Incivility Revisited

This blog is a tad late today.  I play the mandolin in our church music group, and we were honored to sing and play at the funeral of one of our congregation this morning.

Here in what is locally known as SLO County – San Luis Obispo – we now have at least two on-line news and opinion sites.  The first one cannot be trusted.  The second one, SLOSense.com, is just a few months old, if that.  It was begun by a friend of mine who had been living elsewhere for a time, and had just moved back to SLO.  He was appalled by the change in the political discourse at the county level since he is back from what it was when he left, so he started SLOSense.com as a place where people can bring up issues in a safe spot.  When I was Chairman of the Board of Supervisors I did not allow incivility from the public, either when there were public speakers on the various subjects we would be voting on, or from members of the public making cat-calls from the audience.  When we were still in our much over-crowded old Court House, I looked up to see a Deputy Sheriff standing outside the windows watching what was going on.  He was probably on break.  At the same time, I was having trouble getting someone to speak in a civil and respectful manner, so I just motioned to the deputy to come in, which he did, then I motioned him to escort the gentleman out.  Which he did.  Worked really well because people recognized that my bite was as bad as my bark!

Recently we have a majority on our Board who are quite conservative, and the one woman is so far to the right she believes the United Nations is going to come in and take all of our property rights because of something at the UN called Agenda 21.  I always assured the public they could discuss the subjects and express their opinions, but they must do it in civil and respectful manner.  There were no such instructions from the current Board Chairman.  One of my daughters attended a meeting and was so distressed she nearly threw up.  I finally agreed to attend one of the meetings and express my displeasure.  My instruction to the Board Chairman was to, “Pull up your big-boy jeans and take control of these meetings!” Another thing that was lacking at the meeting was any acknowledgement to the people who did get up to speak.  A simple, “Thank you for your comments” is all that is called for.

Recently I posted something on SLOSense about how foolish the City Council was to have initiated two measures, A & B, to take away binding arbitration from the police and fire department unions.  The campaign was so vitriolic against the first responders that a great many of the senior, experienced officers resigned.  A few immediately, and more over-time as they attained the years to do so.  One of our daughters was one of the senior officers who had been assigned to the downtown area of SLO City to manage, whenever possible, the problem with both the transient population as well as the homeless mentally ill.  She retired some two years ago.  A month or so ago the SLO City Downtown Association requested two officers for the downtown area to deal with the transient population and homeless mentally ill.  As her mother, I, of course, thought this was hilarious that it would take two officers to replace what my kid had been doing.  And also, the equipment, salaries and benefits for two officers would be way over what one senior officer would cost the city. 

I posted this info on SLOSense because I wanted to, and I made sure it was a civil posting because my friend had stated that incivility would not be tolerated.  Well, someone, probably using a pseudonym answered my posting in a most insulting and belittling manner.  He was warned about the posting, and then insulted the host of the site.

What this man, at least his name indicated he was male, doesn’t realize is that when you are in politics, for sure, you delight in the fact that someone has freaked out, simply because then you know you are right in what you said.  If someone says, “Oh, that was an interesting comment”, you can be sure what you did or said was not particularly noteworthy.  But if someone comes back and calls you “pathetic” and a “hypocrite”, and uses such words as that you know you have really hit the mark in what you said.  In other words, you know you are being particularly effective when the comments become particularly virulent.  A sort of sick way of knowing how effective you are, but then that is politics.

The lack of civility in much of our public discourse really bothers me in the sense that I know from experience how destructive to the effective work of governing it can be.  Some people are intimidated by just being in the same room with a rude person, much less attending a public meeting rife with incivility.  It is a very effective way of discouraging citizens to come to the meetings to speak their minds.

Let us all demand that our public sites, either on the internet or at a government meeting, be conducted in a respectful and civil manner. 

 

 

Thoughts on Boston

A few years after I was elected but before we had moved into our new government building, we had a bomb threat.  Our protocol was followed to the letter, except for me, and I did what I shouldn’t have, which was to run back about 30 feet to my office to grab my purse!  As a result I was the last one out of the building.  As I got to the exit door a car pulled up to the curb and a lady jumped out, saying she couldn’t believe that she had found a parking place right in front of the door.  I explained that she couldn’t stay there, nor could she go into the building because of the bomb threat.  Visibly shaken, she asked, “Terrorists?”  Nah, I replied.  Probably just some home grown nut.  “Oh, that’s OK then”, she said, quite relieved. 

I am constantly amazed at people’s reactions to unsettling events.  My response is to go into a “dealing with it now” mode, and I don’t fall apart for a couple of weeks, when, of course, everyone else is over it and I get absolutely no sympathy.  Other people fall apart instantly.  Others sort of panic.  Others seek someone or something to blame.

It is this last reaction that has me worried about what happened in Boston this week.  Immediately the radical right wanted to stop the immigration reform legislation, name the surviving bomber an enemy combatant so that he can be tried by a military tribunal, and because I don’t frequent radical right wing blogs, I’m sure there are many comments that it is all of Islam that is at fault, and we as a Christian nation must fight Islam to the core.

To take these in reverse, we are not a Christian nation.  We were not founded as a Christian nation deliberately.  Europe had not too long before emerged from a religiously motivated 30 year war, and our nation’s founders wisely did not want sectarianism to infect our body politic. 

Also, radical Islam has about as much to do with main-stream Islam as the Westboro Baptist Church has to do with my own Catholic parish, which is nothing at all.  We have in this country people who in the name of being Christian pro-life blow up abortion clinics, kill doctors who provide women’s health care, which may include abortions, and other atrocities. 

Senators Grassley and McCain, and the others who want the bomber to be named an enemy combatant so that he can be tried by a military tribunal can only see one solution to any problem the United States has, and that is a military one.  This lack of any thought that there might be a more peaceful solution to problems than the military is really sort of frightening.  So far, these old guys are in the minority, and let us all hope that is where they stay! 

Stopping the immigration reform legislation because two immigrants perpetrated an absolutely horrific thing is absurd!  There are 11 million undocumented immigrants in this nation who have not blown anyone or anything up.  And one of the two immigrants is a naturalized citizen.  To put the fates of 11 million people up against the actions of two people is about as asinine as one can get. 

Let us pray for the complete recovery of the victims, and for their ability to overcome the horrible trauma to their bodies.  And let us remember that there are radical Muslims, radical Christians, radical Jews, radical secular humanists, radical what evers.  Let us not be caught up in the same mindset as these two young men who see a whole group of people as the enemy.  It is too easy a step from that to violence.

Deviousness At Its Best!

Since I am an acknowledged political junkie, I have been watching with a great deal of amusement all of the political posturing over the President’s proposed budget.  If you continue reading this, remember that the President cannot be reelected.

The political right is having a fit because the President got a significant tax “increase” the first of January.  They, of course, don’t mention that it is truly not an increase because the Bush tax cuts were allowed to expire so the tax rates simply went back to what they were in 2003.  Hardly an increase.  The political left is having a fit because the President has proposed a “chained CPI” to Social Security, which would eventually lower the amount of payments seniors dependent on Social Security would receive. 

But stop to consider for a moment what is happening.  The right is saying they will not vote for the budget because of the added revenue from more taxes, while the left is saying they will not vote for the budget because of the “cuts” to the social safety net.  This budget hasn’t a snowflakes chance in the hot place of ever being passed, and I’ll bet the President knows that by putting in the “chained CPI”, he made sure it didn’t pass.  Why would he do that?

Easy, if you are a devious soul like me.  He took a terrible drubbing in the 2010 mid-term elections, and he would certainly not want to do that again.  What better way to give those candidates on the left who will be running against conservative office holders a campaign issue.  “My opponent was willing to let the sequester continue, damaging the economy of the country, because they wouldn’t raise taxes on the wealthy, but at the same time were willing to cut Social Security and Medicare, and make us more vulnerable to a terrorist attack by cutting the Pentagon budget”.  I, of course, would like to have the Pentagon’s budget cut, but it makes a great talking point in those states that tend to vote Republican.

And, the candidates on the left can pound their respective chests (yes, even the women) and proclaim how they “saved” Social Security and Medicare.  And then, one would hope, when he has a liberal majority in the House and Senate in 2015/16, they can finally get something done, including but not limited to: real immigration reform, real gun safety reform, an overhaul of our health care system, a revamping of the tax code to stop the wealthy and corporations from hiding their billions so they don’t have to pay taxes, and one that I think is absolutely vital, funding a massive country-wide infrastructure system that will last us into the 22^nd century, at the very least, while providing an enormous amount of jobs, and prosecuting Wall Street bankers to the fullest extent of the law. 

If this is in fact the President’s ploy, I certainly hope it works.

 

Conspiracy Theories? Nah!

The other night I was watching a discussion on MSNBC among Chris Hayes, Rachel Maddow, and others about conspiracy theories.  They were opining that those who indulge in conspiracy theories in public ought not to do so – that conspiracy theories were usually not correct, and were outlandish.  Over time, however, I have learned that what Hayes and Maddow were saying is not completely accurate.  It is perfectly acceptable to indulge in conspiracy theories (after all, our best spy and mystery novels are conspiracy theories), but the danger lies in starting to actually and totally believe them to the point they cause one to do something irrational.

Years ago I became acquainted with a very nice man who had begun to question whether the Drug Enforcement Agency was somehow operating in his relatively small town south of where I live.  He began reading all sorts of stuff about the DEA, the FBI, etc., and then he began to believe his theories.  As a result, he stockpiled all sorts of weapons, ammunition, and bomb-making material in his house, in a residential area, yet.  Needless to say, he spent some time in an institution for the criminally insane.  Now this is obviously carrying a conspiracy theory much too far.

In our present political climate I still haven’t decided whether the behaviors of some of our Republican state governments are just plain incompetence or are somehow connected.  Take the case of all of the Republican controlled states that did their best to limit voting in certain areas under their jurisdictions.  These areas almost always had a majority of minority voters who tend to vote Democratic.  At the same time in Michigan last year, Republican Rick Snyder, after slashing taxes to the bone, had his Republican controlled legislature pass a law that he could declare a community or city in a fiscal crisis, abolish all duly elected officials, and replace them with an “emergency manager” of Snyder’s choosing.  The people of Michigan were, of course, pretty upset and passed in the November election an initiative measure overturning that very undemocratic law.  In December, Snyder had the legislature passed almost the exact same law, but with the added ruling that the law could not be overturned by an initiative measure from the people!  The most recent city to be placed under an “emergency manager” was Detroit.  It has been noted that almost all of these communities and cities have predominately minority residents.  Fortunately in the last few days a coalition of groups in Michigan has sued to have this law overturned. 

Probably anyone reading this has also noted that states that are governed by predominately Republican legislatures are doing their absolute best to eliminate all women’s health clinics on the basis that they provide abortions.  Forget that the clinics also provide other vital health services to poor women.  But these attacks on women’s health services have pretty much happened in the last months, and all under the guise of “preventing abortion”.  It is completely beyond my understanding why anyone would want to limit women’s health services, although at one time I read that women need to get married so they can have health insurance from their husbands. 

My take on conspiracy theories is that they can be really interesting, if viewed as a novel.  For instance, imagine a group of obscenely wealthy people who decided to destroy the economy of the United States, disenfranchise minorities and women, and have corporations using emergency managers run the country.  This could be a really good novel or movie.  Any takers?