It’s bad enough that Texas stole my one chance not to vote for anything. This was going to be the one year that we Californians got off. During my first ten months in L.A., I was asked to vote three different times. And it was a non-election year. People in ancient Athens didn’t vote that much. And they had way more free time because their entertainment options were limited to stories that they could make up about star patterns. When Texas passed its gerrymandering¹ law in August, eliminating five Democratic congressional seats, California Governor Gavin Newsom countered with a move to gerrymander our state for the next three elections to create five Democratic seats. He sent the president a letter saying he’d back off if Trump stopped asking Republican states to gerrymander, but Newsom knew there was no chance Trump would read a letter. So I had to open a vote-by-mail envelope inside another vote-by-mail envelope that might have been inside another vote-by-mail envelope, and stare at the one dot I had to fill in on a ballot that cost $282 million in taxpayer money. Because that dot was asking me a question of ethical philosophy. As Arnold Schwarzenegger has argued, Prop 50 is immoral. One of his greatest achievements as governor was ending California gerrymandering by copying Arizona’s policy of having an independent commission draw districts. Schwarzenegger figured other states would follow California’s example, as they’ve done with nothing else since the 1970s. Instead, Republican states have done the opposite, drawing districts that give them an advantage and, adding insult to injury, almost all look like Bill Clinton’s penis. The Terminator side of the ethical question is based on deontology, a philosophy that demands people base their choices solely on moral imperatives. There is right and there is wrong, and you don’t adjust circumstantially. There is no “unless” in the Ten Commandments. It’s not “You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male or female slaves, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor” unless they’re hot. Also, if you want to live by the Ten Commandments, you have to be cool with the slavery part. Drawing districts to look like Clinton’s penis is clearly cheating. It’s wrong. Don’t do it. When they go low, we go high. Utilitarianism, which is the operating morality in every Schwarzenegger action film, tells you to do whatever does the most good. Kill baby Hitler. Earn billions by stealing people’s crypto if you donate the money to malaria nets. If stopping authoritarianism means drawing dicks on maps, then Keith Haring it up. I’ve spent the last decade bending toward deontology. If we liberals betray our free speech principles to stop Republican senators from running their New York Times op-eds or speaking at colleges, maybe we’ll win elections, but we’ll abandon the policies that are the point of winning elections. If we justify violence, we lose. If we cheat by carving up districts, we lose. Liberalism might save abortion and Obamacare, but it will have hollowed out the kindness at its core. I betrayed my deontological better self and voted for Proposition 50. My utilitarian lesser self pulled the lever to switch tracks on the trolley car to run over a few California Republican congressional districts to save democracy for all Americans. When the rules change, you need to play by the new ones, no matter how awful they are. If a Republican-led Senate won’t bring a Democratic president’s Supreme Court nominee to a vote, that’s what Democrats need to do next time until a new, fair rule is established. I hate the argument that in a corrupt world, you have to be corrupt, because that’s a vicious cycle. But I do some things on my tax returns that I will not explain here, other than to say “loan-out corporation.” I voted for Prop 50 with regret. And little hope that in 2030, I won’t have to do it again. I just hope they’re smart enough not to put it on the ballot in an odd-numbered year. 1 Named after a sneaky trick in 1812 when Massachusetts governor Elbridge Gerry signed a law creating a Whig-decimating district so messed up that it looked like a salamander. Thank you for paying to read my column. Wait: This is for the people who didn’t pay? Then I owe you nothing. You are the ones contributing to the end of my career. If you want to pay an exorbitant amount of money to get one extra post a month – which often won’t even be that good – upgrade to a paid subscription here:
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Saturday, November 1, 2025
Texas Messed with Me
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