Don's Tuesday Column

               THE WAY I SEE IT   by Don Polson  Red Bluff Daily News   4/25/2017

                   Partisans gotta vent over losing

Republican Doug LaMalfa’s Redding Town Hall slightly improved on the rather low expectations we have seen displayed by the Democrat “Resistance” (their term harkens back to WWII France, inferring Trump=Hitler). They seem dedicated to undermining, sabotaging, subverting and—at public events like LaMalfa’s—reducing discourse to that of undisciplined mobs. Hence, the shouting, hectoring, and interruptions in Oroville drowned out much of the Congressman’s efforts to communicate in a civil manner with his constituents. Redding attendees came across as somewhat less vitriolic and uncivil but adamant in liberal advocacy; the local electorate that voted overwhelmingly for Donald Trump and Doug LaMalfa disagrees.

As reported by CBS Sacramento (sacramento.cbslocal.com), and duplicated to a lesser extent at Sequoia Middle School last Wednesday, “The boos and shouts of displeasure started during the introduction of Rep. Doug LaMalfa at his town hall meeting in Oroville. For nearly two hours, the crowd at the State Theater shouted down responses by the congressman.”

He couldn’t even talk about the Oroville Dam disaster, as “LaMalfa’s answer was cut short by the crowd.” His presentation on health care was likewise rudely interrupted: “His narration was hard to follow as shouts continued from the crowd…

“As the crowd yelled through each response, a 16-year-old high school student offered his perspective: ‘I think the immaturity is astounding,’ said Greyson Reynolds. He was at Monday’s meeting to thank LaMalfa for holding a similar Q & A at his high school. The atmosphere according to Reynolds was much different. “Night and day. It’s hard to believe that these people are grown adults and those people, the people at my high school, are children. You’d think it was the opposite.’”

LaMalfa upbraided the rudeness on display, “Do you yell at church?” Supporter Linda Agee simply said, “I’m appalled…You can disagree, but you can be decent to each other.” A Redding LaMalfa supporter expressed dismay that, due to the shouting and rudeness of his opponents, the respectful demeanor of his supporters failed to register how solid was his support.

Denise Culley, at her first town hall in Oroville, said, “It’s very enlightening and disturbing.” Ironically, however, Culley’s unease stemmed partly from her perception of LaMalfa: “He really didn’t care what everyone thought. He had a closed mind.” That might suggest the kind of “confirmation bias” written about elsewhere—when LaMalfa failed to echo and agree with his critics, his “closed mind,” rather than his principles, was the only explanation. “Epistemic closure” (the refusal to consider objective information not already part of one’s beliefs) might also account for their rabid animosity to anything LaMalfa said.

A similar quote from a non-LaMalfa person at the Redding event made it clear that her beef was that the Congressman didn’t advocate liberal positions and that he supported Trump. She said that LaMalfa wasn’t listening to his constituents, who are “here and they are really angry…I would love for him to come around and support the things that are important to us.”

Hey, Democrats, we get that you are and remain angry over losing elections and power; and that ginning up your negative emotions over not getting your way—otherwise known as the “tantrum” response—provides a venting for your frustration. Just bear in mind that the conservative Republican principles adhered to by most voters, Mr. LaMalfa and President Trump are incompatible—cannot coexist—with what you want. Socialized, single payer medicine won’t ever work at the same time as people are free to choose their own health insurance and medical providers using their own money.

As with so many other issues, the problem with liberal solutions is that they inherently force people to give up their freedom to choose, buy, contract and participate, in a headlong pursuit of grand schemes. Their solution is that—if we all just hold hands and agree to be one big, single-minded, conforming blob—the collective state can wisely order our decisions and meet our needs. Not in America as long as individual freedom and responsibility remain our cornerstones.

A critic’s letter attempted to discredit this column and the positions herein advocated; what came across will not persuade voters or readers who overwhelming stand for and agree with my views. For instance, castigating the Center for Medical Progress for their release of secretly recorded conversations with Planned Parenthood leaders over lunch; for how they edited those recordings; and how that has brought about highly politicized prosecution in California—none of that changes the words and practices those tapes revealed. They made money selling baby parts.

I guess that when 60 Minutes, Katie Couric or network news agencies selectively edit everything from interviews with gun rights supporters, to George Zimmerman’s taped police phone call, to deleting the “Allahu Akbar” Islamic proclamation of home-grown Muslim terrorists, and scrubbing the evidence of black racism against whites from crime reports—that kind of editing serving the progressive, social justice cause is ok. Exposing infanticide is not.

The narrative against this column has morphed over the years. When my opinion is offered alone, they say I have no qualifications or expertise to support my statements; when I offer authoritative analysis from qualified experts, well, then I’m unoriginal. Foreign connections of Trump and his people are ipso facto damning; the endless financial conflicts and scandalous contributions to the Clinton Foundation, however—ho hum. Hillary’s guy John Podesta can be in bed with Russians, Iranians, Turkey or whoever—never mind. If my critics had no double standards, they’d have no standards at all. “Fact checks” are just liberals being disagreeable.