Across the United States, Confederate statues are coming down. Pedestals are cleared. Plaques rewritten. Symbols of an openly racist past are finally being acknowledged for what they were.

That matters.

But while the country debates symbols, California continues to operate something far more destructive because it is not symbolic at all.

California maintains systems.

California’s Racism Was Institutional, Not Ornamental

California has long told itself a reassuring story. Progressive. Enlightened. Forward-looking. On the right side of history.

That story collapses under scrutiny.

California was not a reluctant participant in America’s worst medical and social abuses. It was a leader. The state built, funded, and defended institutions that segregated, confined, sterilized, drugged, and lobotomized African Americans, Mexicans, Native Americans, women, disabled people, queer people, and the poor.

This was not hidden misconduct.
It was law, policy, and procedure.

These were not rogue doctors or isolated failures.
They were systems designed to manage people rather than care for them.

When Los Angeles Was a Holy City

Before Los Angeles became a symbol of alienation and indifference, it was briefly one of the most spiritually concentrated cities in the world.

In the 1910s and 1920s, Los Angeles attracted healers, revivalists, migrants, and people searching for meaning. The city was young, unregulated, and open to reinvention. Care was not yet professionalized. Suffering was still considered a communal responsibility.

At the center of this moment stood Aimee Semple McPherson.

When Angelus Temple opened in 1923, it seated more than 5,000 people and reached millions more by radio. McPherson’s movement emphasized healing, charity, and direct human connection. Whatever criticisms exist of her theology or performance style, her influence established Los Angeles as a place where compassion was public and expected.

Empathy was not outsourced.
It was practiced.

This matters because it proves California did not begin as a cold or indifferent place. Empathy existed at scale.

What Replaced Empathy Was Not Science. It Was Administration

As California industrialized, care was reorganized.

Healing was professionalized.
Compassion was regulated.
Suffering was categorized.

Psychiatry and psychology moved into the space once held by communities, churches, and extended families. Instead of accompaniment and humility, these systems brought hierarchy, diagnosis, and coercion.

The state did not eliminate suffering.
It learned how to process it.

Once care became administrative, people became manageable.

The Architecture of Control

California’s state hospitals were not sanctuaries. They were containment facilities.

Sonoma State Home became a centerpiece of the American eugenics movement. California sterilized nearly 20,000 people under state authority. Children were labeled defective. Women were punished for perceived sexual deviance. Native spiritual practices were pathologized. Mexican families were torn apart.

This was not a moral accident.

California’s eugenics framework was studied and praised by Nazi racial hygienists in the 1930s. That connection is documented through shared literature, correspondence, and direct admiration.

When these institutions became politically uncomfortable, they were not dismantled.

They were renamed.

Lobotomy as Policy

Lobotomy was not a fringe mistake. It was a solution to overcrowding and resistance.

In California’s hospitals, lobotomy reduced staffing needs, enforced order, and suppressed dissent. Healing was secondary. Compliance was the objective.

When lobotomy became politically toxic, chemical restraint replaced it.

Different tools.
Same logic.

The method changed.
The power structure did not.

Jim Jones Was Not an Anomaly. He Was a Reflection

Jim Jones did not infiltrate California’s political system. He was invited into it.

Jones rose in San Francisco because he delivered what institutions already valued. Voter turnout. Discipline. Moral theater. Control.

In 1976, Mayor George Moscone appointed Jones to the San Francisco Housing Authority Commission. That appointment reflected Jones’ political utility, not his virtue.

The same system that rewarded psychiatric control rewarded Jones.

Order was mistaken for care.
Organization was mistaken for morality.

Jones was not a glitch in the system.
He was a product of it.

When Institutions Lose Empathy, Substitutes Appear

As California’s institutions became colder, people sought alternatives.

This is the context in which movements like L. Ron Hubbard’s Dianetics gained traction. In 1950, psychiatry was associated with electroshock, lobotomy, and indefinite confinement. Millions were desperate for explanations that did not threaten erasure.

This does not validate those movements.

It explains them.

When systems refuse accountability, substitutes grow in the cracks. Some are dangerous. All are symptoms.

California’s Failure Is Measurable

California’s cruelty cannot be explained by poverty.

California is one of the most economically powerful regions on Earth. In 2024, the state government announced California had become the world’s fourth-largest economy by nominal GDP.

And yet California consistently ranks among the worst states to be poor.

Using the Supplemental Poverty Measure, which accounts for housing costs and taxes, the U.S. Census Bureau places California near the top nationally for poverty rates when cost of living is considered.

California also leads the nation in unsheltered homelessness. Federal and state data confirm that California has both the largest homeless population and one of the highest unsheltered rates in the country.

This is not scarcity.

This is structural failure.

The Global Contrast California Avoids

In countries like India and Cambodia, GDP per capita is a fraction of California’s.

Yet in many low-income communities in those countries, mutual aid remains intact. Families rely on one another. Care has not been fully outsourced to institutions.

California has more wealth, more universities, more technology, and more infrastructure than most nations on Earth.

What it lacks is relational responsibility.

That is not an economic problem.
It is a moral and structural one.

How California Heals

California does not need better branding.
It needs reckoning.

As a state:

• Open sealed psychiatric and institutional records

• Name eugenics, forced sterilization, lobotomy, and coercive confinement as state crimes

• Expand survivor compensation programs paired with public truth-telling

• Reform involuntary treatment laws with real due process and independent advocacy

• Shift care away from courts and back into communities

As people:

• Stop outsourcing compassion to systems

• Treat suffering as a human encounter, not a reportable condition

• Rebuild local networks of care

• Reject systems that equate obedience with healing

• Return to nature, community, and presence as baseline regulation

California did not become cruel because its people are worse than others.

California became cruel because its systems made empathy optional and control efficient.

Live Pure Means Dismantling Machinery, Not Polishing Symbols

Tearing down statues is easy.

Dismantling machinery requires courage.

Live Pure is not nostalgia.
It is accountability.

California will not heal until it stops mistaking management for care and authority for compassion.

Real justice is not symbolic.

It is structural.