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MY TRUTH -
“ Politicians are a lot like diapers. They should be changed frequently, and for the same reasons.” – (anonymous)
Political violence doesn't always involve physical confrontation. But at least with physical violence, you know who to lash out against. Defunding the police and limiting emergency responses are obvious forms of political punishment documented daily on the 6 o’clock news.
With the softer coercive, economic, and psychological forms of violence, many of us don’t realize who is responsible. As a result, they continue year after year to vote for their oppressor, a perfect example of Stockholm syndrome. Reinforced continuously since the MSM and the political class excel in blame shifting. In California, residents face "non-kinetic" forms of political violence, such as systematic policies that harm, coerce, or suppress individuals through economic manipulation, regulatory overreach, and institutional control.
The assault begins with speech itself. California lawmakers have repeatedly attempted to censor online content and political advertisements, particularly around elections. Assembly Bill 2273 (California Age-Appropriate Design Code Act) mandates content restrictions on platforms, while AB 2655 requires platforms to remove "deceptive" content during election periods. Senate Bill 1001 forces disclosure requirements on AI-generated political advertisements. While federal courts have struck down many of these efforts as First Amendment violations, they create what experts call a "chilling effect"—citizens self-censor out of fear.
This silencing extends to elected representatives themselves. During legislative sessions, Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas has cut off microphones of Republican legislators and refused recognition during debates on critical bills, effectively denying representation to hundreds of thousands of constituents.
At school board meetings across the state, parents face arrests under California Penal Code Section 403 (disrupting public meetings) for speech that causes officials "discomfort" or "alarm," even when their statements are truthful and non-threatening.
The social enforcement mechanisms prove even more devastating. Under the guise of AB 587 (Social Media Platform Transparency and Accountability Act), tech companies coordinate deplatforming efforts that lead to doxxing, debanking, firing, and business destruction based on political views. Educational institutions enforce speech codes through Title IX interpretations, with teachers and students facing discipline for expressing views on gender, sexuality, or related topics that administrators deem "discriminatory." At the same time, media organizations coordinate these efforts, leading to what researchers term "epistemic handicapping"—convincing people to doubt their own observations and experiences.
DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) policies expand this control by enforcing ideological conformity through mandatory training and diversity statements, while utilizing bias reporting systems to target individuals for subjective offenses. Government contracts and benefits become contingent on DEI compliance, creating economic pressure that compels organizations to adopt specific political stances or risk losing contracts and income.
These policies demonstrate civic violence by destroying careers and livelihoods based on immutable characteristics rather than merit and experience. They are also exclusionary by systematically denying opportunities to qualified individuals based on race or gender, thereby abandoning equal treatment under the law in favor of diversity and undermining merit, legality, and integrity. DEI remains the guiding principle in leadership roles within state and local governments. As a result, even the most carefully designed policies often fail to achieve their intended outcomes.
California's tax structure represents perhaps the most systematic form of economic political violence against its residents. The state imposes a crushing web of taxes that transforms basic living into acts of unpalatable choices.
California's progressive income tax reaches 13.3% for high earners—among the highest in the nation. A resident earning $600,000 pays $73,800 in state income tax alone, while federal caps on state tax deductions amplify the burden. Small business owners and self-employed individuals face particularly aggressive enforcement from the California Franchise Tax Board.
Los Angeles County residents face a combined sales tax rate of 10.5%, with some areas reaching 11.25%. These regressive taxes hit lower-income households hardest, while frequent local tax increases create "tax creep" without accountability for results.
Property taxes establish a two-tier citizenship system. Proposition 13's assessment caps favor longtime homeowners, while new buyers—often younger and less wealthy residents—face significantly higher effective rates. A $1.5 million home brings in about $18,750 annually in property taxes, with additional special assessments adding uncertainty to family budgets.
California's 70.9 cents per gallon gasoline tax—the nation's highest—specifically targets residents' freedom of movement. In Los Angeles's car-dependent landscape, filling a 15-gallon tank adds $10.64 in taxes alone. This mobility tax disproportionately affects lower-income drivers who cannot afford electric vehicles or must live far from work due to housing costs.
California has mastered the art of criminalizing existence itself. Under the banner of environmental protection, everyday activities become "pollution" requiring payment of carbon taxes. Driving, farming, cooking, and heating homes—all rebranded as environmental crimes that demand financial penance and new devices.
Building codes and permitting rules create impossible barriers to development and business operation. The cost of building a home in California is significantly higher than the national average, with costs of $200 to $500 per square foot compared to the national median of around $150 per square foot. This translates to an extra premium of $200,000 to $700,000 for a typical 2,000-square-foot home.
Road diets eliminate driving lanes while adding bike and bus lanes, deliberately creating traffic congestion and pollution while officials simultaneously demand movement toward "net zero" emissions. The hypocrisy is intentional—create problems, then demand more power to solve them.
Senate Bill 79 epitomizes California's assault on individual mobility and freedom of movement. This legislation systematically eliminates parking requirements for new developments, forcing residents into a transportation nightmare designed to benefit political allies in the construction industry. By eliminating parking while simultaneously implementing road diets, toll lanes, and congestion pricing, officials create artificial scarcity that forces residents onto dangerous, unreliable public transportation systems where assault, robbery, and drug use create daily threats to personal safety.
California's approach to crime exemplifies this systematic abuse. Serious crimes like human trafficking and drive-by shootings are reclassified as "non-violent" to manipulate statistics. Despite voters approving Proposition 36 to address rising crime, officials systematically underfund its implementation. "Catch and release" policies allow dangerous criminals back onto the streets within hours of arrest, while early prison releases flood neighborhoods with convicted felons.
Street takeovers—where convicted felons openly block traffic and terrorize communities—continue with official blessing. Snatch-and-grab looting operations devastate retail establishments while prosecutors refuse to prosecute. Small business owners watch helplessly as their livelihoods are systematically destroyed by officially sanctioned criminal activity.
The Department of Motor Vehicles issues commercial driver's licenses to unqualified applicants who cannot speak English, particularly for long-haul trucking operations. These policies put massive vehicles in the hands of drivers who cannot read road signs, understand traffic instructions, or communicate with emergency responders during accidents. When families lose loved ones to accidents involving unqualified commercial drivers, state officials dismiss these tragedies as acceptable costs of their progressive agenda.
Perhaps no statistic better illustrates California's systematic cruelty than the explosion in child poverty under Governor Newsom's leadership. Child poverty more than doubled from 7.5% to 18.6% between 2021 and the present—a staggering increase representing hundreds of thousands of children pushed into deprivation by deliberate policy choices.
High housing costs force families into overcrowded, substandard conditions or homelessness. Energy costs mean children go cold in winter while parents choose between heating and eating. Gas prices prevent families from accessing better schools, healthcare, or job opportunities, trapping children in cycles of poverty. Compared to states like Texas (11.1% child poverty) or Florida (12.5%), California's 18.6% rate represents an extraordinary and purposeful policy failure.
Despite spending $282.6 million in taxpayer dollars on Proposition 50, the real goal is to maintain the supermajority's stranglehold on power and flip the House of Representatives to Democratic control. This represents the ultimate subversion of democracy itself. Instead of voters choosing their politicians, Gavin Newsom is engineering a system where politicians can choose their voters through manufactured crises, strategic funding, and political manipulation.
This needless special election also creates environmental problems. In addition to the published costs of $255 million, over 100,000 trees were cut down for the paper needed to notify Californians, causing an additional 8000 metric tons of “dreaded” CO₂ to print and mail ballots. Environmental degradation becomes acceptable when one's quest for power is unlimited by rational thought or morals.
California's systematic suppression extends beyond individual voices to the electoral process itself. The federal government's lawsuit against California's Secretary of State reveals systematic violations of the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA), Help America Vote Act (HAVA), and Civil Rights Act.
California reported 2,178,551 duplicate registrations, constituting 15.6% of total registered voters—a staggering figure that calls into question the validity of every election outcome. The federal lawsuit outlines three specific violations: refusing to provide voter registration records, concealing voter list maintenance information, and inadequately removing ineligible voters from registration lists.
When 15.6% of voter registrations are potentially fraudulent, and state officials refuse federal oversight, every election outcome becomes suspect. This represents the ultimate form of political violence: the theft of democratic representation.
California practices what political scientists call "anarcho-tyranny"—harsh enforcement against law-abiding citizens combined with deliberate non-enforcement against actual criminals. Government-owned spaces like public transportation, parks, and retail areas become dangerous through progressive non-enforcement policies, while officials view law enforcement itself as inherently racist.
Beyond statistics and policy debates lies a more personal form of violence—the systematic diminishment of California families' quality of life. Parents face impossible daily choices that previous generations never had to contemplate buy food or gas, get the kids new clothes or pay for medicine, heat the house or pay for health insurance.
The endless psychological stress of never having enough creates a form of mental torture. Families lie awake calculating whether they can afford gas and groceries, whether the water bill leaves room for their child's prescription, and whether running the heater means skipping meals. The cruelty lies not just in the financial pressure, but in the knowledge that these impossible choices are artificially imposed by officials who exempt themselves from the consequences of their policies.
When necessities become luxury items through deliberate policy design, when families must choose between heating and eating, when children go without because their parents can't afford both medicine and rent, the state has crossed the line from governance into systematic cruelty.
California represents a test case for modern political violence operating through institutions rather than direct force. By controlling speech, excessive taxation, weaponizing regulations, and manufacturing crises, by omission and commission, officials exercise power over residents' daily lives in ways that previous generations of authoritarians could only dream of achieving.
The genius of this system lies in its deniability—officials can claim they're protecting the environment, promoting equity, or ensuring public safety while systematically destroying the economic and social foundations of their constituents' lives. Most policies appear reasonable in isolation, but together they create a comprehensive system of control that makes traditional political violence unnecessary.
Understanding this new form of political warfare is essential for anyone seeking to preserve individual liberty and democratic governance. The battle for freedom now occurs not in the streets but in tax codes, regulatory frameworks, and institutional policies that shape every aspect of daily life. What has all this political soft-core violence accomplished? It is not human flourishing, a happy citizenry, a better school system, a reduction in homelessness, a healthier population, or smaller deficits.
These policies succeed at their actual purpose: consolidating power by creating a financially stressed, socially isolated population that's too exhausted to organize effective political resistance. The resulting dysfunction isn't a policy failure; it's a success. California’s political violence features ever-expanding state control while transferring wealth from middle-class families to politically connected interests, like NGO that fail at their assignments while ranking in tens of millions of dollars. For those implementing these policies, creating a struggling and dependent citizenry is ideal. It is far easier to control a dependent and exhausted population than a prosperous and self-sufficient one that has time to think for itself.
(Eliot Cohen has been on the Neighborhood Council, served on the Van Nuys Airport Citizens Advisory Council, is on the Board of Homeowners of Encino, and was the president of HOME for over seven years. Eliot retired after a 35-year career on Wall Street. Eliot is a critic of the stinking thinking of the bureaucrats and politicians that run the County, the State, and the City. Eliot and his wife divide their time between L.A. and Baja Norte, Mexico. Eliot is a featured writer for CityWatchLA.com.)
