Bill LaCroix: Bitterroot Wing-nuttery: Part 2

Friday, April 6, 2012

Bitterroot Wing-nuttery: Part 2

Preface: After I sent the Bitterroot Star my letter (Bitterroot Wing-nuttery: Part 1: Hell), I sent a shortened version to the Ravalli Republic, because the Republic usually likes to keep their letters down to 300 words or less. Within my shortened letter I referenced Mr. Wisneiwski’s stalking of two citizens claiming his right as “citizen enforcer” to do so. Sherry Devlin, the editor, refused to print the letter, and the following is the exchange we had.

I re-submitted the letter (below) with reference to “stalking” taken out. I haven’t heard back from her yet.

-----Original Message-----
From: Sherry Devlin [mailto:Sherry_Devlin@lee.net]
Sent: Sunday, April 01, 2012 10:21 PM
To: Bill LaCroix
Subject: RE: Letter to editor

Bill,

If you want this to run in the paper, you need to take out the stalking/threatening references -- unless charges were filed and convictions were won -- and stick with your complaints about the Democratic filings.

thanks,

Sherry Devlin/ Ravalli Republic editor

From: Bill LaCroix
Sent: Monday, April 02, 2012 1:45 PM
To: ravalli republic
Subject: Letter to Editor

Sherry,

There was no actual “stalking” charges filed, unfortunately, even though that’s exactly what he did. There is a police report (and I believe a RR article) about the late Oct. 2010 incident with the county commissioner. He did maliciously follow Stewart Brandborg to his home in July of 2010 and then announced Brandy’s address at a Celebrating Conservativism meeting shortly thereafter with the suggestion that some of the 100+ “2^nd Amendment” people attending “go talk to him”. This is what we have to put up with every day here with these people, they are libelous-to-malicious in word, deed and print, and they get away with it. Partly because of a biased standard of proof they’re allowed as opposed to their victims. It’s tiresome.

No offense, but just so you know. Bill LaCroix

Re-submitted Letter:

Editor,

Jan Wisneiwski has been in the papers a couple times this last week. He’s been there before, like when he followed and bullied a female county commissioner and an elderly citizen in 2010, but let’s stick to the present.

First we see him inviting a fellow Freeman-style conspiracy aficionado to our public planning board meeting to “testify” that environmentalists are trying to foist a Stalinist system of repression on “we the people” through Agenda 21 after allowing the public meeting to be opened with a prayer that that the board had just voted not to allow (can anybody say the word “libel”?). Next we see him and six other conspiracy-minded “patriots” filing for Democratic precinct positions. We hear him claiming that he doesn’t know anything about why his extremist buddies filed at the same time he did and we hear that he’s not “looking at going in there and trying to trash the central committee” . Rather, he claims, he just wants to see the Democratic Party be “more open and transparent”. “I’m a Democrat”, he offers as an example of this new “openness and transparency” he would like to subject Democrats to. “It says so right there on the ballot.”

For anyone who agrees with Jan that bullying people who disagree with their world view is O.K. because they must be evil “Stalinists” by definition (since they disagree with them), and who further equates this air-tight rationale-to-bully with “First Amendment rights”, I offer this little factoid: all seven imposters filed for Democratic precinct chairs on the afternoon of March 12^th, the last day for filing. Six of the seven were recorded within minutes of each other, from 3:50 PM and 4:40 PM. The one filed at 4:40PM was notarized by Ravalli Co. Republican Central Committee chair (and publicly-subsidized Planning Office-Manager) Terry Nelson the day before, on a Sunday. They all walked in at the last minute, together, to “trash the central committee”, Jan’s disingenuous “aw,shucks” defense notwithstanding.

Maybe all you conspiracy scholars who have worked so hard to obtain your heightened sense of Paranoia can help me out: where in all this do we find the openness and transparency, the honesty and respect for the rights of others that you insist that everyone else grant to you? I eagerly await your inevitable response.

Bill LaCroix/ Victor, MT

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Why I Blog

Thoreau and Emerson had a discussion in May of 1846 about the Mexican War--our first war that set us on the course we still track today. Conquest of nation-states and the inevitable Imperialism that follows. Emerson counseled his friend that we can supersede the transgressions of a well-meaning State by the Muse. Thoreau wasn't so sure that the State was so well-meaning or that the Muse alone would be enough to supersede it. But he tried both the Muse and "other means" to our everlasting benefit. Civil Disobedience, in the American sense, has always been his child, in large part because he raised it to the level of Literature. "Other means" requires the Muse to be lasting and effective, and vice versa. How would anyone know what the hell you were talking about otherwise, let alone emulate what you're trying to do?

The problem with Progressives today, I think, is that we have been in the habit of letting other people--Rupert Murdoch, the Koch Brothers, Sun Myung Moon--tell our stories for us, people who do not mean us well. We haven't plugged our muse into our political discourse very much, and that's a big mistake. Mark Twain didn't make that mistake, and he was among the first American writers to use the new-fangled typewriter. Why do we children of Twain, Emerson and Thoreau make that mistake now with our new-fangled computers?

For all its faults, Corporate America understands that people are story-based critters, like it or not, and I think we progressives should like it. By definition, people make many important social (read: political) decisions based largely on who's the best storyteller. It’s in our nature, and Corporate Media is a classic example of how Nature abhors a vacuum. We’ve collectively created a cultural ‘narrative’ vacuum by allowing ourselves to be so easily entertained by—Corporate Media! And Nature hates that. She’ll allow the same garbage responsible for that vacuum (Corporate Media!) to be sucked in and to rattle around until it ruins our cognative motors before she’ll let that sad state of affairs stand. I'd ask any "America Firsters" stumbling on this blog and reading this far to consider: Rupert Murdoch is from Australia. Sun Myung Moon, now-deceased but whose creatures, the Washington Times and UPI still walk the face of the earth, was from Korea. The Koch Brothers, of course, were from the sheikdom of Texas. All of them were, and the living ones still are, so obscenely rich they apparently believed they own America simply because they paid for it, and we collectively let them define who among us are “real Americans”?! C'mon!

Although it helps to strive toward the goal, progressives don't have to be great writers, and I'm not claiming to be one. We simply have to acknowledge that we have the better stories and we’re sitting on our best ones. Our truest ones. Multi-national billionaires have better versions of American Liberalism and Progressivism than the real ones told by real Americans? Us? We shouldn't put up with that. Why do we?

Like any historic attempt, we need to find our Voice. Significant action will come only after our contemporary, progressive political muse matures, which it hasn't yet. Not to paint with too wide a brush, but too much of our positions have been framed in intellectual, almost-didactic prose, which, if you don't identify as an intellectual, means boring. Not all of it, just a whole lot of it, but never mind. If history's still a guide--and I hope it still is--there's hope, because when any progressive movement's Muse matures, it generally becomes the baseline for much of Western Civilization’s meaningful and therefore lasting literature. For example, "Mein Kampf" is still in print but I'll bet you'd have to turn over a lot of rocks to find someone to call it 'literature'.

So, this blog. It's a call, I suppose, to elevate our critical modern discussions out of Fox-news-landia back to where intelligent, caring Americans can find their feet and fight back, either with the Muse, by other means, or both. It’s not up to some politician to change the narrative. That’s up to us. So by definition we still have as good a chance as we ever had. Don't lose hope. It’s always been this way. At least in literate societies.

In other words, like Emerson advised and Thoreau partially agreed with: stories matter, and may the best Muse win.