Chesa Boudin’s appearance on Clubhouse on Thursday was fascinating. He’s been facing a lot of criticism after a leniently-treated felon killed two pedestrians in a hit-and-run in a stolen car on New Year’s Eve. Many, in similar circumstances, would hide from their detractors. By contrast, Chesa walked right into a Clubhouse room populated by some of his most prominent critics, and, when invited, took the stage. After a brief scuffle, in which he dodged a query about whether he still admired Hugo Chavez, he was invited to have a more civil dialogue. In response, he emitted curious, hypnotic sounds for about two hours.
The main theme was that it wasn’t his fault, and that nothing, really, was his fault. There was little he could do about anything. He verbally gestured, both frantically and calmly, at bureaucratic muck, antiquated technology, and the Brokenness of the System—he pointed outwards in every direction. The one error he admitted to was not correctly predicting the length of the pandemic. His staffing decisions, he admitted, were not optimal in light of the unexpected plague. Though it’s suspicious for anyone to claim that their only error is in not being an oracle, Chesa was erudite enough to render this claim coherent.
When confronted, he evaded without seeming evasive whatsoever. Mike Solana more or less directly asked him whether he was responsible for the deaths of Hanako Abe and Elizabeth Platt, and he seemed to be responding, at first. However, after talking for five minutes, we’d only learned that he was remorseful and that a byzantine systemic failure bore ultimate responsibility, about which he was having “difficult conversations” with stakeholders that might take some time. He was entirely absent in the chain of causality he presented.
His speech was definitely deceptive in character, but it was deceptive in a very sophisticated way. It was kind of like Dazzle Camouflage, a variety of ship camouflage used in WW1 consisting of flamboyant patterns designed to make ships difficult to track rather than difficult to see. You could never tell precisely what Chesa’s personal position was, and he threw out an impressive collection of context-free facts that seemed to prove his extremely vague case. By the time he was done with one of his dizzying riffs, he might have even convinced you that crime in San Francisco is on the downswing.
At times, he seemed to be there as a representative of learned helplessness. He promised to take some kind of action, but also took great pains to imply that the action would necessarily be sluggish. Chesa, according to Chesa, is a virtuous man trapped in quicksand. The only straightforward blame he assigned was to the police.
I don’t feel informed enough to be sure about whether Chesa is as terrible as some of my peers say he is, and I’m new to the field of San Francisco Hellscape Studies. Deputy District Attorney Nancy Tung does seem credible when she says that he has blood on his hands, and it’s a little disconcerting to notice San Francisco police subtweeting their discontent with his policies. But I’m sure there are opinions on the other side I should hear.
I was hoping to learn more on Thursday. Ultimately, all I learned was that Chesa Boudin is a really smooth talker. He produces a forbidding verbal miasma. I can’t say that I don’t trust what he’s saying because I don’t really know what that is.
This kind of communication is hard to spot unless you've either been trained to recognize it or have been in the direct management of such a person. I had the latter experience and even though I knew what he was doing, I would be in a state of agreeing with him while he was talking and then upon reflection I realized he was taking advantage of me and manipulating me. Crazy stuff once you see it - you can find it in almost all major institutions.
“ San Francisco Hellscape Studies” love it, using it