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Social media governance.
The California legislature has a gift for making laws that don’t work. Yes, they have a gift for making laws that are insane and extreme, but beyond that, they have a gift for making laws that are strangely written, full of practical dead ends and undefined assumptions, and highly likely to be dismantled or substantially reshaped in court. They don’t pass laws as laws; they pass laws as symbols and status gestures, as onanistic TikTok social display. I’ll give a few examples, but first let’s start with the ruler of the Congo.
After we fled the City of Los Angeles, my introduction to the city council in my small suburban town, a few years ago, came in two forms: First, I read a series of local news stories about the many ongoing problems in the way the city government was working, as we kept losing department heads and key city staff. (“The resignation means the city will have to begin a search for its sixth finance director in less than three years.”)
But second, as all of this chaos was churning, I read about the mayor of our very small city leading a group of city commissioners to New Orleans as a jazz outreach delegation. She came home to host the royal visit of a person she met on the trip, Queen Diambi Kabatusuila — initially introduced to the town as “the ruler of the Democratic Republic of the Congo,” until city officials were informed that the Democratic Republic of the Congo doesn’t have a monarchy — for a grand tour of city facilities. Her Royal Highness was effusively declared to have been impressed by the town library, so we’ve got that going for us.
That mayor is gone, now, but her rotating crop of replacements aren’t noticeably more committed to the quotidian reality of the city, 3.4 square miles of crumbling streets. They’re busy with the climate action plan, and with their very very serious regional outreach to achieve social justice and climate justice and, you know, something something justice something. They are performing their symbols.
So start with this premise: The function of elected officials in California is the performance of symbols, the narcissistic status dance.
Doing just that, the bumbling halfwit Richard Pan, a pediatrician turned Big Pharma water-carrier, has succeeded in the passage of his “disinformation” bill, AB 2098. Here’s how the legislative counsel explains the bill:
Existing law requires the applicable board to take action against any licensed physician and surgeon who is charged with unprofessional conduct, as provided.
This bill would designate the dissemination of misinformation or disinformation related to the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, or “COVID-19,” as unprofessional conduct.
But, as Igor Chudov notes, the bill — now the law — defines away its purpose, declaring that misinformation is “false information that is contradicted by contemporary scientific consensus contrary to the standard of care.” (And disinformation, the law says, is merely misinformation spread with “malicious intent,” disagreeing with the consensus plus being mean and bad.)
Being a longtime admirer of Richard Pan’s unique mind, I adore the definition of falsehood as something contrary to the consensus. It’s true, you moron, ‘cause lots of people believe it! (The earth is at the center, and the sun revolves around it! Go to your room!) But back to Chudov’s good catch: The law evaporates if you can show that the consensus isn’t, and European public health regulators, among others, are doing that work. So if a doctor violates the consensus by telling a patient that the mRNA injections don’t prevent infection or transmission….okay, hold on a second.
So Senator Pan wishes to burn the witch, but he defines “witch” in such pudding-soft language that he gives the witch-burners nowhere to stand without sinking and vanishing. His declared purpose evaporates in the sloppiness of his mind. But he gets the symbol, declaring that he has declared that the witch should be burned. He gets his tweet.
Or take SB 107, which I’ve just written about, and which gives California courts jurisdiction over child custody disputes for children from other states if a parent cries “transgendered.” But again, how will it work? Here’s what the law says:
“A court of this state has temporary emergency jurisdiction if the child is present in this state and the child has been abandoned or it is necessary in an emergency to protect the child because the child, or a sibling or parent of the child, is subjected to, or threatened with, mistreatment or abuse, or because the child has been unable to obtain gender-affirming health care or gender-affirming mental health care, as defined by Section 16010.2 of the Welfare and Institutions Code.”
The courts will be endlessly alligator wrestling with the real-world applications of this confidence that children who need gender-affirming care is a clean category with solid lines around the edges. Here on earth, a judge is going to find a sanpaku-eyed mom in the courtroom, explaining that oh, your honor, my daughter needs her penis removed IMMEDIATELY, and everyone else in the family is going to be blinking at the judge in Morse Code.
Or take SB 1100, which encourages city governments to regard criticism and dissent as disruptive conduct and to eject the crimethinking community from their meetings for daring to bully their elected representatives by saying stuff.
The first time any local government is dumb enough to try to apply this standard at a public meeting, it’ll slam into a First Amendment lawsuit and die. Everyone knows this but California’s actual elected officials, who govern the state.
None of it works. None of it is meant to work. They’re cosplaying Aaron Sorkin characters for Instagram, playacting what they think government does, throwing symbols at the wall to see what sticks. Most of it doesn’t stick. But the selfies. Oh, brothers and sisters, the selfies.
UPDATE:
A political class that exists to perform symbols.
What I find ironic is that I, an uneducated bumpkin (I only have a BA and that from a state school) from the backcountry (meaning the expansive Midwest where Starbucks only became popular about a decade ago) know that the "Democratic" Republic of the Congo has no monarchy, and never did. And yet my social and education betters get taken in. Yup, about right.
As for the rest, yes, it's all virtue signaling, but while it's laughable, it's not without its consequences. There are the basic, immediate ones, in that doctors will be put through hell along with parents in custody battles. There's the stress and the legal fees. And even if it turns out "okay" in the end, it is an unnecessary nightmare.
But this also distracts from real problems, like streets that need maintaining, children that don't learn, people that are left behind, and that's part of the charm, at least for the ones that do the signaling.
Finally, and this is the one that really will wake you up at night, you're dealing with a group for whom the ends justify the means. So, no, they can't get this done, but when they don't get it done, they will use that as an excuse to rewrite the system because the system is "undemocratic" or not "socially just" and based on "white supremacy," or some variation on that theme. Look what happened with Dobbs. The court overturned Roe, which even "ultra MAGA conservative" RBG suggested would happen because the ruling was faulty, but rather than take another tact and work with the states or figure out how to approach the issue in a way that might not violate the constitution, we immediately hear, "This is why you have to elect Democrats so we can pack the court and save democracy."
So, yes, this is laughable and annoying but it also bodes poorly for the future if it's not brought to a halt and people don't demand better of their "leaders."
My high school political science teacher once said “The only reason the [federal] government is good is that it’s set up to not work”. That was 32 years ago and I’ll never forget it.