By Dean Maddox, Public Safety & Crime Reporter

Look, man. I’ve lived in California my whole life, and I already know the politicians here got a few screws loose on their Priuses, constantly finding new ways to pass laws nobody sane would ever want, but Carmel’s city council just took the gold medal in recreational stupidity with what they pulled this week.

They banned pickleball — not drugs, not crime, not the fentanyl zombies wandering around like extras in a low-budget apocalypse show, but pickleball, which should tell you everything you need to know about what gets priority in these coastal playgrounds for wealthy hall monitors.

Pickle. Ball.

These people wake up every morning trying to figure out how to make life just a little bit worse for the normal folks who are somehow still here, and hell, I don’t even know if you qualify as normal if you’re deep into pickleball to begin with because the whole sport feels a little strange to me, but you’re still a whole lot more normal than the jackwagons on the Carmel city council, so you’ve at least got that going for you.

Santa Cruz recently banned tobacco sales altogether, deciding grown adults couldn’t be trusted to buy a pack of smokes because God forbid somebody enjoy themselves without asking permission, and now Carmel’s out here swinging at retirees with paddles like they’re public menaces in need of government intervention.

What’s next — banning whistling, shutting down front porches after 9 PM, outlawing happiness entirely, or putting a permit system on having a pulse?

And if you’re one of the pickleball enthusiasts or whatever the hell you all call yourselves, let me ask you something: did you stand up for the smokers when the virtue-signaling politicians were coming after us, or did you keep your mouth shut because it wasn’t your fight? I’ll bet my last Marlboro you stayed quiet, and now you’re feeling the same boot on your neck.

Nobody wants to say it out loud, but the truth is these people despise anything they can’t micromanage, whether it’s noise, the smell of cigarettes, old folks getting exercise and laughing too loud, or any other sign that regular life might still be happening somewhere in their jurisdiction.

Joy is treated like a problem, community like it’s suspicious, and fun like it’s something the city attorney needs to investigate.

Meanwhile the actual problems keep piling up: roads falling apart, taxes so high folks can’t afford a doghouse, families packing up and moving out by the thousands, and drug camps multiplying all along Highway 1, but the big priority somehow is cracking down on the sound of a wiffleball hitting a paddle, which is exactly the kind of nonsense we’ve come to expect.

California used to be a place where you could breathe a little, but now it’s run by people who act like hall monitors with a God complex, rolling out new restrictions on smoking, vaping, plastic bags, gas cars, playground noise, and anything else that might resemble freedom, and now they’ve added pickleball to the list.

And for the folks in the cheap seats, let me say it clearly: we are banning a sport that’s basically ping-pong on a bigger table played by sweet old ladies named Bev, which should be definitive proof the government has completely lost the script.

The funniest part is that the same people who scream “democracy dies in darkness” are the ones making sure you can’t enjoy a Tuesday afternoon without some ordinance ready to fine you for existing.

So yeah — first they came for the smokers, now they came for the pickleball players, and if you think they’re stopping there, you’re dreaming, because porch chairs, laughter, and anything else that sounds like freedom will be next.

I’ll be on my back patio if anybody needs me, smoking a cigarette and praying they don’t outlaw that too.