“You’ve got to be carefully taught.” Sung by Lt. Cable in “South Pacific,” I believe this song contains the kernel of the problem with the current City Council majority. The carefully crafted lessons the majority had for this city began right out of the gate. On the night of Dec. 7, 2022 (a night which will live in infamy), the delirious MAGA crowd mocked Rabbi Stephen Einstein with a raucous antisemitic undercurrent. Since then, at every opportunity, this majority has step by step encroached on the decency which used to characterize this city. In each case, the majority has taken careful measures to signal the people who can properly be hated from the podium and in the official acts of the city. They came one by one for each. They vilified the unhoused working families of this city (accounting for over 1,000 children). They canceled the Greater Interfaith Council of Huntington Beach. They rewrote the statement of welcome and value in the Declaration on Human Dignity, signaling that it is A-OK to nurture a climate of selective hatred toward the LGBTQ+ community. They turned the Main Library into a culture-war no-man’s land. They gave city resources by the decade and by the millions as a gift to a political backer and tried to hide it. And then, they tried to claim that it was mere “lawfare” to beg a judge for the details of those gifts — all the while engaging in frivolous, wasteful and unsuccessful litigation against everybody. Then-Mayor Tony Strickland claimed to have “saved the air show” — but they seem to have lost the Olympics for good.
There is a word for this process of incremental violation of norms and boundaries. The City Council majority has been “grooming” this city.
Galen PickettHuntington Beach…