Good Luck with That

California actually has a legal process to recall tyrannical politicians. [More]

Tell me abut it. My friend Russ Howard led the "Recall Roberti" effort, and we see what it got him.

Forget about getting enough people to lift a finger to do a recall -- which by the way requires serious, consuming commitments in money and manpower --   I'm still waiting for enough to come forward to help out a guy who gave them his all. His was one of the three case studies that inspired the "Profiles in Apathy" concept.

Plenty of anonymous bloviators are willing to bellow "Molon Labe!" in comments.  Count on them to do anything else and the chance of positive action goes down exponentially, especially if money is involved -- hell, how many times have I asked for readers to send Vanderboegh a gratitude offering for value received, and guess what.

I saw an interesting stat on a social media site I monitor -- for the week thus far it has almost 700,00 "post reach" hits, almost 100,000 "post engage" hits, and 19 "website clicks." That's all the people who thought it might be in their interest to learn what posts were about before making up their minds. All the squabbling commenters were making noises about posts they hadn't even read based on the post title, and were basically just weighing in as an excuse to bray fixed opinions at each other, or to change the subject altogether and go distractedly chasing off in another direction.

Forgive me if I'm cynical. Not even being able to get 99.9% of site visitors to share links for stuff they're not getting anywhere else can do that.

And as for CRPA leading the charge, please -- don't hold you breath. Say, didn't Arnhole first get in following a recall...?

There's a reason we see this happening in California.  But those of us explaining that reason are either ignored or subjected to the logically indefensible "single issue" cop-out.

You do have to wonder if someone won't even send an email or share a link how much prolonged sacrifice and risk they're actually prepared to endure. And as for the growing consensus that politics won't work, how many through personal detachment made that a self-fulfilling prophecy?

When everything breaks down, there will be plenty of blame to go around.