Chris, once again I applaud you for doing the work most of us don’t do. Essayli is obviously one of the only sane people in Sacramento and I hope this exposure helps him.
We can’t all leave. If all the sane people leave, we leave behind a hell on earth for those who stay in Kommiefornia. I’ve thought of leaving, but my wife won’t do it, so we have to educate ourselves and our kids against the evil that is the California legislature.
I'll not leave myself on the slick, crimson altar of the Left in some vain hope my fellow non-Leftists will somehow grow a backbone, stand up to evil, and save me from the sacrificial dagger plummeting down at my chest.
We have a free market of 50 states and the best way to show the Left we won't put up with them is to leave them in our dust.
The cali-marxofascists can like the dust off my "free boots"! Lee you are spot on,after 35 yrs in "the biz", i finally had to "git",the toxicity of the industry,the spineless,yellowbelly,gutless horde that controls it will never change.The Cali GOP has no guts with the exception of a few true PATRIOTS. The few brave outspoken " stars" who have taken a different path are inspiring,the trouble is they have "name recognition", the rank and file get buried in in a maelstrom of lies threats, NO WORK! I miss SoCal but i dont miss the shit on my boots!
MAKE AMERICA GREAT flush the sewer!......mike savage
Be the leader of your household and take responsibility. She has disrespected you. Leave, with or without her. Someone special is waiting for you in the Southern states.
"We can’t all leave. If all the sane people leave, we leave behind a hell on earth for those who stay in Kommiefornia."
The current level of hellishness is partly owing to moderates leaving for the free states. With them, travels a second moderately prosperous demographic; hard leftists abandoning the mess they've made, in search of relative financial advantage elsewhere.
Both segments take their extracted equity and higher cash flow, and bid up property values in their destinations, forcing outmigration of the younger folks they've outbidded.
It isn't obvious what percentage of the moderates emigrated from the USSC for purely economic reasons. Mind you, I can't say that I blame them for bettering their financial positions, but you're absolutely correct that when moderates depart, the percentage of extremists increases.
"because the party’s political consultants identify it as a losing issue. They do polls, and voters say they’re worried about economic issues, taxes and crime. And they are, but the landscape of voter concerns is being shaped by the Republican refusal to fight."
I can still remember the odious Karl Rove back since the 1990's telling republicans not to waste time on culture battles, including abortion. Decades later consultants like him have made certain that we have a submissive uniparty across the country at all levels of government, in both red and blue states. A real pleasure for corporatists, bankers and the legion of immoralists everywhere. Clearly the priority is not for the welfare of children but for an open door for their abusers
People of principal who run and are elected should exercise their moral muscles regularly in order to strengthen them and should steer clear of the kind and mild poison cup of cowardice. Citizens and voters should do likewise.
"People of principal who run and are elected should exercise their moral muscles regularly in order to strengthen them and should steer clear of the kind and mild poison cup of cowardice. Citizens and voters should do likewise."
I haven't seen the solution better articulated anywhere. VERY well said.
Chris, how do I send money to his campaign? We need to help fund people who are fighting for the right reason. I stopped giving to WinRed when Rona was the head of it because were a bunch frauds. Waiting to see results from the new leadership a WinRed before I send them money again.
Thank you. Contribution made. If I hit the lottery, I will bundle millions of dollars and make contributions in other people's names like ActBlue does.
Thank you for this, Chris. Weiner is my Rep. He appalls me. I have been a lifelong Democrat (today independent), but now I will consider becoming active with the California Republicans. Thanks for putting it in the frame.
PS I have a question. I used to see Harmeet Dhillon interviewed quite a bit on television, and I thought she sounded pretty good. So it's kind of surprising to hear that the party leadership is sort of useless. What's your opinion of her?
In 2020, after the stolen election, I dove head first into the Republican Party in Los Angeles, desperate to bring some balance and justice to CA and our country. Currently, I am an elected member of my Central Committee, an active member of the LAGOP, a delegate of the CAGOP, and the President of the Greater Pasadena Republican Assembly part of the California Republican Assembly. (All this and I wasn’t even a Republican in 2020!)
Bill Essayli is right: The only way to change the party is from the inside. We have the worst leadership up and down in the GOP. The Republican Party needs to embrace America First and let Trump be our leader and guide. After 2020, a small contingent of grassroots America First’ers got involved and we made some positive changes in LA County. More and more are getting involved- but not enough to fight the juggernaut that is the Democrat Machine. It’s an all-hands-on-deck moment!
Bill Essayli is terrific and a fighter. We need a lot of more leaders like him.
Support him, and your local Republicans, however you can!
What Essayli said was "We are not going to change Sacramento from the inside. It's going to have to be a hostile takeover of the caucus and the party." And yes, that's going to take as many Republicans who have the heart of John Wayne to decide there are things worth fighting for at great personal cost.
As is frequently the case, California represents a microcosm of the rest of the country:
Republicans are comfortable. They don’t want to fight. They are happy to just hang on and name seashells.
Outside forces are needed to reassert power on the Right. MAGA does it nationally, but MAGA and Republicans who want to fight have a hard time getting traction in California.
So the Dems do crazy Commie shit. The imposition of the state between parents and kids is classical Commie social engineering. The State is omnipotent and wise. This version of Communism doesn’t pretend to care about the workers. They care about terrorists, trannies, and felons. But, but,but… Californians keep voting for ‘em. 🤷🏼
If you’re a Cali voter who votes for the party of sexual mutilation and secret 12 year old abortions, what do you want me to tell you?
If you’re a Jew who votes for a party funding pro-Hamas rallies and which lets Leftist psychos attack cops and burn down cities, what do you want me to tell you? You’re voting for your own demise and the end of America.
Some places have gone so far Left that it will take something cataclysmic to change the mindset. All the engineered disasters of the past few years, all the restrictions on civil liberties, and people still vote for this. It’s self-destructive but will take decades to sort it out and ain’t nobody got time for that.
My aunt lives in Spokane. Are they still going through with forcing everyone to retrofit their homes with electric heat pumps so they can stop using natural gas? Hoping there is a lawsuit against that and that the Chevron doctrine being overturned will help.
The Children's Story by James Clavell - if you're not familiar with it, you can probably find it online. It's shocking how easy it is to brainwash folks...
No, the “republican” government of Utah is Democrat Junior. Or “democrat lite.” In studying Trump’s moves and counter moves, I don’t think he’s either R or D, and not even L (because they never win). I don’t know where that is headed, but I appreciate the smashing of the political machine that seems to be happening.
You should exit the doom bunker more, maybe. What a sad world it must be. Surmising what Trump has been doing for many years is fascinating. Look at net effects of what he does, not what he says or how he behaves. Despise his personality if you must, he knows how to win. Even against a machine determined that he won’t. Dooming out doesn’t advance any sort of rational cause.
Make no mistake; as flawed as he is, he'd be far better than four more years like we just had with Biden; and we know this for sure because Trump had a 4 year term.
But one of the problems with Trump is that he's the most personally divisive political leaders I can recall. I'll tell you honestly--and I'm not trying for any sort of political or philosophical connection--he is as divisive as George Wallace. Divisive for different reasons/issues, but he cause a sharp, clear line to be drawn. It's what the nation needs, but no longer has the stomach for, so they vastly prefer someone who gently sings Kumbaya to them, gives "special" help to the "right" kids--and we can *all* feel great about that, right?--and tells them about the wicked witches to avoid.
That's where we are now, sorry to say. Fuckin' pre-school mentality among voting adults.
Read what I say in this thread about the 2022 off-year election., It's *why* I'm worried.
That is definitely one of the problems. Since when does a politician divide families in half and make them not speak over their support of him? (Saw that in my own extended family.) Is that how infantile of a culture we are, or how divisive he is? Extremes are not a good thing. But I’m not sure we weren’t too far gone that anything but an extreme would have worked.
Yes, I can see that, and I can *feel* it, sorta, but a hugely confounding factor is that within my lifetime (>70 years) I've experienced a lot of off-year electionhreversals. This seems to always happen, some, and most dramatically if within the two years since the general election, significant visible problems have emerged and are recognized by the broad public.
This happened here in PDX in 2022. HUGE issues with crime and homelessness. Many "normal" citizens wrote letters to the editor, many local polls indicated serious, serious concerns over the deteriorating public environment driven by the apparent lack of policing and prosecution. The downtown part of Portland, which had been carefully crafted by very aesthetic urban planning driven by the private sector, was a real showpiece. This deteriorated slowly from the Occupy times (2008 or so?), thru Trump's election in 2016, with protests and destructive demonstrations, thru the Floyd protests and COVID, such that the downtown was largely abandoned by "normal" people and in the vacuum the homeless and criminal elements moved in.
This was all very apparent to all, especially since the city had drifted in the space of perhaps 4 years from a showpiece to sore spot--to be regrettably avoided.
The stage was set for a significant off-year election change in 2022, and in spite of this, locally very little changed. Mostly the same old complaining progressives were re-elected, local thru state levels.
I looked and this happened on a NATIONAL level, too. And we can't say that it was an anti-Trump vote because for the most part he was not much involved.
So what happened such that all former normal political responses I'd seen my whole life--a pendulum swing from liberal to conservative and back again, as social and economic conditions dictated--why did this NOT happen this time?
Thinking about it ever since. I believe that something broke in the "balancing mechanism" in the American psyche--the political sensibilities I'd seen since Eisenhauer, were completely abandoned for 2022. There was never anything like this, so far as I can recall: things got much worse, everyone noticed, and yet the same political leadership was broadly re-elected.
And this is a watershed moment. We are in uncharted waters now. If yet another progressive/woke administration is elected--and doubly so if this also happens at the state/local level--I think the nation will fairly quickly move toward confiscatory redistribution that is targeted toward favored identity groups, at the expense of everyone else.
Very good point. Have we now broken even the helpful political norms? And what takes their place? I think voting machines are partly at fault, but I also wonder if the battle has demoralized people, and they now stay in their safe harbor of the “devil they know”?
The re-election of useful idiots has more to do with machine control of elections than with the dumbing down of voters. It is coincidental with the surveillance state post 911. The two-headed Rebublicrats determine who wins.
Not sure I can agree to this. What I see in Oregon, which was red when I moved here and is now as blue as any state in the union, can best be captured by the emphasis of one particular campaign ad during the 2022 gubernatorial election.
A long-time Portland ultra-progressive woman, gay, speaker of the house, ran against a GOP woman from the rural part of the state. The GOP woman was very persuasive and appealing, and the social situation with crime, drugs (which were not per se illegal in OR since 2020) and homelessness was such that the election was perceived by pollsters to be a toss-up.
At the very end,one week left, the progressive candidate ran an ad where she soberly looked the viewer in the eye and said:
"Oregon does not have to be red to fix our problems."
Basically, she made people think of the *shame* of having voted for the GOP. The shame of being publicly associated with living in a red state rather than a blue one.
And so she won by a comfortable margin.
In OR, that's all it takes, apparently. Don't be one of "them".
Well, if his gamesmanship gets me lower taxes, less regulation, and even some of the wall it is better than the alternative. It seems most of the establishment Republicans don't know how to play the game other than the play of losing "gracefully" every time and wrinkling their nose at the Republican base that they wish would just go away.
An Eighties liberal. With a feminist daughter. Rallying behind him as some sort of rad-trad icon is silly. Don't thrust up your fist and yell 'Fight!' Kick butts and take names, like you failed to do last time. Ever hear of Bukele? It can be done.
Donald's Spiritual Advisor is a New Age televangelist celebrity named Paula White-Cain. (Yessir, she's an honest-to-god Cainite.) Sure Donald, NOW I'll take you seriously.
This guy wants to win. We said, "We don't want to win!" so often in the Army National Guard that it became our shorthand for 'useless E8/E9s & O5/O6s who should be volun-retired'.
I like this guy.
12 years old. That is not even Pony league in youth baseball. Remember when Pony League was where pitchers actually began to throw junk? When you could actually lead off instead of being stuck on the base.
You must be 13 to play Pony League. I have always thought it was 13 to be formally a 'teenager'. TWELVE does not have a teen in its spelling!!
THEY ARE CHILDREN! PRE-PUBESCENT CHILDREN.
I truly don't know how people live in California and maintain both or either sanity or a moral compass.
Chris, you are an outlier. God bless you and your family for the courage to still fight.
Brian. We’re staying, but U slowly try to wake people up from their hypnosis. My older brother finally woke up and he’s a born again conservative. My younger brother, in Northern California, is a bigger challenge. My kids, they are being indoctrinated in what it means to be Americans: hard work, no victim hood, Ten Commandments.
If you have a strong insular ethnic or religious community to live within, then you and your family stand a fighting chance to keep yourselves and your kids healthy amid the madness.
But if you are a white mainstream Gentile American who's not Amish or some kind of hardcore Mormon or something then you put yourself and especially your family at grave risk by staying behind to fight.
It's like some kind of Heinlein plotline: only old men whose children have grown up and left should enlist in the fight for California.
I wrote about early insurance coverage for the gender lie and the role that the San Francisco Bd of Supervisor and Wiener played in it all back in the early 2000s. You might find it of interest. They play a long game.
I’m sending this to my CA family. Especially since they just quietly go along with the insanity of the school system and trust that their teaching at home balances out the crazy. It might. But then, they’ve not had a kid who leveraged the system against them. Yet.
"The fight" is not in Sac. There is no way to win under that dome of debauchery. I honestly see no reason why any honest GOP legislator even shows up to pretend to joust with the windmills. They are not changing the laws, they are not changing the lunatic left, they are doing nothing but collecting a check and playing a role.
The fight is with educating, engaging with and empowering the citizens of their districts and others on the brink of serfdom throughout the state.
My suggestions; stop showing up for the leftist politburo meetings, stop with the polls asking "what should we do?", stop with the proposing reasonable legislation that wastes time and does absolutely NOTHING.
I am in Senator Grove's district. She does provide opposition to the insanity, but other than her one semi-win earlier this year, there are near zero other results to take note of.
All of these folks (thinking of newly anointed McCarthy fill-in Fong) post on fakebook and xtwit, only interact with wine moms and larpers, get folks ginned up, and then fold at the end of the session.
Call their office, write their office, email their office ... "sorry there's not much we can do, ... super majority and all...".
Until masses of people, and I mean tens of thousands, show up outside (or maybe even inside) 1315 10th St, nothing will change. They have no reason to. They get thousands from lobbyists every week to do their bidding, not ours, as you mentioned.
So, the fight is to engage and enlist the citizens, before the last of them leave the next new Mexican state of Alta California. Stop playing nice. Stop with the wine mom platitudes. Stop with the fake speeches no one hears. Who the hell has the time and patience to listen to any of it?
This sums up what is happening in every political entity, whether it be Federal, State, or local.
I live in the Great Red state of Texas, a very wealthy, old money, Republican from East Texas is our Speaker of the House. The only way he gets that position and “power” is getting Dems to back him. He then puts Dems in as Chairman of important committees. They then have the power to block legislation that “We the People” want. Very frustrating. Tried to primary him, but the Dems crossed over and voted for him. What was surprising was the number of Rinos who voted with him.
Only good thing to come of this is that our eyes are now open and the fight is on. It is going to take time, but it will happen.
Chris, once again I applaud you for doing the work most of us don’t do. Essayli is obviously one of the only sane people in Sacramento and I hope this exposure helps him.
We can’t all leave. If all the sane people leave, we leave behind a hell on earth for those who stay in Kommiefornia. I’ve thought of leaving, but my wife won’t do it, so we have to educate ourselves and our kids against the evil that is the California legislature.
"We can’t all leave."
Yeah, we can, and we must.
I'll not leave myself on the slick, crimson altar of the Left in some vain hope my fellow non-Leftists will somehow grow a backbone, stand up to evil, and save me from the sacrificial dagger plummeting down at my chest.
We have a free market of 50 states and the best way to show the Left we won't put up with them is to leave them in our dust.
The cali-marxofascists can like the dust off my "free boots"! Lee you are spot on,after 35 yrs in "the biz", i finally had to "git",the toxicity of the industry,the spineless,yellowbelly,gutless horde that controls it will never change.The Cali GOP has no guts with the exception of a few true PATRIOTS. The few brave outspoken " stars" who have taken a different path are inspiring,the trouble is they have "name recognition", the rank and file get buried in in a maelstrom of lies threats, NO WORK! I miss SoCal but i dont miss the shit on my boots!
MAKE AMERICA GREAT flush the sewer!......mike savage
Be the leader of your household and take responsibility. She has disrespected you. Leave, with or without her. Someone special is waiting for you in the Southern states.
"We can’t all leave. If all the sane people leave, we leave behind a hell on earth for those who stay in Kommiefornia."
The current level of hellishness is partly owing to moderates leaving for the free states. With them, travels a second moderately prosperous demographic; hard leftists abandoning the mess they've made, in search of relative financial advantage elsewhere.
Both segments take their extracted equity and higher cash flow, and bid up property values in their destinations, forcing outmigration of the younger folks they've outbidded.
It isn't obvious what percentage of the moderates emigrated from the USSC for purely economic reasons. Mind you, I can't say that I blame them for bettering their financial positions, but you're absolutely correct that when moderates depart, the percentage of extremists increases.
"because the party’s political consultants identify it as a losing issue. They do polls, and voters say they’re worried about economic issues, taxes and crime. And they are, but the landscape of voter concerns is being shaped by the Republican refusal to fight."
I can still remember the odious Karl Rove back since the 1990's telling republicans not to waste time on culture battles, including abortion. Decades later consultants like him have made certain that we have a submissive uniparty across the country at all levels of government, in both red and blue states. A real pleasure for corporatists, bankers and the legion of immoralists everywhere. Clearly the priority is not for the welfare of children but for an open door for their abusers
People of principal who run and are elected should exercise their moral muscles regularly in order to strengthen them and should steer clear of the kind and mild poison cup of cowardice. Citizens and voters should do likewise.
Alwayscurious, (love the handle BTW)
"People of principal who run and are elected should exercise their moral muscles regularly in order to strengthen them and should steer clear of the kind and mild poison cup of cowardice. Citizens and voters should do likewise."
I haven't seen the solution better articulated anywhere. VERY well said.
bsn
I hate to me too, but, me too.
Hahahhaha
Chris, how do I send money to his campaign? We need to help fund people who are fighting for the right reason. I stopped giving to WinRed when Rona was the head of it because were a bunch frauds. Waiting to see results from the new leadership a WinRed before I send them money again.
https://essayliforassembly.com/
Thank you. Contribution made. If I hit the lottery, I will bundle millions of dollars and make contributions in other people's names like ActBlue does.
Winred is awful. Made a donation once and they just kept taking. Had to cancel a card as you can’t turn it off.
Thank you for this, Chris. Weiner is my Rep. He appalls me. I have been a lifelong Democrat (today independent), but now I will consider becoming active with the California Republicans. Thanks for putting it in the frame.
PS I have a question. I used to see Harmeet Dhillon interviewed quite a bit on television, and I thought she sounded pretty good. So it's kind of surprising to hear that the party leadership is sort of useless. What's your opinion of her?
In 2020, after the stolen election, I dove head first into the Republican Party in Los Angeles, desperate to bring some balance and justice to CA and our country. Currently, I am an elected member of my Central Committee, an active member of the LAGOP, a delegate of the CAGOP, and the President of the Greater Pasadena Republican Assembly part of the California Republican Assembly. (All this and I wasn’t even a Republican in 2020!)
Bill Essayli is right: The only way to change the party is from the inside. We have the worst leadership up and down in the GOP. The Republican Party needs to embrace America First and let Trump be our leader and guide. After 2020, a small contingent of grassroots America First’ers got involved and we made some positive changes in LA County. More and more are getting involved- but not enough to fight the juggernaut that is the Democrat Machine. It’s an all-hands-on-deck moment!
Bill Essayli is terrific and a fighter. We need a lot of more leaders like him.
Support him, and your local Republicans, however you can!
https://essayliforassembly.com/
Vote RED up and down the ballot. If we don’t bring balance and justice to America and California, things are going to end very badly.
Chris, Thank you for your great articles.
i will share this one far and wide!
Excellent!
What Essayli said was "We are not going to change Sacramento from the inside. It's going to have to be a hostile takeover of the caucus and the party." And yes, that's going to take as many Republicans who have the heart of John Wayne to decide there are things worth fighting for at great personal cost.
As is frequently the case, California represents a microcosm of the rest of the country:
Republicans are comfortable. They don’t want to fight. They are happy to just hang on and name seashells.
Outside forces are needed to reassert power on the Right. MAGA does it nationally, but MAGA and Republicans who want to fight have a hard time getting traction in California.
So the Dems do crazy Commie shit. The imposition of the state between parents and kids is classical Commie social engineering. The State is omnipotent and wise. This version of Communism doesn’t pretend to care about the workers. They care about terrorists, trannies, and felons. But, but,but… Californians keep voting for ‘em. 🤷🏼
If you’re a Cali voter who votes for the party of sexual mutilation and secret 12 year old abortions, what do you want me to tell you?
If you’re a Jew who votes for a party funding pro-Hamas rallies and which lets Leftist psychos attack cops and burn down cities, what do you want me to tell you? You’re voting for your own demise and the end of America.
Some places have gone so far Left that it will take something cataclysmic to change the mindset. All the engineered disasters of the past few years, all the restrictions on civil liberties, and people still vote for this. It’s self-destructive but will take decades to sort it out and ain’t nobody got time for that.
This is same as Washington state. WA actually passed its own legal version of trans-sanctuary for minors earlier this year or last year.
My aunt lives in Spokane. Are they still going through with forcing everyone to retrofit their homes with electric heat pumps so they can stop using natural gas? Hoping there is a lawsuit against that and that the Chevron doctrine being overturned will help.
Initiative 2066, "Stop the Gas Ban," will be on the November ballot. https://letsgowashington.com/i-2066-stop-the-gas-ban-protect-energy-choice/
Thank you!
This group is in the fight. Check it out. https://conservativeladiesofamerica.substack.com/p/are-you-ready-to-join-the-fight
The Children's Story by James Clavell - if you're not familiar with it, you can probably find it online. It's shocking how easy it is to brainwash folks...
It is shocking, and when you see the hypnosis in your own family and how embedded in their brains the brainwashing is, it is eye opening.
Thanks for the recommendation. I read Clavell years ago, but was not aware of this story. I just bought the kindle version on Amazon for only $1.99.
The Republican party throughout America is no better that that in California. Trump is Democrat, Jr.
No, the “republican” government of Utah is Democrat Junior. Or “democrat lite.” In studying Trump’s moves and counter moves, I don’t think he’s either R or D, and not even L (because they never win). I don’t know where that is headed, but I appreciate the smashing of the political machine that seems to be happening.
Trump's biggest strength is what he *might not* be.
We know he's a born narcissist, but he might not be a transgender apologist.
We're really grasping at straws, aren't we?
You should exit the doom bunker more, maybe. What a sad world it must be. Surmising what Trump has been doing for many years is fascinating. Look at net effects of what he does, not what he says or how he behaves. Despise his personality if you must, he knows how to win. Even against a machine determined that he won’t. Dooming out doesn’t advance any sort of rational cause.
Oh, he's a fighter and that's good!
Make no mistake; as flawed as he is, he'd be far better than four more years like we just had with Biden; and we know this for sure because Trump had a 4 year term.
But one of the problems with Trump is that he's the most personally divisive political leaders I can recall. I'll tell you honestly--and I'm not trying for any sort of political or philosophical connection--he is as divisive as George Wallace. Divisive for different reasons/issues, but he cause a sharp, clear line to be drawn. It's what the nation needs, but no longer has the stomach for, so they vastly prefer someone who gently sings Kumbaya to them, gives "special" help to the "right" kids--and we can *all* feel great about that, right?--and tells them about the wicked witches to avoid.
That's where we are now, sorry to say. Fuckin' pre-school mentality among voting adults.
Read what I say in this thread about the 2022 off-year election., It's *why* I'm worried.
That is definitely one of the problems. Since when does a politician divide families in half and make them not speak over their support of him? (Saw that in my own extended family.) Is that how infantile of a culture we are, or how divisive he is? Extremes are not a good thing. But I’m not sure we weren’t too far gone that anything but an extreme would have worked.
By the millions. Desperate people in a desperate land.
Yes, I can see that, and I can *feel* it, sorta, but a hugely confounding factor is that within my lifetime (>70 years) I've experienced a lot of off-year electionhreversals. This seems to always happen, some, and most dramatically if within the two years since the general election, significant visible problems have emerged and are recognized by the broad public.
This happened here in PDX in 2022. HUGE issues with crime and homelessness. Many "normal" citizens wrote letters to the editor, many local polls indicated serious, serious concerns over the deteriorating public environment driven by the apparent lack of policing and prosecution. The downtown part of Portland, which had been carefully crafted by very aesthetic urban planning driven by the private sector, was a real showpiece. This deteriorated slowly from the Occupy times (2008 or so?), thru Trump's election in 2016, with protests and destructive demonstrations, thru the Floyd protests and COVID, such that the downtown was largely abandoned by "normal" people and in the vacuum the homeless and criminal elements moved in.
This was all very apparent to all, especially since the city had drifted in the space of perhaps 4 years from a showpiece to sore spot--to be regrettably avoided.
The stage was set for a significant off-year election change in 2022, and in spite of this, locally very little changed. Mostly the same old complaining progressives were re-elected, local thru state levels.
I looked and this happened on a NATIONAL level, too. And we can't say that it was an anti-Trump vote because for the most part he was not much involved.
So what happened such that all former normal political responses I'd seen my whole life--a pendulum swing from liberal to conservative and back again, as social and economic conditions dictated--why did this NOT happen this time?
Thinking about it ever since. I believe that something broke in the "balancing mechanism" in the American psyche--the political sensibilities I'd seen since Eisenhauer, were completely abandoned for 2022. There was never anything like this, so far as I can recall: things got much worse, everyone noticed, and yet the same political leadership was broadly re-elected.
And this is a watershed moment. We are in uncharted waters now. If yet another progressive/woke administration is elected--and doubly so if this also happens at the state/local level--I think the nation will fairly quickly move toward confiscatory redistribution that is targeted toward favored identity groups, at the expense of everyone else.
Very good point. Have we now broken even the helpful political norms? And what takes their place? I think voting machines are partly at fault, but I also wonder if the battle has demoralized people, and they now stay in their safe harbor of the “devil they know”?
The re-election of useful idiots has more to do with machine control of elections than with the dumbing down of voters. It is coincidental with the surveillance state post 911. The two-headed Rebublicrats determine who wins.
Not sure I can agree to this. What I see in Oregon, which was red when I moved here and is now as blue as any state in the union, can best be captured by the emphasis of one particular campaign ad during the 2022 gubernatorial election.
A long-time Portland ultra-progressive woman, gay, speaker of the house, ran against a GOP woman from the rural part of the state. The GOP woman was very persuasive and appealing, and the social situation with crime, drugs (which were not per se illegal in OR since 2020) and homelessness was such that the election was perceived by pollsters to be a toss-up.
At the very end,one week left, the progressive candidate ran an ad where she soberly looked the viewer in the eye and said:
"Oregon does not have to be red to fix our problems."
Basically, she made people think of the *shame* of having voted for the GOP. The shame of being publicly associated with living in a red state rather than a blue one.
And so she won by a comfortable margin.
In OR, that's all it takes, apparently. Don't be one of "them".
Trump is not a republican. He just knows how to play the game.
Well, if his gamesmanship gets me lower taxes, less regulation, and even some of the wall it is better than the alternative. It seems most of the establishment Republicans don't know how to play the game other than the play of losing "gracefully" every time and wrinkling their nose at the Republican base that they wish would just go away.
An Eighties liberal. With a feminist daughter. Rallying behind him as some sort of rad-trad icon is silly. Don't thrust up your fist and yell 'Fight!' Kick butts and take names, like you failed to do last time. Ever hear of Bukele? It can be done.
Donald's Spiritual Advisor is a New Age televangelist celebrity named Paula White-Cain. (Yessir, she's an honest-to-god Cainite.) Sure Donald, NOW I'll take you seriously.
Where did you get this info on his advisor? There are several evangelicals that are in contact with him.
Oh yeah, I'm sure there are.
You sure know alot there woke fella! Gotta be a "box car" lemming,huh?
Stop pestering me, Hillary.
P.S. LOVE the 'MICHEAL SAVAGE' in caps.
And COURAGE is an outlier. “When people decide to fight,” Essayli says, “we’ll win again.” Amen to that!!
This guy wants to win. We said, "We don't want to win!" so often in the Army National Guard that it became our shorthand for 'useless E8/E9s & O5/O6s who should be volun-retired'.
I like this guy.
12 years old. That is not even Pony league in youth baseball. Remember when Pony League was where pitchers actually began to throw junk? When you could actually lead off instead of being stuck on the base.
You must be 13 to play Pony League. I have always thought it was 13 to be formally a 'teenager'. TWELVE does not have a teen in its spelling!!
THEY ARE CHILDREN! PRE-PUBESCENT CHILDREN.
I truly don't know how people live in California and maintain both or either sanity or a moral compass.
Chris, you are an outlier. God bless you and your family for the courage to still fight.
bsn
Brian. We’re staying, but U slowly try to wake people up from their hypnosis. My older brother finally woke up and he’s a born again conservative. My younger brother, in Northern California, is a bigger challenge. My kids, they are being indoctrinated in what it means to be Americans: hard work, no victim hood, Ten Commandments.
If you have a strong insular ethnic or religious community to live within, then you and your family stand a fighting chance to keep yourselves and your kids healthy amid the madness.
But if you are a white mainstream Gentile American who's not Amish or some kind of hardcore Mormon or something then you put yourself and especially your family at grave risk by staying behind to fight.
It's like some kind of Heinlein plotline: only old men whose children have grown up and left should enlist in the fight for California.
Thanks for focusing on this.
I wrote about early insurance coverage for the gender lie and the role that the San Francisco Bd of Supervisor and Wiener played in it all back in the early 2000s. You might find it of interest. They play a long game.
https://margox.substack.com/p/synthetic-sex-insurance?r=1kuq0
I’m sending this to my CA family. Especially since they just quietly go along with the insanity of the school system and trust that their teaching at home balances out the crazy. It might. But then, they’ve not had a kid who leveraged the system against them. Yet.
"The fight" is not in Sac. There is no way to win under that dome of debauchery. I honestly see no reason why any honest GOP legislator even shows up to pretend to joust with the windmills. They are not changing the laws, they are not changing the lunatic left, they are doing nothing but collecting a check and playing a role.
The fight is with educating, engaging with and empowering the citizens of their districts and others on the brink of serfdom throughout the state.
My suggestions; stop showing up for the leftist politburo meetings, stop with the polls asking "what should we do?", stop with the proposing reasonable legislation that wastes time and does absolutely NOTHING.
I am in Senator Grove's district. She does provide opposition to the insanity, but other than her one semi-win earlier this year, there are near zero other results to take note of.
All of these folks (thinking of newly anointed McCarthy fill-in Fong) post on fakebook and xtwit, only interact with wine moms and larpers, get folks ginned up, and then fold at the end of the session.
Call their office, write their office, email their office ... "sorry there's not much we can do, ... super majority and all...".
Until masses of people, and I mean tens of thousands, show up outside (or maybe even inside) 1315 10th St, nothing will change. They have no reason to. They get thousands from lobbyists every week to do their bidding, not ours, as you mentioned.
So, the fight is to engage and enlist the citizens, before the last of them leave the next new Mexican state of Alta California. Stop playing nice. Stop with the wine mom platitudes. Stop with the fake speeches no one hears. Who the hell has the time and patience to listen to any of it?
Chris,
This sums up what is happening in every political entity, whether it be Federal, State, or local.
I live in the Great Red state of Texas, a very wealthy, old money, Republican from East Texas is our Speaker of the House. The only way he gets that position and “power” is getting Dems to back him. He then puts Dems in as Chairman of important committees. They then have the power to block legislation that “We the People” want. Very frustrating. Tried to primary him, but the Dems crossed over and voted for him. What was surprising was the number of Rinos who voted with him.
Only good thing to come of this is that our eyes are now open and the fight is on. It is going to take time, but it will happen.