As another primary season wraps up, it is becoming ever more apparent that voting in California has become a form of playacting where we collectively pretend that The People participate in a legitimate system and thereby choose their rulers and get the laws they prefer.
While it’s certainly true that The People, myself included, go through the motions of considering the candidates and issues, filling out a ballot, and submitting it to the authorities who, in theory, properly process and tabulate the result, the outcomes are all forgone.
Every major race, and most of the minor ones, have become a predictable contest between the Social Democrat and the outright Marxist. Only the names and faces change.
Once elected, the only question is how far left the office-holder will go in implementing policies.
Even when conservatives do manage to pull off a victory, as they did in Shasta County and the occasional school board, the State immediately intervenes to prevent any policy contrary to the reigning progressive preferences.
Thus we are left with a state of affairs where no matter how burdensome and idiotic the regulation, no matter how much living costs go up and the standard of living is diminished the ruling party not only gets reelected by overwhelming margins but is able to resist all efforts of correction. In other words, a permanent [Democratic] majority.
And the truly scary thing is that California is the model that the Democrats would like to adopt for the country as a whole.
Writing in the Eastern Bloc in the late-1970s, Czechoslovakian playwright Vaclav Havel found himself at the forefront of the Charter 77 movement defending the right of culture to exist independent of the government. The result was a book on dissent titled “Power of the Powerless.”
Havel’s key insight is that in free societies, where there is competition for power, there are “certain correctives that effectively prevent ideology from becoming more and more removed from reality.” In a totalitarian system, however, the correctives disappear eventually creating a “post-totalitarian system: a world of appearances, a mere ritual, a formalized language deprived of semantic contact with reality and transformed into a system of ritual signs that replace reality with pseudo-reality.”
This is exactly the state of affairs in California today.
Havel’s remedy to this “post-totalitarian” situation is to “live within the truth.” This is not necessarily achieved through political action. In fact, a specific political reform does not lead to an awakening but is rather the final outcome of an awakening. Instead, “any means by which a person or group revolts against manipulation” can be the catalyst for change. These “free expressions of life,” which are essentially pre-political, are the true threat to the post-totalitarian system.
I think we saw this in the organic resistance to the many COVID-related restrictions and are seeing it again in the refusal of many to submit to the increasingly strident demands of the transgender movement.
I think we will begin to see more of these individual acts of “truth living” as the state’s alternative energy fantasies begin to bite. Then people will start to realize that all of the mandates and goals for emissions reductions weren’t some theoretical exercise but actual plans with the full force of state power. Neither are they targeted at just the evil corporations and other major offenders of environmental crimes.
As we’ve witnessed in the various farmers’ revolts in Europe, which are in part a reaction to efforts to transition from fossil fuels, people will not just rollover when their livelihoods are at stake. This could have major implications for a State in which agriculture is a significant segment of the economy.
Now, I’m sure some of you will point to Steve Garvey’s competitive race for the U.S. Senate as a glimmer of hope. Don’t get me wrong. I’d love to see The Garv in the General Election—especially if it means giving the boot to the obnoxious Katie Porter and making The Schiff-ter sweat it out for a few months.
And while a second-place finish would be a victory of sorts, Steve Garvey is not going to be the next senator from California. At this point, it is doubtful that California will ever again have a Republican senator (at least within the lifetimes of most of the people reading this article).
Don’t get me wrong. I don’t think that the current state of affairs will continue indefinitely. There are historical and economic forces beyond the control of even the California Democratic Party. After all, the Soviet Union only made it 80 years. I just don’t think that any election is going to reverse the monopoly of power in California.
The true way out of is for brave individuals to resolve to stop living within the lies.
J.S. Scifo is a North County resident who has worked in national and state politics. You can also follow him at J.S. Scifo on Substack | Substack.