No Words, No Path

discourse holds the wheel, and discourse is pretty drunk right now

California is hitting a number of walls, and yes, the first headline is very Pravda in its facts vs. framing maneuver:

We have a “budget rollercoaster” in the sense that the budget is hurtling downward with no sign that it’ll be climbing again any time soon, but let’s just go with it. The new Six Flags all-down rollercoaster, coming soon to Mount Whitney. Must have crampons to enter line.

So here’s the big picture: growing economic desperation at the bottom, escalating capital flight and outmigration, declining government revenues against a growing expectation that government should do everything for everyone. Things are getting so bad that San Francisco isn’t even going to fund its Office of Reparations.

In the face of all that…stuff we should probably deal with, the first-out-of-the-gate candidate for my local state senate seat dropped some campaign literature at my front door this week:

Facing year after year of endlessly growing homelessness and the explosive decompression of our state budget, our top political priorities are giving lots of government money to Planned Parenthood, making the climate of the planet respond to our will, and “commonsense gun safety laws.” I am always relieved that no politicians are opposed to common sense. The joke in that last promise is that Yvonne Yiu is running to replace the indescribably repulsive Anthony Portantino, an anti-family zealot (and the author of the bill that set out to criminalize disagreement with local school officials) who has churned out new gun laws with the regularity of a man having his morning bowel movement.

If it’s a day ending in -y, California is putting a new gun law on the books. Sorry, a commonsense new gun safety law. And yet, weirdly, we still have a lot of gun violence…

…which leads to politicians coming to the door to say that we should pass new gun laws, which leads to more gun laws, which don’t reduce gun violence, which leads to more gun laws. The last gun safety bill Gavin Newsom signed added taxes on the purchase of guns and ammunition, which SURELY should have stopped people from shooting each other, and yet….

So we’re out of money is a huge problem, and we have even more people who are homeless is a huge problem, and the answer is more abortions and more gun laws. No matter what happens, the rhetorical performance always rattles down the same tracks. Ten years ago, and ten years from now, the mailer from the state senate candidate says that click whirrrrr [name here] will fight for common sense gun laws. In the post-apocalyptic Mad Max rubblescape, pantsuited creatures will emerge every two years to croak that they stand with Planned Parenthood. A woke rhetoric at rest or in motion remains at rest or in motion even if acted upon by an outside force. The discourse is a fixed chant. California politics is a catechism, not a discussion. It cannot address reality.

In fairness, though, on rare occasions it pretends to address reality. Like when Gavin Newsom had a ten-year plan to end homelessness. In 2008.