A Protest of Weirdos by a Weirdo.
The current popular meme in politics these days is that right-wingers are “weird.” I am compelled to write this because I myself am quite weird. And I am writing this from the capital of weird, San Francisco. As such, I can most assuredly be considered an authority on weird and weirdness. If those weird credentials are not enough, I can also point to my tenure as an editor for an online horror magazine for goths, during which time I was called weird by a large cross-section of the country, sometimes on the radio and sometimes on television. They didn’t even have to see pictures of me to determine this most of the time, it was pretty weird. It was all because of Columbine — a deeply weird event that has become all too disturbingly normal.
So believe me when I tell you, these people are fucking weird.
San Francisco is definitely the capital of weirdness in America — I can’t speak for other countries because I’m not that well-traveled outside of the United States for my own weird reasons. In San Francisco, weirdness is tolerated. In most cities, the nail that sticks out gets hammered down. In San Francisco, you gotta watch out because you’re gonna get tetanus from all the nails sticking out. We started tolerating weirdness with Emperor Norton, and it’s gotten to the point where if you are good at being just out there we will celebrate you just for the fact that you wander down the street with a sign demanding action from the current president against the 12 galaxies for zegnotronic elucidation or whatever the meds made you write that day. Hey, has anyone seen Frank lately?
The big problem seems to be when the weirdos get hoards of money that rival the central banks of nation-states, which makes them want to become nation-states of their own. Can you imagine Emperor Norton if he’d had $200 billion? We would be saluting his heir as the current Emperor. Unfortunately, Elon Musk has $200 billion and is not as amusing. Safe to say he thinks he should be the Emperor too. We tolerate him in San Francisco, mostly because he bought Twitter. He’s leaving though, because he can’t have a section of his car factory called “The Plantation” where he keeps all the black workers. We’re also fine with him leaving. The best part about Elon Musk seems to be that he’s on too much ketamine to actually complete a long-term project successfully so he’ll always move on when the accountants start telling him to find a cheaper place to base all the companies.
Part of what I like about San Francisco is that it’s so expensive that eventually everyone who hoards money gives up and moves away so they can hoard more money. Let me tell you, worshipping money is weird. Trent Reznor told me so.
I have to admit, about two weeks ago I was in a deep funk. I was watching an extra from The Walking Dead debate some dude who had just staged an assassination where he actually had one of his own supporters killed, at least that’s how it looks from my deeply and admittedly weird mind. The police still can’t get into that kid’s encrypted messages, isn’t that weird? It’s about as weird as that kid having overseas bank accounts. And lots of money to apparently buy a $5000 gun setup, a van, a rangefinder, and explosives. It’s all still very weird. I was in a dark place. It got better when the corpse dropped out of the race and a familiar face took his place.
Now, I am not a huge fan of Kamala Harris. I lived through her tenure as the successor to the fisticuff-loving Terrance Hallinan. I don’t get to talk to people about San Francisco politics much but I have to admit it that I absolutely love it. It is always weird. My history obsession gets scratched in real-time with San Francisco politics because I know I’m watching history in real-time. I can see how people will talk about Willie Brown in 100 years because I see how they talked about Sunny Jim Rolph from 1911. So I get Kamala Harris. She is a known quantity. She is not weird. She’s disturbingly normal. And she gives me hope that the national weirdness can be combatted. Because what some of these people need is some serious jail time, and I know that’s her whole schtick. I just have to avoid doing anything illegal while she is in office. I think I’m good.
As a San Franciscan, I feel compelled to call out the weirdos we have here who are trying to do on a local level what the weirdos on a national level are trying. While I feel confident that the national level is on the right track, I am somewhat alarmed by the lack of direct action against what I perceive to be real local threats. We have some dangerous weirdos rearing their heads in San Francisco. Tech authoritarians, deeply weird people who read some Robert Heinlein or George Orwell or Philip K. Dick or William Gibson and thought this was a great way to run a society — something to strive for as opposed to a warning.
I’ve talked about the weirdest one before — Garry Tan. He’s the head of Y-combinator nowadays, a deeply weird organization — a “tech accelerator”. Your company applies to it and they invest in your company for stock, help you set up the corporate structure, and show you around to their network of like-minded investors. It’s definitely who you know with that crowd. Part and parcel of that is that they live in a tech authoritarian bubble — they only talk to people with the same views as them and they’ve deluded themselves into thinking the majority of San Franciscans feel the same way. I’ve been in their offices multiple times over the past decade, and I’ve never been overly impressed by anything I saw. I have been through several accelerators like YC in my time, and to be honest, the best I ever saw was not in San Francisco but in Chicago. This is not that weird — Chicago actually has a work ethic, whereas my impression of San Francisco’s work ethic is not that great. Not that I am complaining, I’m a pretty lazy weirdo myself.
The reason I bring up Garry Tan now is because of his connection to Project 2025.
September 4th through 5th is a conference in San Francisco at Fort Mason. I know Fort Mason very well because I walk my dog through there on the way to the store. Another part of what I love about San Francisco is the view, and it’s great from Fort Mason. This is probably why this venue was booked for the Reboot 2024 conference that Garry Tan is throwing in conjunction with the Heritage Foundation, the authors of Project 2025. Garry Tan believes in a radical remaking of society where certain people who don’t meet his political ideology are detained and shipped out of the jurisdiction. This is completely in keeping with the deeply weird Project 2025, which seeks among other things a suspension of law within 100 miles of the US border, total bans on abortion, revoking the right to vote from women, and much more. Garry Tan supports politicians locally who toe the national line for these policies. It’s probably because I live so close to this that I intend to show up with a protest sign. I am resisting the urge to type out a screed and tape Xeroxes to telephone poles around the neighborhood as all the random weirdos I’ve seen through the years do here. I figure I’ll just type this out and post it on Medium where nobody will ever see it. But I believe in direct action, and if I am the only person out there with a protest sign on September 4th at 4 pm, then so be it. Part of me hopes that I’m not though, because the single gate to Fort Mason is small enough to be blocked by a large enough crowd.
San Francisco tolerates weirdness. Don’t confuse hate for weirdness. Join me on September 4th to protest Garry Tan’s weird brand of authoritarian hate and show him we won’t tolerate him bringing Project 2025 to San Francisco. Sign up at the California Pirate Party for more information.
