Targeting LGBTQ+ individuals, women and people of color may be an effective way to pull votes from America’s political fringes — fear stirred into hate makes for a potent mixture — but the majority of people do not support such views. On the contrary, the vast majority of Americans will agree with the sentiments expressed by Fierro in the quotation above.
Yet such politics cannot be ignored or set aside as being extreme. When a talk-show host or a politician assigns evil motives, unreal and imagined, to an entire class of people because of their immigration status, sex, gender, gender identity or skin color, they aren’t just playing politics, they are slandering and endangering others for their own personal gain.
You can’t stir the pot of fear and hate — and target others with the resulting poison — without real world consequences. And when friends and family are gunned down to “stop the evil,” you cannot place the blame for those killings solely on the individual who pulled the trigger: Those who spread the poison are equally if not more responsible than the alleged killer.
This is not the first time fear and hate have been used to change the course of American politics. Similar tactics were used following the first world war and into the early 1920s to attack Blacks, worker’s unions and socialist organizations. That became a time of lynching, mob violence and massacre (White against Black) and mass arrests of union sympathizers as well. It was a time of high-level propaganda, stirring of the aforementioned pot of fear and anger into a toxic and violent reaction that rocked the nation.
When it ended, segregation had the upper hand, unions were badly weakened and socialism was a dirty word.
It happened again during the Great Depression, and again in the 1960s.
And its happening now, as political organizations campaign against LGBTQ+ rights; fight against equity and inclusion in our schools; target immigrants and the homeless; and preach racial hatred and dominance.
If we turn a blind eye to the instigators of such hate — if we vote for them despite their behavior — we as individuals will also be culpable for the harm done.
In 2021, 147 anti-transgender bills were filed in 34 states, setting a new record for such laws in America.
Even in the Gorge, there are those targeting equity in our schools and seeking to ban books they see as “anti-Christian” in their views of LGBTQ+ people.
For myself, those supporting such legislation — those stirring anger and hate for their own political gain — will receive no support from me. And more to the point, I personally will never vote for a politician who does not explicitly condemn this and all such mis-targeted wars of anger, hate and injustice.
But that’s a personal response and solves nothing.
A recent survey national survey found that more than 70% of Americans believe democracy to be at risk in the United States of America. A remarkable majority! But about 40% of those surveyed blame the Democrats, and about 40% blame the Republicans!
Until we can actually talk between ourselves — and together separate fact from fiction, truth from lie — there is little hope for change.
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But that conversation is a doable thing, when it takes place at the local level and is based on local facts.
I was reminded of this during recent elections: After months of negotiating the most negative election I’ve personally witnessed, as a local newspaper editor, I attended a Republican fundraiser on the invite of the Wasco County GOP.
I recognized a majority of the participants: I’ve worked with them, photographed their children, done business with them. I’ve seen them give even when it hurts, and stand tall even when they were exhausted.
It was fun. And significant to me, in that none of the antagonistic and hateful “new Republicans” I’d been plagued with for months were even present at this real-world event. Democrat gatherings were also lacking the antagonistic and extreme elements I’d been encountering in my work as an editor.
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Now all we have to do is get the Republicans and the Democrats together, and talk not about elections and politics but about community needs and solutions — which has long been happening every month throughout the Gorge, as witnessed at a majority of our county, city and school board meetings.
So let’s stop attacking the vulnerable, stop believing the ridiculous — and start working together in the real world for the common good of all.
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Mark Gibson is Columbia Gorge News editor and a long-time photojournalist working in the Gorge.
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