Time for a hearty ol' rant
I remember thinking that I didn’t want to be gone a few days, then come crash-landing back with a tirade.
Like a grenade falling out with the party favors.
Poor taste, right?
But then I thought: “Oh, hell with it.”
Everyone else is pitching tirades into the public discourse these days, and an overwhelming number of these street-corner screamers are wasting their time entirely.
Why shouldn’t I have my time at the soap box? Where in the rules does it say that you get to have a tirade, but I don’t?
Not that a tirade is any guarantee you’ll draw more folks than fit on the porch of your RV.
It’s amazing how many people seem to have the answer to everything, and somehow believe that sheer volume makes you smarter than the character who is screeching something different from the opposite corner.
And when something goes hideously wrong? When someone is injured or, God forbid, dies?
Simple: Just blame the “tragedy” on whomever was hollering louder than you.
INSTEAD OF looking far and wide for angry politicians, why not stay close to home?
Sure, depending on your philosophical leaning, there are national headliners ready to tee it up at a moment’s notice.
Rush Limbaugh couldn’t wait to point at James Hodgkinson, the gunman who seriously wounded Republican Congressman Steve Scalise, and described him as a “mainstream Democrat voter.”
(Quick pause here: No offense, Rush, but I seriously doubt that a mental-health professional — of either political party — would agree that Hodgkinson is a “mainstream” anything.)
On the other side of the fence, former President Barack Obama had a slightly different take on the everyone-gets-to-speak theory.
“An explanation of climate change from a Nobel Prize-winning physicist looks exactly the same on your Facebook page,” Obama said, “as the denial of climate change by somebody on the Koch brothers’ payroll.”
But wait a second here...
You’re thinking: Didn’t he say something about looking closer to home for political debates?
Yes, he did, and we don’t slither out from under our words in this part of the world.
LET ME toss a couple names out this morning, then: Don Bradway and Teuvo Orjala.
Surely you know these gentlemen, by now.
Bradway is the voice (and a loud one) of the American Redoubt, and a red-blooded conservative. If you’ve even bumped into a Republican politician in the grocery story, you’ve probably met Bradway — and he’s certainly not afraid of being front and center, anytime.
Don moved here from California, which he calls the “Occupied Zone.”
(Yes, he means it.)
On the other hand, Orjala represents a species once as rare as the California Condor — a successful Democratic rabble-rouser who has helped ignite something that gives the North Idaho GOP...
Maybe not quite terror.
Hives?
Just the sheer numbers that Orjala and his local band of Indivisibles — a national anti-Trump resistance movement — have turned out for rallies, town halls and marches would be eye-catching enough. But the North Idaho Indivisibles also have shown up in startling (and sometimes unruly) numbers to challenge Kootenai County Republican state legislators, and even cause a mighty frustration for U.S. Rep. Raul Labrador.
When a bit of poor publicity about hollering during public forums gave the Indivisibles a black eye, there was no whining. They showed up in greater numbers for the next event, and were well-behaved.
Bradway, of course, is almost obligated to make fun of Orjala’s movement.
“There’s always a group that shows up around this time,” Bradway said. “But the enthusiasm will wear off.”
However, Bradway does understand the enthusiasm the Indivisibles have built opposing Trump.
“He’s a lightning-rod kind of guy,” Bradway said, “and that’s the sort of target you want as the opposition. And if Republicans get too confident, all they have to do is look at George W. Bush.
“He made a great target, too.”
What a lot of us are waiting to see is not which national radio bullhorn can blast loudest.
No, we’re wondering if all this competitiveness might produce some surprises by November of 2018.
- • •
Steve Cameron is a special assignment reporter for The Press. Reach Steve: scameron@cdapress.com.