we have a very small welfare state (this place would be apocalyptic without it lmao) as compared to other states, along with shit like CARB and smog testing (for good reason) and comparitively high taxes and as much as 60%-70% non white populations in some areas drives people insane and convinces them they are under government tyranny

also a lot of our laws really are pretty dumb, they're the epitome of like progressive liberalism where you try to do something nice but it isn't compatible with capitalism as it exists so it winds up being completely pointless at best and borderline malicious at worst, like really lenient sentencing for crime (bad idea without anything to support it lol) and draconian gun laws

honestly though I feel like a lot of it boils down to insecurity and racism, this state used to be pretty conservative and almost completely white so seeing a lot of the city centers turn into extremely overcrowded (a lot of the Bay for example was farmland as recently as the late 70's) and frankly shitty places filled with a bunch of brown (who do your garden and stand outside of El Hon Depo) and yellow people (the yellow people who make more money than you) made a lot of people go fucking insane. Like the entire Bay Area used to be a stronghold of the KKK and shit, and so did LA county. The #1 complaint I see people make is about demographics. This place was basically an ethnostate at one point, the California natives were peaceful and were wiped out pretty much instantly by the different waves of settlers and Mexico/New Spain never really set up here as much as they did in Texas so it was pretty much all honkies at one point. The state is like close to being majority Mexican iirc, and most of that population is scattered in the farm towns where poverty and meth and gangs are nuts. There is not many left in the cities due to how expensive it is so it's all Chinese immigrants and wealthy Indians moving in who inspire homocidal rage in all of the "natives", white and nonwhite.

also the communist thing is just American brainrot, there's no real explanation for it. It doesn't make sense because it's not supposed to. I think it originally started as a joke but people here in the US are so unhinged that anything except the Congo Free state is full communism. If you really press people they will just say "nanny state, high taxes, sanctuary cities, illegal immigrants, too many rules/regulations = communism"

California is honestly kind of a fucked up place. It's like a beta test of the rest of the USA and by Allah this entire country will be Brazil but worse in the coming decades. The informal racial caste system forming in the Bay, the impossible rents, the tent cities, the ultra militarized and racist police, etc.

like SF is basically a treat factory/amusement park for the rich, it's fucking surreal and bizarre to see someone in rags puking their guts out from crack withdrawals next to a coffee shop that charges $20 for a tiny shot, this inspires revulsion in anyone sane and since liberals are so ineffectual/dumb the only people who really point out how terribly fucked it all is tend to be conservatives and since the social milieu of the state tends to shun open displays of conservatism they tend to cluster together into malignant circlejerks that leads to all the ultra conservatives to flee to their suburbs and small towns where they just get even crazier

it's like a lot of thing honestly, this state has so much shit going own it is borderline its own country