In the aftermath of the discovery of SLO County Planning Commissioner Jim Harrison’s incendiary and snark-witted Facebook posts, we should not mistake them as just another example of “free speech” gone awry, but rather as part of a cancer of white nationalist and anti-Constitutional bigotry spreading under the Trump presidency.
As a former Republican who left the party in the late 1980s, I was first alarmed by the rise of the religious right, and within it, the goal to establish America as a fundamentalist “Christianist” nation, governed theocratically. Little did I suspect that 25 years later, I also would witness the rise of the many “antis”—anti-Semitism, -Islam, -immigrant, -science, -LGBT rights, all of which would be stirred into a boiling stew of culture-war politics by an ever more extreme right-wing constituency.
In the years preceding Barack Obama’s election as president, opinions of the kind commissioner Harrison posted were virtually unknown in the political mainstream. They were the sort of thing one had to seek out on the Stormfront website (neo-Nazi), or were circulated among widely scattered so-called “Christian identity” gatherings to nurture racial and religious animus. But that was then. Who knew that our first African-American president and his multi-racial administration would so unhinge much of white America and disgorge its submerged resentments into a nasty movement, delivering us the divisive Trump presidency?
I trust that Commissioner Harrison’s extremist politics will be shown to have no place in public service.
Gordon L. Fuglie
Atascadero
This article appears in Volunteers 2020.
Now that’s some real racist hate. Stop voting Left. End hate.
It’s funny that the left continue to claim Trump has made us divisive, he only exposed how the true left are along with the righteous righty’s he’s not choosing but exposing them from how the general public sees them. This has been escalating since the 80’s and now someone who really doesn’t care what the left or the right think speaks his mind without any diplomacy or political correctness, this is what Americans truly want enough with all the lies both parties. He’ll win easily in November and all will have to deal with him for another 4 years hopefully all the bickering and whining will subside but I highly doubt it.
People like “Kevin” really hate it when his tribe’s hatred is brought to light, and he responds by insisting that we must stop hating haters for their hatred. The mind reels.
Trump devotees are scum. No decent person supports the orange turd, only sociopaths, idiots & sadists do. They are all neo-Nazis at heart & some of them like Harrison are just more open about what they are.
Vote for humans,
if those humans, care about humanity.
Diplomatic relations, Sustainable ecosystems, and the global economy are complicated.
Don’t vote for people who’s thoughts can be summed up in a chant.