So, Saint Paul has a new city council.
Sort of.
Just like the old city council, the new one treats the knobs and levers of government power as their toy and playground.
They’re just a little more overt about it:
And in terms of waving “Progressive” bloody sheets about in public?
Again – same as the old council, but more-so:
Couldn’t see that coming. Honest. Seriously.
I was casting about for the perfect way to describe the incoming City Council, when an email from a friend of the blog did it for me:
The New York Times thinks it’s important that Saint Paul, Minnesota has elected an all-female city council.
I was with a group of women the other day who also were saying how wonderful it was, how diverse this council is now, and laughing at unfunny jokes like “don’t we feel sorry for the middle aged white man?”
“Change doesn’t happen with the same voices at the table,” Ward 6 Councilwoman Nelsie Yang says in the article.
Funny, I say to the group of women I’m with- these women who were recently elected, their campaigns all sounded the same. And on top of that, their campaign promises and priorities all sounded the same as Russ Stark. Is he middle aged yet? I’ll bet he is. And he’s definitely white. And, this entire newly elected council, why, their priorities all sound the same as another white man who has visited the Twin Cities often- Pete Buttigieg.
But, their voices, their priorities, don’t sound the same as former Ward 7 Councilwoman Jane Prince’s priorities. She was often mocked and called all sorts of names on social media for being a different voice.
I’m going to break in here and say it: Jane Prince, the former staffer for Ellen Anderson, who used to seem waaaaaay out on the left. [2]
Their voices and priorities don’t sound 100% the same as former Ward 1 Councilman Dai Thao, who was the first Hmong American to be elected to Saint Paul City Council. While he was definitely liberal, because his voice was different, because he didn’t sound the same as those in power, he was often “accused” of being a Republican. LOL.
And Debbie Montgomery, who was mentioned in this article as the first Black Woman to win a Saint Paul City Council seat. I don’t remember her a lot on the council, but I do know that since her time on the council, she has been accused of being a Nimby and being out of touch with her neighborhood because she doesn’t sound the way these newly elected women sound.
So, to Ms Yang and the rest of these women that are so proud to be a “different” voice on the council, you can ride that all they want, but the reality is, the majority percentage of the 30% or so of voters who bother to show up to vote in a local election really weren’t voting for change, weren’t voting for a new voice, they were voting for you because you sounded like the white men before you who were virtue signaling all the priorities that you virtue signaled in your campaigns.
Call me a cynic, or a realist, but I suspect our governing class thinks the not-at-all-new “New and more intesectional” council’s, er, predictability is a feature, not a bug:
As Alan Dershowitz once said in addressing a crowd we’d call “woke” today, but merely “PC” in the much less insipid early ’90s:
Your idea of “diversity” is someone with different colored skin, or in a skirt, who thinks exactly the same as you”
So that’s something that’ll never change.
[1] I acknowledge that I am not a biologist
[2] Jane Prince was also a great staffer – who made sure everyone, even pesky Republicans, got answers from Anderson’s office. Try that with Sandy Pappas or Rena Moran or Maria Isa).