“When the soul enters the body, when life begins—I don’t have certainty on that,” he said. “And yet, you look around society, people seem to have a lot of certainty about that, and then total confusion as to how to deal with people with psychosis. They’ve got it completely upside down.” It boggled his mind that the other candidates running for governor were 100-percent certain about what they couldn’t know, and weirdly unsure about how to fix things that could be fixed.

“Politics should be a means to an end of a good society,” Shellenberger said. “They’re making it the end.” He was referring to the homeless activists who were his nemesis, but he could have been talking about the environmentalists or the pro-lifers in the desert. “Their real goal is control and moralizing and power. Mine is freedom, care, civilization.”