Don’t Texa-fy California; Voting in the Recall Matters
In two weeks it will be all over. Either Larry Elder or Gavin Newson will be Governor of California.
If you want to take a look at how bad things might be, look no further than Texas, where it’s legal to openly carry a gun with no training, illegal to register to vote by mail, vigilante rewards are available for anti-abortionists, and Black Lives Don't Matter.
I suppose there is no intentional symbolism involved in the 666 laws going into effect this year in the Lone Star State. Some deeply Christian legislator should have figured out it’s the Number of the Beast as mentioned in the Book of Revelation. Maybe they like that sort of stuff.
Bang! Bang! Not content with the liberalization of gun laws following the 2019 mass shootings in El Paso and Midland-Odessa, the legislature enacted “constitutional carry” (HB 1927), meaning Texans 21 and older can openly carry handguns without a license or training if they are not legally prevented from doing so by state or federal law. Previously, Texans were required to have a license to carry, and to obtain a license, you had to take a training class, pass a written exam/shooting test and submit fingerprints.
The Big Lie Lives! Although there is no evidence of any rampant voter fraud in Texas, fealty to the Great Leader demands laws that just happen to have the greatest impact on minorities and others deemed to be disloyal. SB1 eliminates drive-thru voting & extended hours, bans mail ballot drop boxes, makes it a crime for election officials to distribute vote by mail applications, and allows “free movement” for partisan poll watchers, who are presumably packing, lest antifa show up.
My Body, Your Choice. Supreme Court watchers anxiously awaited a late night ruling, putting SB8 on hold. Alas, it never came, and the wingnuts at the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals have successfully rolled back Roe v. Wade using a legal back door. Abortions as early as six weeks into pregnancy are now prohibited. Since the Supremes have been iffy about government enforcement as an intrusion on privacy, the law allows private individuals to sue abortion providers or people who assist abortion. Additionally, HB 1280 would outlaw abortion in Texas 30 days after any potential U.S. Supreme Court decision overturns Roe v. Wade.
https://twitter.com/AdamBlickstein/status/1433054541726076929?s=20
White Lives Matter. HB 3979 limits teachers from discussing current events and systemic racism in class. The bill also prevents students from receiving class credit for participating in civic engagement and bans teaching of the “1619 Project.”
California GOP gubernatorial candidate Larry Elder won’t come out and say he’ll do any of those things, mostly because he couldn’t. But follow the money and you’ll find all those things high on the agendas of the people funding his campaign.
And actually doing them isn’t the point; the chaos and division created via trying to advance this agenda serves to undermine people’s faith in collective action and public institutions. It’s the fight that counts in a Blue State like California.
Elder’s campaign and the Recall movement in general have been energized by the 20% of voters who see making an issue of public health measures to combat COVID-19 as a way to disrupt the processes of governing.
That’s why Elder will continue to make misleading claims, like the one CNN fact checked yesterday.
Larry Elder, the leading GOP candidate vying to replace California Gov. Gavin Newsom, said he doesn't think it's necessary for young people to get vaccinated against Covid-19 or for children to wear masks at school, and he vowed to repeal any mask or vaccine mandates for California's state workers if he is elected to replace the Democratic governor in the September 14 special election.
"I don't believe the science suggests that young people should be vaccinated. I don't believe the science suggests that young people should have to wear masks at school," Elder told CNN's Joe Johns during a wide-ranging interview Monday afternoon in Los Angeles.
Even though some pediatric ICUs faced a shortage of beds in areas that were hard hit by Covid-19 this summer, he went on to make the misleading assertion that "young people are not likely to contract the coronavirus, and when they do, their symptoms are likely to be mild, and they're not likely to be hospitalized, and certainly not likely to die."
There are so many inaccuracies baked into his statements, I’ll just say you need to read the CNN article should you have questions. Ultimately, though, the facts don’t matter, as anybody who’s listened to the vaxxer/anti-masker arguments will tell you.
Their stances are about belonging to a group whose mindset is driven by acceptance of authoritarian attitudes and preferences for social dominance hierarchies, and a tendency to evaluate situations and people according to the emotions of fear and disgust (which in turn correlates with a high degree of xenophobia).
How do you stop this? One way at hand is to soundly defeat them at the ballot box. Diehards will deny the truth, others will have to reevaluate their choices. Maybe their newfoundland ‘friends’ aren’t so cool, after all.
There are two weeks left. If you haven’t voted NO in the California Recall election, now is the time to do it. And, seriously, don’t bother with question #2; the real question is between good and evil.
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