Novelist Ken Kesey (One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest) and Governor Gavin Newsome seem to have little in common other than being or having been residents of California. Yet their offbeat approaches toward The Establishment of their respective times are markedly similar. Kesey tweaked the blue noses of the East Coast and mainstream America with his psychedelics-infused bus trip(s) while Newsome mocked the vigillantism of the gun-totin’ religious right when he signed California Senate Bill 1327 into law.
Kesey’s roadtrip and attendant antics of the Merry Pranksters presaged the Hippie movement, the counter-cultural revolution, and the social-political insurrections of the 1960s such as the Chicago Seven. Their nonconformist acts inspired the political activities of the Youth International Party (Yippies) and spawned the musical phenomenon of Jerry Garcia, the Grateful Dead, and their Deadhead followers which continues to this day.
Estimating the impact of Newsome’s political gambit is more difficult to say. Spoofing the Texas state legislature’s anti-abortion approach by institutionalizing citizen vigilantism is an aggressively original and highly risky legal approach. Though the objectives of the bill and several others related to it are meretorious, they make the gun restrictions of an already safe state (comparatively) even stricter, and it is by no means certain the Supreme Court fight Newsome anticipates will ever occur. Some political experts dismiss the idiosyncratic bill as so much political posturing and part of Newsome’s opening salvo in a presidential bid in 2024.
Yet placing bounties on gun and parts manufacturers and distributors may not be as quirky and perverse a strategy as Second Amendment supporters would have you believe. In times when assaults on our national capitol and individual rights have become the norm, it also may be time for more such quirky, quixotic, and non-conformist acts in the spirit of the Merry Pranksters to occur.
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