And Now a Word from California Governor John C. Calhoun, Who Don't Have No Truck With Them Damn Federals
Look here, boys, we just got ourselves a Nullification Crisis, if we feel like bothering to notice. And it points in the direction these things tend to go:
I GOT MY VACCINES NOW LET’S SECEDE, the new progressive mainstream position. We’re not even gonna be part of your like whatever, anymore. Yay we’ve formally divorced from the authority wielded by the federal government.
As our most important statesman liked to say, not a joke, man. Echoing the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions of 1798 and the South Carolina Exposition and Protest of 1828, California just withdrew itself from an unwanted part of its relationship with the federal government. Here’s how the press release from Governor Gavin Newsom’s office puts it:
“California breaks from future federal guidance.” Remember that states can do that, now, like declaring sanctuary status and attempting to use nullification and interposition against the enforcement of immigration laws. States can go just go their own way, from now on, and central authority is subject to nullification at will. I’m literally laughing out loud at this wonderful new progressive principle being celebrated in Sacramento.
They never seem to wonder what happens tomorrow, but I don’t mind that they don’t ever notice the question.
The state has sort of ghosted in federal authority, freezing the Biden administration into place by adopting pre-Mean Orange-January 20 federal vaccine standards1, but locking out the federal health agencies in their current and future forms. California used the “gut and amend” process to get this done, suddenly dropping new provisions into an unrelated bill in the late end of the legislative session — preventing committee hearings and extensive news coverage in advance of passage. They threw a big surprise party for the people of the state.
You can read a detailed description of the bill in the Senate Floor Analysis by opening this PDF file, with the most relevant portion starting on pg. 2, behind bullet point #2:
Piling on the symbols of the progressive secular religion, the bill also protects the Holy Sacraments of the Church of California:
Pregnant men can still get lots of free abortions. Order prevails. “Peace be with you,” sighs Marin County, sinking back into a dream.
I’ve argued that the American political “left,” in its current form, lacks ideological coherence, is basically a hospital ward full of brain-injured psychotics, and zigs around behind a bizarre set of shifting symbols without ever knowing what they mean by any of it. They’re oppositionally left, opposed to whatever Orange Hitler and his mean flyover state MAGA trash want or do. Abortion and wonderful gender-affirming care and SO MANY COVID VACCINES OH LOOK I JUST GOT SIX MORE are all very progressive, so whatever means get you there must also be progressive, and whatever political effects follow on behind the application of those means must be good.
And so, a very few years after the progressive historian Jefferson Cowie won the Pulitzer Prize for history with a book arguing that federal power is inherently virtuous and state and local power is inherently racist and atavistic, the update-your-microchip version of progressive politics is that nullification is progressive, states are the proper source of political authority, and federal power is a political illness that requires massive resistance.
See the practical result: California, striking a blow for progressive governance, just rolled back the entire twentieth-century project of the metastasizing administrative state. Them federal types can’t tell us what to do, boys, we got us our own customs and traditions down here in these parts.
You have to believe in science, listen to the experts, and obey Dr. Fauci, and
We’re divorcing ourselves from the authority of the federal health agencies.
We could just very quietly take them up on it.
WHEN DADDY STILL LOVED US
Reading this again, a few minutes after I posted it: There's nothing Democrats won't do in the service of mRNA injections. It's the drum major in their parade, and they just march wherever it leads them. WE LOVE YOU, VACCINE. It's a degree of mindless devotion that I wouldn't have imagined. They're going to burn down the administrative state to serve....Moderna.
Okay.
It still hurts to see each time California decends a bit lower on the regression slide. Your phrase ”basically a hospital ward full of brain-injured psychotics, and zigs around behind a bizarre set of shifting symbols without ever knowing what they mean by any of it.” is so true it stings.