Letter from Red Country Part III - "Beware the Rioters and Window Smashers!"

Lately, many conservatives have taken to calling anti-Trump protesters “rioters” and “window smashers,” as if we have our own personalized crowbars and bricks. I've even heard this from locals here in Coos County.

But in reality, your average protester is likely to be one of your aunts or uncles or a retired school teacher or a doctor or a nurse or a soccer mom, or a grand-father or a sister or a pipe-fitter or an uncle, a real estate agent or your landlord.

Here are some “Rioters” and “window smashers” sitting around tables in a meeting in a space provided by the Coos Bay Fire Department for special rioting and window smashing training. The menace just leaps at you right out of the photo.

Here's some more vicious looking rioters and window smashers.

Warning: Graphic content.

 

I don’t know what protesters (aka “rioters” and “window smashers”) look like in other parts of Oregon, but around here, they drink French roast and drive Hondas and probably go to all the games. 

Letters From Red Country - Part II

 

Town Hall, Coos Bay, Feb 19th, 2017

 

Town Hall, Coos Bay, Feb. 19th, 2017

Coos county showed up in force at the town hall meeting with Ron Wyden on Sunday Feb. 19^th at Marshfield High School auditorium. 

When I first arrived, there was hardly anyone there, but a couple of police officers, a security person lurking in the hallways and me. They seemed like nice guys, not too nervous and itchy. But the political environment being what it is, you never know. And I didn’t know what to expect being around a major politician, so It occurred to me that when the time came to take a picture I ought to pull my cell phone out of my pocket nice and slow like. 

In an hour or so the auditorium was filled with an energized, sign-carrying crowd.

The biggest crowd reaction (and the biggest surprise) by far was when Sen. Wyden promised to push for investigations into this administration’s Russian connections and for the release of Trump’s tax returns. Large numbers of attendees jumped out of their seats at that moment and cheered. I tried to get a photo of it, but my cell phone got caught in the zipper of my jacket pocket, and everybody had already sat back down by the time I had disentangled it from the zipper. 

I got the feeling that this whole Russian thing, whether Trump and the Republicans like it or not, is going to be a central issue going forward. They can try to ignore it and keep stonewalling investigations, appoint nice, respectable old generals for national security advisor, and so on – but it’s just going to get more and more costly for them as time goes on.  

As for Sen. Wyden, he seemed competent and reasonably honest, as politicians go. He knew his subject matter. I felt glad that he was one of my Senators.