Capitalist
In 2020 Los Angeles [county] narrowly elected a man called George Gascon as its district attorney. He has been a disaster, having no particular interest in actually prosecuting criminals and setting many free; the crime rate has soared to anarchic levels. Tucker Carlson, the Fox News broadcaster, has highlighted this on numerous occasions and it’s just shocking what is taking place.
This is what happens when good men do nothing – Edmund Burke comes to life. It is to my deep embarrassment I confess to being one of the good men who did nothing and let this evil monster become DA.
In a slightly complicated series of events, I was born in one country, have lived almost my entire life in another (NZ, obviously), yet hold citizenship, since birth, in a third. Not only that but, after a drunken, abusive incident at a hotel in 1995 when I mistook the then prime minister for a waiter, I was arrested, stripped of citizenship, taken to the airport and told I’d be imprisoned indefinitely upon return to the country I was actually born in. (And you think Ardern is a tyrant!)
So by an accident of birth I am a US citizen and under US law and California election law entitled to vote in elections using my father’s previous address as a voting residence. Accordingly, I have happily voted in US federal and California state primary and general elections since 1992; they email me a ballot, I fill it out and post it back.
There are no particular problems doing so with, say, a presidential election, or even US Senate or the California governor recall election last year; Larry Elder is great isn’t he? However, there is the ever-so-slight matter that I have never actually been to California: I have visited the US many times but have avoided that ghastly place full of shallow, vulgar people (and several former step-mothers). Air NZ used to have a very convenient Auckland to Houston route that meant we happily avoided the west coast by 1500 miles or so on our annual American holiday.
Even a person with my sardonic sense of humour and enjoyment of pranks has a limit to what sort of ‘leg pulling’ is acceptable. To start voting to elect judges, or school board members or members of the Manhattan Beach City Council…well, I would feel the most outrageous humbug; it really would be too much of a (you know what)-take, especially if somebody I voted for ended up winning by one vote. So I have always steered clear of the more ‘local’ elections on the ballot.
This hasn’t been a problem until 2020 when Gascon emerged as the winner of the district attorney election and set about destroying Southern California. I know it sounds silly, but I do feel slightly guilty.
Today the email arrived with a link to access my ballot for the 7 June primary election, although as I write this it isn’t working (presumably they mean “available to access” from 28 April California time?). I’m seriously considering voting for every office on the ballot this time to help avoid another Gascon winning by default because “good men do nothing”; this is not for the faint-hearted, as researching candidates has taken me ages to do.
In general, I will stick to voting for the chap endorsed by the California Republican party; the only exception being a gal called Rachel Hamm for secretary of state (her website shows she’s a real conservative firebrand!). Let’s hope the good guys win this time.