Before you criticize me for bashing Barbara Lee before she’s even sworn in, tell me this: Why would you expect her to be any better a mayor than Sheng Thao (who was one of our worst mayors ever)? They both subscribe to the same political ideology, namely wokeness, in which racial matters favoring people of color receive higher priority than public safety, economic development, or support of the police. They both are largely untransparent to the general public, orchestrating their deals with unions in secret. And they both have a royalist view of the mayoralty, believing “Madame Mayor” to be above politics and, thus, not answerable to the needs of the people.
A leopard doesn’t change its spots, nor does a former Black Panther who, at the age of 78, has been espousing the same discredited racialist baloney for her entire career. When she was younger, Lee heeded the Panther call of “by any means necessary,” which meant that lying, violence, and spreading disinformation were permissible tools in their efforts to assume power. Over the decades, Lee has become defter at the lies, more polished in her delivery, more adept at the P.R. aspects of politicking. But at heart, she’s still the same old girl she used to be.
I hope, as do others, that Lee can successfully “unite” the city, as she has pledged to do. But what does that even mean? There’s a fundamental rift between the factions that believe “social justice” is the number one goal, and the rest of us who simply want good governance. “Social justice” is in fact a pipe dream. It has no meaning in any normal world. What is “just” to one person is unjust to another. The problem is that any moral equivalence between the two views is rendered absurd when the group demanding “justice” represents and protects criminality, encampments and anti-social behavior. Ordinary people realize this; Lee voters didn’t. They continue to be complicit in a murder-suicide pact that has made Oakland a national symbol of civic dysfunction. Even if Lee were inclined to correct the imbalances in our priorities that have emerged from years of progressive leadership, she couldn’t. Her union paymasters would yank on her chain and punish her.
We’ll be watching Lee and the City Council closely. Soon, I’ll publish a list of actions the city could take immediately that would make it far better. These actions are obvious and necessary, but I guarantee Lee will take none of them. Her union masters won’t tolerate anything that actually helps Oakland.
Steve Heimoff