This nation has come to view victim status as a path to power. The ugly protests, vandalism, murders and other anti-social behavior of the last weeks has been, in many ways, a confrontation between two sides both claiming to be most aggrieved. This is why the claim that all sides have a point has been so volatile – it is a competition to be the “biggest victim,” because that is perceived as the path to power – declaring both sides aggrieved means there is no winner and that is intolerable.
But is victim status really a path to power or is it a path to something else? Given the anti-social behaviors we have witnessed in these weeks, one must wonder. Certainly murder is the most egregious anti-social behavior, but these weeks have been marked with far more – vandalism, riots and near-riots, human wast bombs, and the level of on-line trolling has gone from hideous to galactic overlord level. Such behavior is about inflicting pain, not leading – holding power in this instance seems to be about the ability to get away with it rather than establish using power for what it is meant to be used for. These parties that perceive themselves as aggrieved seem more interested in vengeance than in actual power.
HH: Today, I am turning my attention to the race for the governorship of the Golden State, arguably the second-most important executive job in these United States. Governor Jerry Brown is rounding the corner into the last year of a total of 16 as governor. Brown served as governor from 1975-83 and returned to Sacramento as the big boss in 2011. In between Brown’s runs, Pete Wilson, Gray Davis, Arnold Schwarzenegger were governors, and Southern California and California, first a state in 1850, has an unbroken record of white males in what is called the horseshoe, the governor’s office in the state capitol. Antonio Villaraigosa is trying to change that record of, well, non-diversity. He is one of many candidates who are formally seeking or considering a run to replace Jerry Brown, among them the Democratic mayor of San Francisco, Gavin Newsom, California’s treasurer, John Chiang, the past superintendent of California’s schools and a state legislator, Delaine Eastin, and GOP Assemblyman Travis Allen. There may be others, including former Congressman Tom Campbell and zillionaire environmental activist Tom Steyer, but it is Villaraigosa with the longest resume and arguably the best claim on California’s often-divided Latino electorate. Villaraigosa was the 41st mayor of Los Angeles, California from 2005-13. Before becoming mayor, he was a member of the California State Assembly for six years, finishing his time there as speaker of the Assembly. Villaraigosa was a national co-chair of Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign, a member of President Obama’s transition board, and chairman of the 2012 Democratic National Convention. In September, he announced his candidacy for the governorship, and he joins me early this Saturday morning. Antonio Villaraigosa, it’s good to see you again, Mayor.
AV: Good to see you, Hugh.
HH: First one’s a softball. Why you? Why now to run the Golden State?
AV: Well, first of all, let me just say John Cox is also a competitive candidate.
HH: Thank you.
AV: …from San Diego. I give him his…
HH: His pop.
AV: …his pop. What was your question?
HH: Why you? Why now for California?
AV: Well, I think right now at this time in this state, we need someone that understands this is a great state, but we need to make it greater still. We need to make sure that we’re not, that we’re growing together, that we’re not leaving so many people behind. This is a great state. We’ve grown our economy faster than the national average for a few years, grew more jobs than Florida and Texas combined, but there are a lot of people living in poverty in this state, a lot of people who aren’t making it, who feel this economy is rigged. And I feel like the next governor has got to focus on the economy, got to make sure that we’re growing the economy, that we’re growing more middle class jobs, that we’re educating our kids, training them for the jobs of the 21st Century, and that we’re building the infrastructure that we need.
On the Townhall Review, a radio program I host, we are loaded this weekend. Great segments from Salem talkers.
You’ll hear my segment with Representative Mike Gallagher, not to be confused with the Salem host Mike Gallagher, who coincidentally is also on this weekend’s program not once but twice – first with Ben Shapiro on the white supremacy issue, and later with Rich Lowry to cover the growing push to remove confederate monuments.
A large chunk of my interview with Democratic Senator Chris Coons also made the cut.
Michael Medved interviews James Damore, the fired Google engineer.
And we finish with Dennis Prager’s take on free speech.
Sign up for the podcast here and listen to the program here.
Said the host in his interview of Senator Coons yesterday, “I actually think our politics are close to breaking apart here.” I agree – the American political system is being stretched to its limits. What I find fascinating is how we got here.
It has long been an anti-religious trope that religion is a matter of such passion that it is antithetical to democracy – failing to realize that it is untempered passion that is the problem, not religion. This is plainly evident in our current political mess wherein matters of identity have come to be matters of such passion that they threaten to overwhelm our politics. I pointed out last week, in the wake of the now truly insignificant Google firing, that Rod Dreher had attached the word “heresy” to identity challenges. That is a religious word attached to a secular issue; identity has taken on religious levels of significance. As Charlottesville has made plain it is not the passion associated with the religions of old that threaten our democracy, it is the passions of the “new religion” of identity.
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