liberal” state, modern conservative ideology owes a lot to California. The state that birthed Reagan also birthed Silicon Valley and their “liberal” startups, which have been getting more conservative over the years. The “LessWrong” cult can be traced back to UC Berkeley, and that cult has even influenced Elon Musk who, despite being Trump’s right hand man now, was a liberal darling for many years, a South African turned Californian who built the first Tesla factory in Fremont, California in the heart of Silicon Valley. Tesla was a product of Obama grants, too. Modern tech moguls turn to “woo” pseudoscience and “hippie” drugs, both a product of California culture. This is just a thought I had after listening to the Trueanon episode on the LessWrong cult, but it seems that a lot of modern conservative thought can be traced right back to California.
Nixon too.
This ties into the neurosis of the modern liberal as the institutions and cultures that they held up as the beacons of progress that would move society forward have instead been the Petri dishes of a new fascism. To square that circle they have to invent either foreign boogeymen (Russian bots) or concoct flimsy rationalizations of these things being abnormalities instead of the natural outcomes of these institutions.