America Watch: In a Fractured Society; Contempt can be Fatal

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Contempt is a powerful feeling reserved for people, ideas and institutions we regard as inferior, base or worthless. Those held in contempt by high society and government are routinely despised and dishonoured. Contempt is categorically more toxic than simple disapproval, dislike or animosity. These are feelings that can be overcome, forgiven and resolved. Holding fellow human beings in contempt permanently prejudices relationships. It dehumanizes dissenters and all but eliminates the capacity for compassion.

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Like an enemy engineered bio-weapon, contempt is not only contagious - it can be fatal

Politicians who dismiss their opponents as deplorables, fascists, extremists and insurrectionists, or cynically rip up an opposing President's state of the union address in front of the entire nation are wilfully signalling that it is open season on those they regard as inferior and unworthy of esteem. Like an enemy engineered bio-weapon, contempt is not only contagious - it can be fatal. Over recent years hundreds of decent Americans have been victimized by a brutal trifecta of violent mobs, politicized law enforcement agencies and unhinged leftist lunatics. Painful Examples In June 2020, David Dorn, a retired African-American police officer, was fatally shot when he interrupted a break-in of a friend’s business in St. Louis, Missouri. The murder occurred at the outset of an ugly summer of BLM protests, street violence, looting and arson that gripped American cities after the death of George Floyd. Stephan Cannon, the man charged and found guilty of Dorn’s murder was a convicted felon. He had been previously sentenced to seven years for felony robbery by a St. Louis County judge, but got probation under a “suspended execution of sentence.” Court records indicate that Cannon violated probation twice. He never went to prison and, as a result, was free on the night of June 2 to join a throng of looters and shoot an innocent grandfather. Jacobin crowds and ideological authorities who unleash them are contemptuous of anyone who stand in the way. On January 6, 2021, disturbing video footage captured the moment when Air Force veteran Ashli Babbitt was fatally shot by Capitol Police Lt. Michael Byrd. The 35-year-old woman was among a crowd Trump supporters who entered the US Capitol Building to protest what they believed to be a deeply flawed election process.

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Politicized police and military forces, operating outside constitutional restraints are direct threats to the lives and liberty of citizens

Video footage showed several protesters attempting to break down a door in the halls of the Capitol. Through a shattered window, a lawman could be seen with his handgun raised and trained on the crowd. Officer Byrd stepped forward and fired directly at Babbitt. Byrd’s identity wasn’t immediately disclosed to the public, and he was summarily cleared of any wrongdoing. He later boasted about his action during friendly television interviews where he was permitted to give his account of the shooting without cross-examination. Politicized police and military forces, operating outside constitutional restraints are direct threats to the lives and liberty of citizens. Even the American FBI is on the way to becoming a twenty-first century version of the East German Stasi. Unhinged partisans can also become callous janissaries for politicians with totalitarian temptations. In the early morning hours of September 18, following a street dance at a local bar in McHenry, North Dakota, 18-year-old Cayler Ellingson appears to have been deliberately singled out, run down and left to die by a man in an SUV. Shannon Brandt admitted in a 911 call to hitting Ellingson because he thought the young man was part of a "Republican extremist group.” Brandt also claimed to have had a "political argument" with Ellingson.

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Contempt May Permanently Destroy American Election Integrity

The language Brandt used mirrored contentions made in September by Democrat President, Joe Biden, from the iconic Independence Hall in Philadelphia. Referring to a “continued battle for the Soul of the Nation” Biden insisted that Trump’s “extreme MAGA Republicans” are ‘clear and present danger’ to US democracy. In an address that has come to be known by some as “The Red Sermon” the President said: “It’s in our hands, yours and mine, to stop the assault on American democracy.” In the world according to Biden, it appears Shannon Brandt was called on to do his duty as a virtuous supporter of the governing regime. He appears to have held Ellingson in complete contempt. Contempt May Permanently Destroy American Election Integrity For too long now, common people have been manipulated, bankrupted and persecuted by an increasingly vicious political intelligentsia. Upstanding American citizens, like Dorn, Babbitt and Ellingson, were tragic victims of a toxic culture war. The incarceration of hundreds of January 6, “stop the steal” protesters is another dramatic example of the current regimes’s distain for the rights of political opponents.

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Regimes’s distain for the rights of political opponents

Here in Canada, the Trudeau government is about to launch a similar commission of inquiry into the circumstances surrounding the Canadian Freedom Convoy. Some have predicted that the Prime Minister will establish rules of evidence that favour his own version of actions taking during the course of this widely supported trucker protest against mandatory Covid vaccinations. Empathy and contempt are polar opposites. Empathy leads us to care for the feelings and concerns of others. Contempt is an arrogant disregard and denigration of targeted adversaries. There can be little cohesion in a society when the country’s history, forefathers, customs, laws, institutions and loyal citizens are vilified by powerful members of the nation’s cultural leadership. In the run up to the November vote in the USA, it is difficult to imagine that the necessary conditions for fair and honest elections will be restored by a political class that refuses to respect opponents. Government “by the people” will not be preserved while “the state” perverts democracy and holds its own citizens in contempt.

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