Darkness Falls in California
At midnight last night our leaders shut down California. I don’t blame Eric Garcetti or Gavin Newsom for wanting to be heroes. I can live with erring on the side of caution. (I wouldn’t vote either of them for dog-catcher, but I’m trying to leave that aside.) What I am upset about is, as usual, the hypocrisy.
Do you know, buried in the fine print, is that marijuana is apparently “essential”? Marijuana shops are open during this crisis. Not much else is, but you can get pot. How can this be? Do we have a crisis or don’t we? Pot shops didn’t even exist a year ago, how can they be “essential”? How?
Again, if you want to smoke pot, I don’t care as long as you don’t drive. But what is looking ugly here in California is that the politicians dreamed and fought for marijuana as the fantasy of an endless, bottomless tax. It hasn’t worked out that way, but that’s another story.
My question is how can these politicians look us in the eye and say that we all need to sacrifice and trust them while their real priority is to protect their little cash cows, i.e. the marijuana industry, the prison guards union, the LAUSD… I’m not going to go there. But if I am a nurse or a first responder or a grocery store check-out person who is being asked to really sacrifice (I talked to a worker in the grocery store this morning who had been there since 2 a.m. re-stocking and cleaning) I might have some questions.
No one seems to be complaining that we are not allowed to gather in groups of more than ten to protest any of this. For our own good, of course.
Nascent fascism is always posited as being for our own good. Stay tuned.
