On a cloudy weekday morning last month, I visited San Juan Capistrano hoping to see the future of this country in a place gladly stuck in its past.
The city of about 35,000 has always considered itself an island of Old California, even as clogged roads and McMansions blemished the once-pristine hills. Physically and spiritually, San Juan Capistrano is centered around its mission, one of 21 established by the Catholic Church under the Spanish crown in the 18th and 19th centuries, forming the scaffold of modern-day California.
These southern reaches are one of the few areas of an increasingly purple Orange County that went with President Trump all three times. So I wasn’t surprised that the downtown looked liked a MAGA wonderland as I walked toward the mission…