One of the things that I hate about San Francisco politics is the 'holier than thou' attitude of the Left here. Now, understand, especially for those from outside the local area, that I speak as a major liberal, but the politics of San Francisco is another universe entirely. I've spoken of that before and don't plan to get into it again here. However, there's a trend here that I find detrimental to appropriate public policy and it's the same one I see from the Republicans on the state and national levels. This trend is following the 'holier-than-thou' attitude, categorizing your opponents into little boxes to where they're not human beings or three-dimensional, and treating them as devils with no hope for understanding or redemption. Some of you may think, from reading my posts and diatribes and such on here, that I feel this way about Republicans, and to some extent I can get very 'political' as such too, but I generally, on a policy level, respect the people and the processes whereby we collectively debate and decide and construct policy.

In San Francisco, I see my fellow liberals, mostly the ones who are much further to the left than I and who have a 'holier-than-thou' attitude as doing this same type of negative political gamesmanship that the right-wing does on the state and national level. And it sickens me. It hurts me even more because often I agree with some of their politics, especially nationally, but cannot condone or understand their virulent, childish, and nasty behavior locally.

This last week was one such situation. One local, childish supervisor took a collegial, peace-making, friendly gesture and used it to stab people in the back and push his own political agenda forward, without any care for how his 'means' would look in respect to his 'ends.' This is the kind of disgusting activity I generally hate and despise from the right-wing on a daily basis, and here is a left-wing guy in my hometown doing this, and it sickens me. What a sad way to hurt the political process that one needs to have a collegial and productive debate among differing viewpoints on policy.

Our Mayor, who was blindsided by this act of temerity, said it well: "You cannot accept any justification of conduct that's inappropriate based on end results. (Osama) bin Laden says the same thing about his conduct. Hitler said the same thing about his conduct. ... In a democracy, you follow the rules and regulations. There's no purity in any other way of doing it.''

But of course, this is San Francisco, and we have a politic made up of dudes named Nacho: "Dude, don't hate the player, hate the game," said a 24-year-old bicycle messenger who goes by Nacho.... "Oh yeah, that was tight. How else are you going to get (stuff) done?" Nacho said. "I'd do the same thing if I was acting mayor, like appoint my cousin to all kinds of commissions." Not to take anything away from everybody participating in politics, but it's the holier-than-thou attitudes that distress me the most. And here in San Francisco, we have so much 'holier than thou' attitude throughout the Left here that it makes it hard to make sure proper procedures, collegial respect, and public policy are afforded the role they need in our government.