June 9, 2022 - 7:15am
California may be the incubator of some of the worst political trends of our times — affirmative action, climate hysteria, identity politics — but it is also capable of reversing those trends, and those of the nation as well. Yesterday the Golden State shattered the Left’s urban wall, replacing a far-Left prosecutor, Chesa Boudin, in San Francisco. There is now a growing drive to remove LA’s leftist DA, George Gascon, Boudin’s predecessor, who will face Rick Caurso in a run-off.
LA’s election represents arguably the biggest pushback thus far to progressivism. The city, which has been solidly left-of-centre for a generation, placed Caruso, a former Republican billionaire, in first place for LA’s Mayoralty against longtime progressive political leader, Karen Bass. There’s even growing talk of a similar takedown next winter in Chicago, the home of Barack Obama, where crime problems and economic challenges easily match those of its Californian counterparts.
Perhaps these developments are best seen as an expression of an incipient urban rebellion — not against liberalism but the most extreme woke policies. Interestingly, it is minority voters — black people in New York, Asians in San Francisco, Hispanics in the Southwest — who are driving this trend.
The election of New York’s Eric Adams was certainly the most celebrated case, but there has been pushback against progressive policies in Austin, Seattle and Buffalo, in which voters defeated a socialist-backed Democrat in favour of a moderate candidate. Even in San Francisco, progressive school board members were overwhelmingly defeated in February 2022, an ominous foreshadowing of Boudin’s ignominious loss.
Voters are responding to obvious decline. The relatively poor economic recovery of the deep blue states is one thing, but the rise in crime, particularly in public spaces like subways and among destitute populations, does not make a persuasive case for cities. Even as he endorsed Karen Bass, former LA mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said:
“I have lived here my entire life. I have never seen this city so dirty, so rudderless. Homeless everywhere, crime going up, and there just seems to a be a lack of urgency, a lack of any kind of all-hands-on-deck approach to these crises.”
It would be a mistake to see the LA and San Francisco pushback as a call to conservatism. No Right-wingers are winning in big cities and those with Republican credentials, like LA Mayoral aspirant Caruso, are having to shift parties and embrace liberal social positions. There is not much room for gun-toting, abortion abolitionists or open MAGA supporters.
The real significance here could be if the urban counter-rebellion stirs debate within the Democratic Party itself. The kind of non-enforcement of crime associated with the Left does not seem to be particularly popular with voters, and the weakness of urban economies — notably New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco — suggest that city politicians are going to have to make difficult choices on taxes and other issues.
As the party of urban America, the Democrats need to produce a different set of policies. Under Joe Biden’s feckless leadership, the Democratic Party has embraced positions on crime, immigration and education that are rejected even by many core constituencies. If places like Los Angeles, New York and San Francisco can begin to see reason, there’s some hope that the voters can kick some sense into the old donkey’s head.
Joel Kotkin is a Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University and a Senior Research Fellow at the Civitas Institute, the University of Texas at Austin.
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SubscribeTanya, thanks for this. I’ve been off and on sober for 2 and a half years (mostly sober, a few relapses). I thought when I stopped that I would stop getting so depressed ha ha. In fact the depressions got more extreme, but weirdly sometimes once in a day, never for very long, and then up up up high as a kite – so your 12 octaves image was spot on. Meditation / mindfulness helps, and I do have warm bodies around, even if they’re not recovering alcoholics. Being trapped alone for 2 months would probably have sent me right back to the bottom. Day 19 today, which is better than 0.
Congratulations on 19 days. I was using alcohol to self medicate, manage my mood changes, didn’t know how severe my depression was until I got sober. Working the program with a sponsor has changed my outlook and attitude, but I still need to take a very small dose of antidepressant every day.
Working through the steps made all the difference for me; between having to live with the thing constantly, and living another, and monster-free, life entirely.
Tanya – I am also in recovery. 24 years sober. Zoom meetings have not been all that helpful for me. Watching people carrying their phone around the house and doing other distracting things keeps me from hearing the discussion. At grocery stores I see people piling their carts high with alcohol and I hear that news that drinking and domestic violence are up with the lockdown. Unlike you, I am writing more and more because I want to document every day of this pandemic and all the emotions I’m going through. As you mention, the alcohol is almost incidental, it’s the mental gyrations that lead to the drinking. I’ve been attending all kinds of mindfulness meetings, seminars, guided meditation and dharma talks. That’s what’s helping me stay safe and sane. Best wishes
Tanya, I hope that life-saving AA physical meetings will be able to resume soon, so that people affected by enforced isolation can get their medicine. There must be people in recovery who are dying without it.
Good luck.
Do persevere with the online meetings. This virtual stuff can take a bit of getting used to, but it’s are looking more and more like the blueprint for the future. I didn’t like them at first (not least because I hate looking at my own face) but I am beginning to get back the sense of community and fellowship that we need so badly. Isolation is the killer, and alcoholism loves separation.
Well how about South Africa where alcohol is now banned? Here in Canada alcohol sales have jumped. since the lockdowns started. Not surprised though it is no solution.
Tanya, I have gone to AlAnon for the families of Alcoholics for over twenty years and more open meetings than I can remember, and I echo what you say
My AlAnon meeting is not meeting on-line, but thank God I have been to CoDA, CoDependents Anonymous, where we have a new step meeting just started on line as well as the weekly meeting, and I also go to Adult Children of Alcoholics who now welcome children of dysfunctional families, which counts me in.
It is not the same as meeting face to face and the camera is not working on my computer, but it has kept me alive in Lockdown, as has walking every day on the hill where I live, and consciously praying while I walk. I am closer to my Higher Power than I have ever been, or rather my Higher Power is closer to me, except perhaps last summer when I walked in the heather on the mountain overlooking the ocean after my meetings and watched the sun setting into the sea, and felt Him embrace me every time. It was so powerful I can hardly describe it. It was a spiritual enlightenment which I knew He was giving me, after my meeting, in the fulness of the natural world, but something more powerful and more spiritual than the beauty of nature alone .
Even if I slip, and I do, He picks me up, like a Father picking up a child. I need to trust Him like a toddler held in the arms of a loving parent, a loving mother or father, full of tender concern, so different from the authority figures of my childhood, whom I can trust completely.
I haven’t been drinking more than normal, which is nothing Monday-Thursday, and 5-6 pints of ale Friday-Sunday
6 pints, if I’m being honest.
Tanya,
Your reference to the 12 Steps – please note a short excerpt from a letter of AA cofounder Bill W. in 1966, “Sobriety, freedom from alcohol through the teaching and practice of the 12 Steps is the sole purpose of an AA group”.
I have found recent Zoom meetings a great fillip, especially exposing our local AA community to meetings/inspiration from all around the world. However, looking forward to face to face meetings, starting here in NSW today.
Thanking you,
Rhys G.
Tanya,
Been sober 34 years and luckily where I live there are still a couple of in-person meetings. I loathe the zoom meetings and refuse to eat the picture of the watermelon instead of insisting on the real watermelon.
Crushed by covid 19? and you didn’t even have it? Newsflash, chica, you might give the steps a go. There is a hell of a lot of power in doing them, if you are actually interested in a challenge….and in power. The steps have a way of cutting through self-indulgent, fear based, whining narcissism. Simply not drinking does not equal sobriety.
I’m not sure writing is helping you as to generate the words you seem to be having to go back to your sewer and fish out all the repugnant things that you chucked in there and set them up on a rickety table still covered in bits of effluent for us to gaze at and consume. Unfortunately I’m not buying as I’m looking for strength, fortitude and rebellion among our people, not more middle class metropolitan weeping, clapping, rainbow stickers and self-pity.