Perhaps it's a sign of our mindless political times that the silliest theater can reveal the most serious truths.
Just look at San Francisco.
As my Times colleague Julia Wick reported this week, conservatives, long convinced that the City by the Bay is a progressive hellhole of homelessness, rampant crime and drug addiction, are collectively holding their noses to cheer on the 49ers in Sunday's Super Bowl. Anything to avoid supporting the Kansas City Chiefs and Travis Kelce and his girlfriend, the ubiquitous Taylor Swift.
This is, of course, the natural culmination of the many inescapable MAGA conspiracy theories floating around social media, most of which insist that Swift, Kelce and perhaps the NFL are conspiring with Democrats to defeat Donald Trump and send Joe Biden back to the White House in November.
“I wonder who will win the Super Bowl,” trolled Vivek Ramaswamy, the obnoxious former Republican presidential candidate and vice presidential hopeful. “And I wonder if this fall there will be a major presidential endorsement coming from an artificially culturally supported couple.”
Not to be outdone, whoever runs the popular and accurate far-right X account, End Wokeness, posted: “What's happening with Taylor Swift is neither organic nor natural. It's an operation. We all feel it. We all know”.
And now we have influencers like Rogan O'Handley (aka DC Draino) offering a two-week truce with San Francisco to encourage more Americans to support the 49ers.
“Mr. Pfizer and his girlfriend are going to tour the country as 'world champions' helping elect Joe Biden,” he posted. “World War III will likely occur in a second Biden term and millions of people will die. The “The fate of the free world rests on your shoulders.”
In response to such baffling backhanded praise, Assemblyman Matt Haney (D-San Francisco) told my Times colleague Wick that it was “a little strange to see people who normally hate San Francisco now rooting for San Francisco.”
In response to your response, I say that it is clear that these people have not been paying attention. Because if they had, they wouldn't hate San Francisco. Because they would know that many of the policies that are being proposed in the city lately are more in line with the politics of a far-right conservative than with that of a far-left progressive.
It's true!
While those of us in Los Angeles have been busy electing an abolitionist to the City Council, San Francisco began by ousting its reformist district attorney and moved on to ramp up the criminalization of homelessness and drug addiction.
The reason this is happening (at least on the surface) has a lot to do with Mayor London Breed. She's never really been progressive. But since the pandemic, she has moved even closer to the wealthy and organized right, trying to appease increasingly fed-up residents and, in the process, win an uphill battle for re-election.
To that end, when voters recalled Chesa Boudin as district attorney in 2022, Breed endorsed former prosecutor Brooke Jenkins. Since then, Jenkins has been criticized for all sorts of non-progressive things, including the time she said the quiet part out loud about supporting frequent encampment raids because unhoused people “have to be made to feel uncomfortable” to accept offers of housing. shelter. .
Meanwhile, Breed emerged as an early and strong advocate for getting the U.S. Supreme Court to decide, once and for all, whether it is unconstitutional for Western cities to clear encampments from public property. And in January, the high court announced that it would effectively review rulings by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which has long held that it is cruel and unusual punishment to deny homeless people a place to sleep.
You wouldn't know it from watching Fox News or following the social media posts of MAGA types, but Breed hasn't been alone among Democrats in complaining about tents on sidewalks and RVs under highways, and how the courts have limited their ability to do much about it.
Rather, it has been progressives – the people who apparently no longer dominate politics in San Francisco – who are actually uncomfortable with the sandbox that conservative Supreme Court justices are about to open. Even Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said last month that she worries about cities turning “in a direction where we then start criminalizing people who are homeless because we can.”
But I digress.
More reasons for the far right to reconsider leaving their hearts in San Francisco:
The policy of having the police arrest not only drug dealers but also drug users, holding them until they sober up and then trying to force them into treatment, you know, because it worked so well during the war on drugs. drugs. All in an effort to eradicate the very real problem of open-air drug markets, which conservative commentators love to make fun of.
There's also the upcoming ballot measure that would require adults on welfare to undergo substance abuse screenings and, if found addicted, would have to enroll in treatment to continue receiving financial benefits.
“No more 'anything goes' without accountability,” Breed told the San Francisco Chronicle, in words straight out of the Reagan era. “No more handouts without accountability.”
Responding to those accusations of lawlessness, there is also a plan to ask voters to relax both limits on police vehicle chases and reporting requirements on officers' use of force.
And just a few days ago, Breed announced that he is backing a ballot measure that would gut parts of Proposition 47, the 2014 law that is often criticized by tough-on-crime Republicans because it made simple drug possession and property crimes value less than $950 for misdemeanors.
The new measure would make it easier to throw the proverbial book at people, especially those who sell fentanyl.
“We are making progress on property crimes,” Breed said, according to my Times colleague Anabel Sosa. “But the challenges we face related to fentanyl and organized retail theft require real change in our state laws.”
I could be wrong, but that certainly doesn't sound like something someone who is the mayor of a progressive hellhole would say.
So fear not, far-right social media trolls and MAGA conspiracy theory believers. On Sunday, secure in these serious political truths, you can guilt-free support the 49ers, and maybe even San Francisco the other 364 days of the year.
Travis and Taylor already have enough fans.
