Exhaustion Theory

I’m going to show you something stupid, but not to show you the stupid thing itself. I’m going to argue that the stupid thing is a representative stupid thing, an example of a much larger pattern, and won’t that be fun for us all. I think it explains something about the moment.

Part One:

Robin Abcarian has been a professional journalist for four decades, mostly at the Los Angeles Times. She’s spent her adult life writing about politics. So go read her column about the last gubernatorial debate in California. Here’s how it opens:

What am I looking for in a new California governor?

Like a big chunk of the state’s voters, I’m not exactly sure.

You can already tell you’re in the hands of an experienced professional. There aren’t really any big issues or anything in California right now, so how would you zero in on something you would want from someone who wants to lead the state’s executive branch, right? It’s all just a shrug and a guess.

Then she recites: This candidate said X, and this other candidate said Y. And she tells you which of the recited things she likes: I like X. I do not like Y. She doesn’t analyze or argue or contextualize: she just says I like that one and I do not like that one. The effect is that you’re watching someone wander barefoot through a field of statements and either make “ooooh, pretty” sounds or “ick, yucky” sounds with a kind of vibration from her brain stem. Billy likes blue balloons, they are pretty. Becky loves pink balloons, they are even prettier! She can’t explain any of it, though she attempts some explainy noises, and then it gets worse:

I know who I don’t like, though.

Every time I see Republican Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, with his Tom Selleck mustache, I can’t help thinking he should play a lawman on TV.

1. Should Chad Bianco become the governor of California?

2. He has a mustache

CHAD BIANCO WISHES TO BE THE GOVERNOR BUT ACTUALLY HE APPEARS TO BE VERY MASCULINE THINK ABOUT IT

Have I mentioned that Robin Abcarian has a graduate degree in journalism? You can see how her education sharpened her mind.

She adds that Bianco has said some deeply disturbing and disqualifying things, and then she gives an example: “A lack of affordable housing has nothing to do with homelessness, Bianco has said repeatedly.” Gasp!

Instead, outrageously, he claims that homelessness has something to do with “drugs and mental illness.”

It is very bad to say this. Why is it very bad to say this? She doesn’t explain, but it’s very bad to say it. Homeless people are all just fine, and they would immediately be okay if you just gave them a house, because the whole crisis is just affordability. Drugs and homelessness!?!? In CALIFORNIA!?!?!? What are you even talking about!?!?

This woman is a journalist in Los Angeles, where you can experience psychotic episodes in the street next to an encampment by driving to lunch.

By the way, this video of homeless people on Skid Row smoking fentanyl right next to the LAPD’s Central Division station? I drove over there this afternoon, and yes. Open drug dealing, drug overdoses, ambulances running day and night, bodies in the street, police station.

Let’s have a look at Abcarian’s analysis of Katie Porter, whose marriage quite notoriously ended with her husband accusing her of once expressing an (apparently frequent) rage by dumping a boiled pot of mashed potatoes on his head, part of a pattern of what he described as an abusive relationship. Abcarian:

“I’ve always liked Porter and her famous white board. I don’t believe snapping at your staff or a reporter is disqualifying, and I’m glad she’s been able to joke about the leaked video that damaged her campaign.”

I like Katie Porter. She is nice. People say she yells a lot, but that is okay. She makes jokes about when she yells at people who work for her. That is funny! She is funny and nice.

Decades on the payroll of a major American newspaper. Will a candidate be an effective governor? “I’ve always liked Porter.” Thanks for your analysis, Robin.

And then finally, big finish, watch how aggressively obtuse this person is. Just watch. It’s a gold medal performance.

First she discusses the attacks on Democratic frontrunner Xavier Becerra. The other candidates are criticizing him because “on his watch at HHS, the Office of Refugee Resettlement lost track of 85,000 migrant children.” Abcarian acknowledges what happened next, when “many of the minors, mostly teenage boys, were exploited by sponsors, who illegally put them to work in various factories, food processing plants and as roofers.” So she has explicitly discussed migration as a source of human trafficking and exploitation.

Then she says that Tom Steyer won her heart by promising to shut down ICE and prosecute ICE agents. Here’s Abcarian’s complete discussion of the way she feels about Steyer promising not to enforce immigration laws: “Could it be I’m falling in love?”

1. Unmanaged migration across borders is human trafficking and exploitation, often of children

2. My uterus is a little gushy over this candidate who says he’ll block the enforcement of immigration laws and shut down the agency that enforces immigration laws

Does she notice that she did this? Does she notice the one-two punch of talking about tens of thousands of minors trafficked across the border to be exploited and then the immediate wine aunt pivot to this ooh-he’s-so-cute swooning about Dreamy Tom Steyer promising to not let anyone enforce immigration laws?

My position regarding the high-cultural-status AWFL and biologically male pseudo-AWFL, in media and politics and academia and NGOs, is that none of them notice themselves at all. They have noises that they’re been trained to make, and they make the noises. Warm and wonderful unhoused neighbors. Warm and wonderful trans kids. Warm and wonderful immigrants. They have categories that they purr about, because one purrs about those categories or else one is a Trump person who belongs in a trailer park. It’s been purely automatic for years and years.

Part Two:

The Republican candidate Spencer Pratt is stirring up the mayor’s race in Los Angeles, but it’s not clear that he’s winning the mayor’s race. (The race is officially non-partisan, but everyone knows about party affiliation anyway.)

Because Los Angeles is now just short of 50% “Hispanic or Latino,” to use the Census Bureau category, I figured the apparent momentum for Spencer Pratt wouldn’t mean much if it isn’t spreading out of Brentwood. So I spent some time today driving around El Sereno, Lincoln Heights, Westlake, and a bunch of other majority-Latino neighborhoods to count political signs. Final count: none, for any candidate, anywhere. We’re well under a month until California’s primary election day, and the city is devoid of political display. There’s no visible support for anyone.

But so is my town in the suburbs, where lawn signs are a quasi-religion and the IN THIS HOUSE WE BELIEVE sign became an AWFL social mandate during the pandemic. During the last presidential election, the neighborhood virtue signaling was dialed up to eleven…

It is very very very important for one’s social status to say that Donald Trump is bad, and our neighborhoods are full of people who are deeply concerned with their social status.

Then, suddenly, nothing. A blank. A deep blue place has stopped engaging in political display. I do have a vague recollection of having seen a Katie Porter sign on a front lawn during a walk a few days ago, and I wish I had photographed the poor orphaned thing. Some actual human apparently posted a Katie Porter campaign sign. On purpose, even. If I’d been thinking clearly, I would have gone back and dumped hot mashed potatoes on it.

But that’s it. There’s just nothing about the election. In affluent neighborhoods, the virtue signaling is still there in non-election-themed signs about No Kings and THIS HOUSE STANDS AGAINST HATE, but I drove around for a couple hours today without seeing a sign for a mayoral or gubernatorial candidate.

The election just…isn’t. It’s a submarine election. I can’t prove it, but I suspect that’s a different problem in different neighborhoods, and the neighborhood around MacArthur Park is just tired of every choice leading to the same misery.

There’s other evidence that something is off: Mail-in ballots, especially from registered Democrats, are coming in far more slowly than they tend to. A divided California gubernatorial field, made up to an abundant degree of the least impressive Democrats on the planet, is producing a loss of air speed that seems to be sliding into a stall.

And I think what’s happening in the AWFL zones is this: The Robin Abcarians, the people who have no capacity for thought but live and feel important by mindlessly slogan-chanting their share of received wisdom, are getting…vibrations. They’re beginning at some deep point to feel what their eyes are telling them about their choices. They’re fighting an awareness that they’re a plague of locusts. So they can’t possibly be enthused by Spencer Pratt, who is a mean Republican and probably MAGA trash, because that’s low-status, but if we vote for the people we’ve been voting for, uh, mumble mumble mumble.

They’re trapped. They’ve trapped themselves. They have to vote with performance-based warmth and virtue to show they just adore our wonderful unhoused neighbors, and all the other symbols of their status-focused quasi-religion, but they also want drug addicts to not shit on their lawns and put tents at the end of the block. So they’ve frozen. They have no good choice, so they’re trying to not be seen making a choice.

We’ll see how that plays out. I have faith in their ability to keep lying to themselves.

@spencerprattLA has over 40K drug addicts holding Angelenos hostage. All it takes is one to make moms feel too nervous to let their kids just go be kids and explore the quiet streets of their beautiful neighborhood. ENOUGH. We are done being held hostage in our own homes. Vote PRATT today!

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