San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
American fascism is on the rise
California can block it — if progressives have the will
It has been nearly a year since an estimated 2,000 right-wing insurgents violently stormed the U.S. Capitol with the intention of overturning Joe Biden’s lawful electoral victory and installing Donald Trump as the first American sovereign.
Yet if a deadly coup attempt provoked a desire to protect American democracy from imminent collapse — violent or otherwise — that momentum has, tragically, long since ceded to business as usual.
As of this writing, just 71 insurrectionists have been criminally sentenced. Only 42% of those received prison time, with an average sentence of 130 days. The instigators of the insurgence, meanwhile, remain free to instigate. Congressional Republicans stonewalled efforts to launch a bipartisan 9/11-style commission to investigate the organizational origins of the assault, with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell calling in “a personal favor” to kill its formation. Attorney General Merrick Garland has given little indication that he intends to harness the power of his Justice Department to aggressively hold the planners and funders of the coup attempt to account. A Democrat-led committee in the House is currently probing the insurrection. But its findings may ultimately prove futile, as relentless revisionism by rightwing media outlets has used factfinding delays to promote conspiracy theories that have burrowed and taken hold. Polls show 71% of Republicans now view Biden’s election as illegitimate. Nearly as many see view the Capitol insurrectionists as lawful “protesters.”
“Fascism’s legal phase,” as Yale professor Jason Stanley recently branded this moment, advances unhindered. Republican-controlled states are actively rigging the game to either restrict voting rights or more overtly overturn electoral outcomes they don’t like. Supreme Court-sanctioned partisan gerrymandering and the gutting of the 1965 Voting Rights Act are primed to permanently entrench local Republican control in battleground states like Georgia that — demographically — would otherwise be trending blue. Overtly stripping Black constituencies of their political representation is at the heart of this strategy.
We appear to be headed toward permanent one-party, minority rule at the federal level. And the unconscionable refusal of Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema to react to this open threat — as well as a near total absence of principled Republicans and GOP crackdowns on the precious few who exist — has left Congress’ Democratic majority seemingly resigned to ride out the clock until the 2022 midterms sweep them out of power, possibly for good.
And then there’s California. The most powerful state in the nation and the public face of the progressive movement clearly has a duty to do in response to the potential fall of American democracy. And yet we spent most of 2021 — in stereotypical leftist fashion — arguing endlessly with ourselves while crises festered. We wasted time, money and political capital on the absurd (and, mercifully, unsuccessful) recall of our governor. More recalls are poised to dominate our headlines in 2022. In a year when effective progressive leadership will be needed more than ever if liberal democracy as we know it is to endure past the 2024 election, California leftism is suffering an identity crisis. Instead of unapologetically looking forward, we will devote much of our bandwidth to debating whether to turn the clock back on recent social justice reforms that have barely had time to launch.
This is not to suggest we lack the capacity to unify.
Californians are perfectly adept at coming together to play the part of the “resistance,” taking to the streets to display our disaffection with right-wing overreach. Our state leaders have no problem using our considerable public funds to throw up legal roadblocks to unsavory federal policies. And we are a piggy bank for the Democratic party and the activist left.
But “resistance” alone isn’t good enough to slow the ascent of authoritarianism. California’s preferred political tactics are all rooted in a system of democratic norms that is rapidly eroding. Their efficacy requires both institutional fairness, consistency in the application of the law and fear of voter reprisals, things already in short supply at the federal level that will evaporate entirely should institutions fall further to anti-democratic corruption.
The aftermath of the Capitol insurrection was the time for Californians to rally behind plans for progressive place-building at home — the kind that could serve as a desperately needed blueprint for a national model of governance. Instead, we reverted to our usual ideological rigidity, internecine sniping and self-interested NIMBYism.
We are, as scholar Richard DeLeon famously branded San Francisco, an “antiregime,” defined by opposition rather than affirmative action.
Leadership capable of transcending this status quo is in short supply. Too many officials at all levels would rather peacock their way into the headlines in pursuit of higher office than do the hard and politically fraught work of creating a place that lives up to our stated ideals. (A message to California’s most ambitious electeds: Dianne Feinstein and Nancy Pelosi’s seats won’t be the prizes you think they are if the country collapses into tyranny.)
In truth, California is a place that preaches political correctness and anti-racism but has among the most segregated public school systems in the country. We lock up a higher percentage of our citizens in prison (mostly people of color) than almost any democracy on the planet. We speak loftily of fighting climate
change, but have an intractable car culture, an insatiable fetish for unsustainable suburbanism and an uncanny ability to shell out billions for green infrastructure like bullet trains while failing miserably to get the job done. We regard environmentalism as the holiest of holies while breathing the foulest air in the country. We talk of progressive social welfare policies but have the highest poverty rate in the nation and a racial wealth gap to match. We have unsurpassed aggregate wealth — with a homelessness crisis befitting an impoverished nation and a self-inflicted housing shortage born entirely of political obstinance.
We have long failed to live up to our ideals — and most of the country knows it.
Our economic clout gives California the means to correct these shortcomings, but we lack the collective resolve for decisive action. This failure doesn’t just make life untenable for millions of Californians. It is ammunition in the relentless drive to discredit the left’s ability to govern. As the same authoritarian propaganda machine that drove last January’s coup attempt paves the way for the takeover of our democratic institutions, California offers an unpersuasive counternarrative to the fascist fantasy of “making America great” though one-party authoritarianism.
California and its cities — especially San Francisco — have long positioned themselves as beacons of American progressivism. The American people have accepted that narrative, for good and for ill.
As a consequence, our home is a stage. But our act has grown stale. And dishonest critics are taking advantage.
The country no longer looks to San Francisco and sees compassionate, if quirky, pluralism. It sees streets dirty with feces, hypodermic needles and homeless encampments. It sees brazen criminality and a city that will abandon its values when inconveniences to its elites grow severe. It sees an out-migration of people who would rather move to conservative Texas than endure life in liberal America.
These critiques are, of course, overstated or outright false — maliciously or lazily amplified by different sectors of the media. But there is enough residual truth in them to resonate.
San Francisco isn’t Gotham, and anyone who says otherwise is either sheltered or lying. You’re far more likely to come across the bourgeois droppings of a teacup poodle than you are a stray hypodermic needle. Overall, this a safe, beautiful, unaffordable city with most of the same social problems of any other large American metropolis. The difference is that we have the wealth, tax base and stated intention to act — but don’t, choosing instead to squabble in interminable and increasingly petty circles.
Our failures, both real and perceived, give weight to fascistic propaganda about the left’s incoherent, hypocritical and incompetent belief system.
To be clear, debate and engagement are obviously essential components of American democracy. Earnest civic discourse can be messy. But much too much of our rhetoric is inane, dishonest or outright Machiavellian.
San Franciscans need to recognize that we are being watched and that the stakes of our performance are impossibly high.
The most revolutionary thing we can do at the moment, then, is abandon our political tribalism, which is rooted in another era, learn to compromise with one another, rally behind a forwardlooking vision and do the work to become the place we claim to be.
We have the tools we need to succeed.
Despite its inequality, San Francisco’s dynamic economy still offers unparalleled opportunities for social mobility. This inherent advantage will be buttressed by a massive infusion of state funds in 2022, thanks to a budget surplus, that will inject billions into California’s social safety net.
More funding to combat homelessness is at our doorstop. Experiments in universal basic income could be on the horizon. So could reparations. We will have the resources to deploy criminal justice tactics backed by social science and compassion in lieu of doubling down on law and order. It is imperative we give these efforts the support they need to succeed.
Harvey Milk famously said, “You have to give them hope.” Hope looks different than it did in Milk’s time, but his words remain true.
American democracy needs to see California succeed. We don’t have any more time to waste arguing.