There’s California, it seems to me, and then there’s the rest of the world.
Speaking of the rest of the world, California’s economy is currently the fifth largest, globally. Imagine everything going on in California–everything from farming to high tech–and it’s a diverse range of endeavors and people to meet them.
If I could live anywhere it’d be in California. In fact, I often wish I lived there.
But I don’t. I live in Tulare County.
Tulare County is the Arkansas of California. Maybe the Mississippi.
A right-wing, knee-jerk backwater where a poorly drawn cartoon such as Devin Nunes is not only comfortable, but–in all likelihood–safe. His support is legion and blind, both–while Nunes himself seems more concerned with his relationship with the White House than that with his own constituents. Those who support Nunes are complicit in the undermining of America.
Which is not being made “great again.”
Trump is far from presidential. He has the typical gravitas all megalomaniacs share–that is, everything is about himself, even if it’s all in his own head. Internationally he’s mocked, and he talks a big game until the time for whatever summit arrives. Then he caves. He’s a bully, a liar and a blowhard. And, as I’ve previously written, he’s in the Russian mafia. Yet Nunes continually bends over (you can decide which way) to support the Orange Horror. Just recently, Nunes was recorded opining that a Republican-controlled congress is this president’s last line of defense.
So much for Twitter.
Last I looked, we live under the rule of law–not a cult of personality–and congress, such as it is, remains a branch of government co-equal with and as a check on the executive.
Californians understand this.
Nunes’ constituents will still re-elect him.
In the nearly 20 years I’ve lived in this Comic-con of a county I’ve witnessed a whole cast of bad actors upon the public stage. Their chief virtue now, of course, is that they’re all gone.
Let’s take a stroll down Memory Lane, shall we?
Former Tulare Police Chief Jerry Breckinridge is gone, after his documented kerfuffle with wife, booze and driving, to take his issues up in the city of Arvin.
The entirety of the former Tulare Local Healthcare District Board is gone, thank God. Individually and collectively an unprecedented disgrace. Sherrie Bell, Dr. Parmod Kumar, Richard Torrez, Linda Wilbourn and Laura Gadke are no more–at least, as a board. How any of them can show their face in the city of Tulare eludes me.
And on that note, gone, too, is Dr. Benny Benzeevi.
There are many more–I have omitted, for instance, the City of Tulare Public Cemetery District–but my favorite has to be former Tulare Mayor Carlton Jones. True, he yet sits on the city council. But after antics that might have shamed Caligula, he voted for his own removal.
Go figure.
If only it were ever that easy.
See how much better the public good can be when certain bad actors exit the stage?
Now another needs to go.
Care to guess which one? I’ll give you a hint:
Whoever puts party, or self-interest, over country is a traitor.
Get off your duff in November and vote.
— Joseph Oldenbourg