There is a word to describe what's happening in Sin FRancisco in this matter:
ANARCHY!
And the mayor is an anarchist who should immediately be recalled.
No, it's not anarchy, nor is it "civil disobedience", which is the term they initially applied to their action.
Anarchy is the absence of government, every man for himself. A government official, issuing licenses is anathema to the concept of "anarchy". ("Hi, I'd like to sign up to be an anarchist. Where can I find the rulebook, and how much will the license cost me?")
It's not "civil disobedience" either, but for different reasons. Civil disobedience is by definition the populace rebelling against the state. When you have one unit of government squaring off against another unit of government, it's not "civil disobedience" by any stretch of the language.
So if it's not "anarchy", and it's not "civil disobedience", then what is it?
It's civil war of course.
How it ends up will determine not so much what kind of future we have as a nation, but whether we've got much of a future at all. Rome is falling, version 2.0.
Please note that I am not engaging in either hyperbole or a term of art when I used the expression "civil war" to describe their actions. I was being as clinical and accurate as possible. One unit of government has decided to break away from the rest of the country, and operate in complete defiance to the rule of law, to which it is officially subject.
San Francisco has in a very real way decided to secede from the USA. How the USA responds to this act of civil war will determine our future.
I will not be surprised, though, if the response boils down to surrender.
Yes. The very fact that Mr. Newsom called the State's senior Law Enforcement Official and the Secretary of State, the keeper of the State's Vital Statistics, and was not clapped into irons shows me that State Government Officials are in on this. It does, in my biased opinion, at this point become a Federal Law Enforcement issue. But how to procede? Why not let SF secede (PLEEEZE!!!), or become a semi-autonomous City State?
If it's good enough for Vatican City, why not SF?
Let the "Rear Door of the Church" jokes begin.
How it ends up will determine not so much what kind of future we have as a nation, but whether we've got much of a future at all. Rome is falling, version 2.0.
...San Francisco has in a very real way decided to secede from the USA. How the USA responds to this act of civil war will determine our future.
I will not be surprised, though, if the response boils down to surrender.
Then there will be a lot of us who will want to secede from such a corrupt, perverse nation and form our own perfect union.
I think I have a better term: Civic disobedience.
If it's civil war, can we all assume that you're on the President's side of it??
I tend to agree. That there have been no weapons fired is merely a technicality. It is nonetheless a civil war fought by other means. It's just that one side isn't fighting back.
I can't express in words how spitting mad I am over this. Not just because of the actual offense, but because of the utter double-standard, and the complete lack of respect for the rule of law.
We need to take the country back somehow, but I don't have any ideas of how to do it with a largely apathetic populace which is more interested in watching "reality" TV than in the future of their country.
This is far more important that what is happening abroad, but few seem to really care.