Thread by @dilanesper

I think both parties, given their druthers, will do culture war stuff rather than governance, and with today being No Kings day (and given President Trump's love of the culture war), I might tell a story that shows how deep the rot in our politics goes. It's bipartisan.

In 2024, the California legislature passed, and Gavin Newsom signed, this law that takes effect in 2026 and effectively bans any California high schools from having Native American mascots.

actionnewsnow.com/news/a-new-cal…

My point in pulling this up is not to debate the issue. My personal opinion on Indian mascots is squishy-- there's ways to do it that were obviously racist (the Washington Commanders' former name) and other ways to do it that aren't (the Florida State Seminoles).

Rather, my point is different than that. California is losing population. Our cities are dominated by homeless camps. We face long-term dangers of global warming. Our high speed rail project is a shambles. We have constant traffic and crime.

And our politicians do THIS.

Obviously these mediocrities in our legislature and governor's office couldn't wait to weigh in on the absolutely pressing issue of... what high school football teams call themselves.

What utter scumbags. And bear in mind, these are people whose politics I sympathize with.

Bear in mind, this legislation doesn't even do anything for our Indian communities, some of whom still live in pockets of pretty serious poverty.

It's pure, symbolic, masturbatory garbage. The legislators should have worn bags over their heads when they voted for it.

This is America politics in a nutshell. It's what Trump does, but it's also what the Democrats do too. They ignore massive substantive problems where politicians would actually have to do work to solve things, and jump on stupid unimportant symbolic issues.

This isn't even the first Democratic-dominated political body in California to jump on renaming high school football teams as a crucial issue to spend time on. Remember when the San Francisco School Board voted to rename high schools (including one named after Ulysses S. Grant)?

The point is, we have real problems in America. You may not even agree with me as to what the biggest problems are. But we all agree there are real problems. And our politicians treat us like trained seals, who will bark whenever they serve up their culture war BS. And we do.

And until our politics becomes more serious, a mechanism to solve the real problems of the country again, we're just going to do this kind of silliness over and over again, and other countries are going to eat our collective lunch.