PAGE A6, KEIZERTIMES, NOVEMBER 19, 2021
Logic of political violence
should alarm us all
PUBLIC SQUARE welcomes all points of view. Published submissions do not necessarily reflect the views of the Keizertimes
When local is sold
By GENE H. McINTYRE
Personal friends include a couple who
own a successful Oregon farm, including
thousands of fertile acres. They’re septua-
genarians but not retired due in large mea-
sure to the fact their four grown offspring do
not want to farm for a living. Best guess
is they’ll sell out to a large corporation,
likely overseas located. Based on the history
of land sales like theirs, formerly having
grown apples, blueberries, peaches, and the
like, the land will be bulldozed for the most
profit-yielding by large machines and small
workforce crops.
Then there’s the Roth’s Fresh Market
story. Roth’s stores were founded by local
guy Orville Roth and a partner nearly 60
years ago. Orville swore to remain local-
ly-owned “forever.” His son will now sell all
the Roth stores in one big deal to a Canadian
billionaire with a chain of grocery stores
in Canada. The new owner has promised
to retain the character, range of inventory
and services for which Roth’s stores have
become famous. Such promises too often
disappear within a year’s time.
Billionaires and big corporations are
almost always absentee owners who come
onto the local scene from afar—once the
sale is finalized—along with teams of expe-
rienced accountants, lawyers, high-powered
MBA executives and ‘tried and true’ employ-
ees already having proven their profit-mak-
ing worth elsewhere. They will determine
who the local movers and shakers are, the
city council members and legislators, and
bring silver-tongued lobbyists to connect
with those folks. Of course, they’ll make
Guest
COLUMN
certain that virtually every move made is
according to codes, rules, regulations and
laws while seeing to it that modifications
thereby are made and suited to their success.
Because the owner and executives almost
always hail from elsewhere and are typically
located in large cities, they will not spend
time locally unless dire necessity calls for it.
It is a near absolute prediction that local per-
sons who work for them will not know them
or even recognize them should they visit
their investment. Rare indeed around here,
it’s surmised, will be a billionaire owner or
corporate CEO who assumes a role like
those of an Orville Roth or a Jerry Frank.
Corporate heads and CEOs are seldom
in favor of unions or any worker protection
associations. Since they have no ties to the
local people, they are not much concerned
about whether the wages and benefits help
to maintain a well-established middle class
where persons living and working there can
afford a home, food on the table, quality of
schools, or recreation opportunities. It all
adds up far too often to mitigating changes
where what was once a shared sense of
belonging, social connectedness, equity in
the standard of living, and upward improve-
ments any longer represent the place.
(Gene H. McIntyre lives in Keizer.)
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By MICHAEL GERSON
A disturbing question now hangs
over the conduct of American politics.
“At this point,” said an audience mem-
ber at a recent pro-Trump event, “we’re
living under corporate and medical fas-
cism. This is tyranny. When do we get to
use the guns?” As the crowd applauded,
the man persisted: “No, and I’m not—
that’s not a joke. I’m not saying it like
that. I mean, literally, where’s the line?
How many elections are they going to
steal before we kill these people?”
The question is important, not only
for the depth of its extremism, but
for the clarity of its logic. For years,
many on the right have defended the
Second Amendment with the “in case
of emergency break glass” doctrine.
Maintaining armed forces outside the
U.S. government, in this view, is neces-
sary for opposing the government if it
grows tyrannical. A significant number
of Americans have armed, trained and
organized themselves with this possibil-
ity in mind.
At the same time, a former president
and other leaders on the right are urg-
ing their followers to believe that they
are living under despotic rule. How
else could you describe an illegitimate
regime enforcing medical fascism
through needle jabs mandated like the
mark of the beast?
The political syllogism is unavoid-
able: If citizens are armed against the
advance of tyranny, and tyranny is
advancing apace, then violence is justi-
fied, even if it is not currently advisable.
This is what Rep. Marjorie Taylor
Greene, R-Ga., was referring to when she
recently said, “If you think about what
our Declaration of Independence says,
it says to overthrow tyrants.” A signifi-
cant portion of our political community
is turning to the Declaration, not for
inspiration about human dignity, but for
a right to revolution.
It is tempting to dismiss this as the
talk of posers and blowhards. But some
posers and blowhards have live ammu-
nition at their disposal. We have already
seen deadly violence spark at the edges
of social controversy—in Charlottesville,
in Kenosha, Wis., in the U.S. Capitol.
These are becoming the culture war
equivalents of the Boston Massacre—
brief, blundering clashes that take on
mythic significance as indictments or
rallying cries.
It is worth noting that political vio-
lence, while relatively rare during the
past 50 years, is not uncommon in
American history. If MAGA militants
are searching for models of brutality fed
by religious fervor, they can find them in
America’s founding.
The Sons of Liberty—known to their
victims as the Sons of Violence—were
more than a threat to unattended tea.
The tarring and feathering of loyalists
other
VOICES
could be a brutal process that blistered
skin. Loyalist officials often had their
houses attacked and looted. The rebel
cry of “liberty and property,” one colo-
nial governor sardonically observed,
was “the usual notice of their intention
to plunder and pull down a house.”
Since the morally murky days of the
Revolution, the American story has
been marked by political violence at
regular intervals. There has been vio-
lence against the federal government
(starting with the Whiskey Rebellion),
against abolitionists, against African
Americans, against immigrants, against
Catholics and other religious minorities.
What lessons are to be drawn from
this occasionally bloody history? First,
the relative social peace we’ve seen
since the early 1970s is more fragile
than we imagine. Americans have often
been tempted to express their anger
and achieve their goals outside the
boundaries of the constitutional order.
The peaceful conduct of politics is not a
natural state; it is a social achievement.
Maintaining it requires positive moral
effort.
Second, public and media figures
who feed or accommodate the impulse
of violence have entered a special cat-
egory of ignominy. They are unleash-
ing the force of nihilism in American
politics—the mad desire to blow up our
political order and put citizens at one
another’s throats. Donald Trump clearly
believes that he benefits from such
chaos. But it could take our country to a
very dark place.
Third, the only way to discredit the
logic of violence is to dispute each of its
steps. No, we are not living under “med-
ical fascism” or “tyranny” of any sort.
No, elections have not been routinely
stolen. And no, “these people” are not
enemies to be killed with assault rifles;
they are neighbors and fellow citizens.
Correcting these fallacies would
seem a rather unexceptional, entry-level
commitment for public service. But to
do so has become profoundly contro-
versial within the Republican Party. And
when House Minority Leader Kevin
McCarthy, R-Calif., refuses to discipline
members of his caucus for threats of
political violence, the message is fur-
ther mixed.
It is often said the Republican lead-
ers have no moral bottom. But there
eventually is a bottom, marked in blood.
(Washington Post)