[Cross-posted, with minor edits, from Freedom Camp, my first here in a while, and the first in an eight-part series. I suppose I'm not making any terribly groundbreaking observations for the savvy DKos set, but perhaps my hobbled overview may serve to enlighten a few non-California readers.]
Make no mistake. Modern California conservatives (most of whom are self-described Republicans, but in some places are just as often self-described "Independents," "moderates," "libertarians," or "pro-business democrats"), while typically softer around the edges, and more willing to create the appearance of being conciliatory -- of trying to appeal through thoughtfulness and a peculiarly unctuous brand of reason -- than their fellow wingnuts in, say, Idaho or South Carolina, are just as bizarrely moronic.
To be sure, they're more enamored of civil liberties and the products of enlightenment values, or they're more "libertarian" (i.e., often 420-friendly, accommodating of the little ladies' right to choose, and happy with miscegenation), and doubtless they'd cry like bitches if you actually dropped one in an Elohim-style survivalist compound in Montana or a Stars & Bars-waving Mississippi trailer park, but ultimately, that's all window-dressing -- at their heart, they are just as
spiritually penurious, just as emotionally and intellectually
dishonest, and just as
morally incompetent as their national Party brethren and allies.
The motley, rickety collage of California's left-of-center electorate, despite its incessant infighting, continually makes great strides in combatting the agenda of the Bund set's effete political descendants on the Left Coast, but these successes have not completely halted the march of robber barony and soft fascism; they have merely slowed them to a crawl. This is good, in that lets our nationally based opponents know that the Bear Flag State is not to be trifled with, but bad because it aids them in honing their underhandedness -- we force them to take their steps ever more gradually, and ever more obliquely, running the risk that there's that much more they can accomplish under the radar.
Our tutoring them in their greater circumspection is in part why we suffered such a grievous loss a couple of years ago when, aided by Gray Davis's absurd willingness to bend over and self-lube for big business, and in-no-small-part-self-servingly abetted by Daryl Issa's ill-gotten millions, we ended up with a Schwarzenegger administration partially orchestrated by and entirely (if secretly) beholden to Bush White House Svengalis. (Yes, I am momentarily digressing over spilt milk.)
It is true: policies that may market brilliantly in Orange will not go over in Venice, or even Malibu. The voters of Glenn or Colusa counties will quaff all sorts of medieval snake oil from which the folks of Mendocino, Siskiyou, and even Butte would rightly recoil. And when the salesman are nationally recognized right-wingers, endorsements from, for example, the sneeringly evil Dick Cheney will have the opposite of the intended effect -- they do our jobs for us. But they've gotten clever. Cranky, professionally prickly, xenophobic stable whores such as Dana Rohrabacher and Richard Pombo have been, for the most part, moved to the back burner, and put on a low flame. "Special Interests" have, with limited success, been quietly redefined to mean not multi-billion-dollar corporate interests, but firefighters' and teachers' unions. Our governor is a famous Holleevüd Schtah married to a feisty Kennedy.
Under this very same, oh-so-liberal, reasonable, "moderate" California Republican executive, an awesome victory has been scored for the reactionary right: a special election scheduled for this November 8. Imagine the possibilities: special elections traditionally have a very low turn-out, meaning that most of the people who head for the polls are the most dedicated Kool-Ade drinkers. And if opposition to the current regime and its plans continues to be as actively, virulently antipathetic as it has been recently, the bad guys still have the possibly effective recourse of merely toning down public awareness that anything is happening on the 8th.
Of course, this bold effort could backfire -- there could in fact be a massive turn-out, which would be bad for the proponents. And already our side has scored a point by getting at least one positive initiative on the ballot.
But today I'm focusing on the first one, in numerical order: the heinous Proposition 73, which submits for voter approval a waiting period and parental notification before the termination of a minor's pregnancy; the initiative would be an amendment to the state's constitution. This one is so clearly ugly, immoral and vicious, so in tune with the über-patriarchal, misogynistic values against which the non-fucktards of America fought so bloodily in the 60s and 70s, that I do not need to discuss it in detail here. I'll merely let Abigail Van Buren, via Bitch Ph.D. do my blogging for me: "Her father beat her so badly that she was in the hospital for more than a month. She lost the baby because of the beating and ended up in foster care."
A gob of runny shit smeared on paper like Prop. 73 could be proposed only in a California that exists in Bush's Uhmur'ka.
In the following weeks, I'll visit each proposition between bouts of the usual Freedom Camp perversion and frivolity. Until next time, remember, chillun': vote early and often, and on November 8th, let's smack these motherfuckers back to the 13th Century for which they so clearly pine.