Somebody wrote to the S.F. Chronicle expressing her “disgust” for Brooke Jenkins, the wonderful District Attorney of San Francisco County. This was after Jenkins said that homeless people “have to be made to be uncomfortable,” a reference to the idea that regularly sweeping encampments encourages unhoused people to accept offers of shelter. “As the descendent of a German Jewish family that was nearly eradicated by the Nazis,” she wrote, “I…am disgusted, once again by our district attorney.”

I for one wasn’t surprised when Thao rejected all three candidates for Police Chief the Police Commission had recommended to her. Thao had her reasons. One, none of the candidates was woke enough. Thao is looking for someone who’s as committed to “social justice” as she claims to be. She’s not interested in a good cop who fights crime; she wants a sort of Nikki Bas in blue uniform, someone obsessed with racial grievance and leftist ideology.

Late on Christmas Day I came home from visiting my San Mateo family. Walking home from 19th Street BART, I decided to grab a beer at one of my favorite neighborhood gastropubs, Low Bar. When I got to the door, there was a sign on it:

Everybody is talking about insurrection, in the wake of the MAGA assault on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 and Trump’s and his co-conspirators’ upcoming trials for inciting it. The underlying assumption is that the extreme Right, desperate not to lose the presidency and its scourge of coercion and control, was behind the insurrection; and moreover, that the extreme Right resorts to violence casually.

A letter to the editor of the S.F. Chronicle really got my blood boiling. I’ll quote just part of it; hopefully the bureaucratic gobblety-goop won’t turn you off. “Sociologically, homelessness underscores the interplay of personal agency, structural limitations and social dynamics. While shelter options exist, factors like past trauma, safety concerns, mental health challenges and lack of autonomy in shelters can significantly deter individuals from accepting them. The decision to refuse shelter often stems from a need for independence, the desire to maintain personal belongings and a reluctance to conform to institutional rules.”