It appears that if you write as a liberal against conservatives who suckle the milk of “persecution” and feast on their own imagined beleaguered suffering, you might just get a visit from the cops.
The fallout from the “Friends of Gresham Bouma” postcard mailing two weeks ago continues, and it appears the Sheriff’s Office is investigating the situation, as well as looking into whoever sent out information regarding Ike Young’s personal, and minor, skirmishes with the law. (Young, often appearing too dense to even grasp the Tea Party platform he seems to want to represent, is running for the legislative seat currently held by my friend Shirley Ringo). Obviously, an investigation is required, and I hope it’s undertaken with a seriousness not dimmed by Tuesday’s election.
Whether the Bouma mailings were by his political enemies, by his far-Right “Christian” allies, or by some lone wolf, I’m glad the case is being investigated — we need to know who did this, clearly, and we need to prosecute this so that it’s less likely to happen again. If it were someone intending to harm Bouma’s candidacy, he has been sinned against and grievously treated, although since the postcard says pretty much the same things his pastor says, the sin and the crime is in the sender’s intent, as well as mail fraud, but not libel. If some of Bouma’s frenzied fighters sent it, with or without his knowledge, in order to further his claims of religious persecution and anti-religious liberal bigotry — or in all seriousness as a prophetic call to electoral righteousness, which I believe is more likely — then those people, however well-meaning they were, deserve to prosecuted to the full extent possible. I think the mailings having originated from the right, or by a loony outsider, is the more likely scenario, and I look forward to the Latah County Sheriff’s Office’s identification of a suspect(s).
But what enrages me is hearing that a friend of mine, a fellow liberal who writes on Vision 2020 about the hate-filled ramblings of Bouma’s pastor, Bouma’s political ideology, and other topics that identify her, correctly, as a left-of-center citizen, was visited by the Sheriff’s Office two days ago — as part of their investigation, they say. I’ve known Saundra for about six years; she’s a reasonable, passionate, thoughtful woman who would no more involve herself in cowardly anonymity or criminal behavior to make her point than Ann Coulter would enter a convent.
This woman has been the focus, like me and a couple of other women, of the brunt of nasty attacks from Moscow’s Christ Church elders, faux-Libertarians and others bent on driving Latah County into the ground, precisely because she refuses to anonymously or behind pseudonyms. In this she shows integrity and courage not normally attributed to Kirk elders; they have much to learn from her, believe me, and I would imagine their hearty anti-liberal chest-pounding and name-calling is what put her in the LCSO sights. Saundra has never written a Vision 2020 post that would reasonably make her suspect in anything other than an uncommon courage and insight, and I’m outraged that she was questioned in Postcardgate, solely on the basis of her liberal leanings.
I have defended the Sheriff’s Office before, and I would hate to think that the Christian conservatism of the Sheriff and his staff motivates the harassment of outspoken liberals and Bouma opponents. Intelligent words, written with passion, ought never to provoke a visit from the cops, and the chill further abuses like this will bring to public debate is more than a little alarming.
Since you are writing as an openly left-of-center political partisan (“Young, often appearing too dense to even grasp the Tea Party platform he seems to want to represent, is running for the legislative seat currently held by my friend Shirley Ringo”) your opinion is what it is. No complaints.
God bless!
Comment by Ashwin — October 31, 2010 @ 1:33 pm