I am traveling in California, the northern part of the state; the part that wishes its wasn’t part of California. It is a very rural, lightly populated area. As you might expect, there are signs of Trump support in the countryside. But, this being California, in the larger towns and small cities, like Eureka, Ft. Bragg (which has no connection to anything military as far as we could tell) and Mendocino, the looney left is an obvious presence. California currently has a proposition to be put before the voters regarding redistricting, or rather, how California’s congressional districts are set, and that is current source for the usual whacko foaming at the mouth.
This is prompted by Republican efforts to redistrict in states like Texas, in the hopes of preserving and expanding control of the House. I object to those efforts. I think any legislative districts should be required to follow natural boundaries, like rivers, or geopolitical boundaries, like country or city lines and should be as regular in shape as possible. I believe race or number of voters in each political party or any other considerations should be banned as factors. That would avoid any attempts to disenfranchise a particular block of voters and might lessen the number of extremists who get elected because they can be as crazy as they want and never lose since their districts are so stacked in their favor.
Democrats will never support this rational approach to districting because if it were implemented now, they would be a permanent House minority. This is a reflection of the extreme district drawing they have undertaken in states like Illinois, New York, Maryland and others. What Republicans are doing is largely just returning the favor. Some states, like California currently, have independent commissions that tend to set the boundaries fairly and neutrally, although California already appears to have jiggered the boundaries in multiple areas to minimize Republican votes.
Newsome wants to eliminate the commission so Dems can go full disenfranchisement of Republicans, in the name of “saving democracy”. The hypocrisy of this is so obvious and pathetic that I can’t even laugh about it. This is about saving Democrats, not democracy There are signs in the aforementioned California towns pushing for a yes vote on the proposition and talking about fighting fascism and Trump and protecting democracy, etc., etc.
All of which reminds me of why I say to people all the time, God bless those like Charlie Kirk who think you can actually have a meaningful debate or even discussion with the whackos, because it is simply not a possibility. A discussion implies rationality–an exchange of reasons why this or that policy may or may not make sense or be the best option. The whackos, and I know it is an insult, but I call them that for a reason, which is that the policies they advocate are destructive to the country and to the people in the country, are not reasonable people. Their views are not informed by data or logic but by emotion, irrationality and slavish devotion to ideology. It is frankly a waste of time to discuss anything with this group. The only thing that will possibly change their minds is a personal bad experience, like being a crime victim, and even then they would likely masochistically blame themselves and excuse the perpetrator.
This group is incapable of defining “facism”, completely fails to understand what it means to be authoritarian, like they are, and fervently supports and encourages violence against political opponents. The only solution I have to their presence in our political life is to ensure that they never get political office and to constantly monitor them for violence, which they increasingly undertake, and to remove the sources of their financial support, i.e. George Soros and other billionaires. California, New York and Illinois should be ample warning to any other state about what happens when the whackos run a state for long enough, much less get their hands on the levers of power at a national level.
