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Believe what they tell you ... the first time – Daily Montanan

['More From Author', 'February', 'Darrell Ehrlick']

Date: 2022-02-10 00:00:00

When your house is burning down, would you ignore the guy on the sidewalk with the empty gas can and the lighter?

Would you sidle up next to him, shaking your head mumbling something about not knowing how this sort of thing could happen?

Ridiculous, right?

Then why is it so hard for Montanans to believe that part of the Republican Party elected to uphold and strengthen Montana is clearly, explicitly and without flinching, trying to tear apart our state government despite the evidence?

It’s not just the wolf-hating hunter in the governor’s office who brags about his culinary wild game cooking while being cited for hunting violations. It’s not just the attorney general who had so little shame as to tell the state’s Supreme Court that he was not bound to follow its rulings.

A few months back, longtime lawmaker and Public Service Commission hopeful Derek Skees called the state’s prized Constitution a “socialist rag.” Some dismissed this as an inelegant criticism of some of its provisions, when really nothing less than outright condemnation should have been the only sane response.

When schools superintendent Elsie Arntzen participated in a forum in which it was suggested that public schools superintendents who supported masking and vaccine requirements be shot, she was able to wriggle out of complicity, saying she wasn’t in the room and didn’t hear the comment. But that ignores the fact that she has aligned herself repeatedly with those who share these radical, hostile views. Their regret, if such a word can be used, wasn’t that they thought and spoke those things, but that they were instead caught in a public forum saying them.

Meanwhile in Great Falls, Cascade County Sheriff Jesse Slaughter told a group of fired-up supporters that if a judge were to mandate masks in her courtroom – the most basic of preventative health measures – he wouldn’t enforce it because he’s got the support of the masses.

A few weeks ago in Helena, when several Republicans, including lawmaker Brad Tschida, R-Missoula, and Sen. Theresa Manzella, R-Hamilton, couldn’t drum up enough support to convince fellow GOP members that the Montana election which swept a historic number of their party members into power was rigged. Instead, they met in a hotel to field concerns from the public, some rumors probably spread from disgraced MyPillow CEO founder Mike Lindell’s conspiracy convention. Remember friends, your Montana taxpayer dollars went toward sending a cadre of Montana leaders to Lindell’s little get-together.

Most recently, Rep. John Fuller, R-Kalispell, has upped the ante as he wrote a lengthy column in the Flathead Beacon proclaiming, “Democracy is a methodology of government that has failed as miserably as socialism.”

With friends like that in state government, why would Russia or China or any other enemy of America even need to try to disrupt or destroy us? We appear to be dismantling this noble American experiment quite fine on our own.

Clutching his pearls tightly, Fuller concludes his column, “citizens must continue to be involved and stand firm against those that would destroy the values that are the basis of the American experience.”

My favorite part of the column is the complete lack of irony.

So, Rep. Fuller – count me in.

I am taking you up on your offer. I will stand against someone who believes democracy has failed like socialism. I will acknowledge and not flinch when I understand that America was founded by a class of White men who largely held racist views, and enshrined the practice of slavery in its seminal documents. And, by doing so, I will use those same moments to teach my children that our country cannot be static and frozen in time, but must continue to be an exercise in achieving “a more perfect union,” as Benjamin Franklin said.

While Fuller and his buddies are trying to gin up outrage, believing that their regressive political views are somehow trying to be censored, or even worse, outlawed by overactive liberals trying to indoctrinate indecency and communism, I think a different tactic is in order: Let’s hear more about this talk of failed democracies, shooting public officials, and casting aside the constitution as if it is a piece of trash. Let’s hear – and judge – each one of these provocative views. Nothing seems more democratic than that.

And while we’re at it, let’s be clear about what is really going on: These aren’t just a bunch of fringe nuts. They are simply expressing the quiet part of partisan belief loudly. They are telling honestly, clearly and with very little equivocation where they stand.

While Republicans are responsible for their own words, thoughts and actions, that cuts both ways for those of us not so keen on dismantling democracy or crushing the constitution. Liberals and moderates must quit making excuses for why they don’t really mean what they said. And we must hold leaders accountable for the exact meaning of their words, rather than dropping the “out-of-context” card every time there’s blowback from a controversial statement. After all, is there really any context for claiming democracy has failed?

Maya Angelou said famously that we must believe people when they show who they are the first time.

And so I have taken them at their word.

I believe, as Rep. Fuller so succinctly said, that he and his friends stand to “destroy the values that are the basis of the American experience.”

[END]

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