America the Great – Elkin Jonesville Tribune

Beals

Surry County, what a great place to live. A little over a generation ago, before our first now adult child was born, my wife and I had the opportunity to choose where we would raise our family. We found perfection on the banks of the Yadkin River here in beautiful Surry County. It was a place that values your contribution as a unique individual for the greater good of the community and came with a feeling of being loved in a non-judgmental environment. It is in this light that I have chosen to share my thoughts in hope of preserving and improving upon this great community we all call home.

As I convey the virtues of a strong sense of the common good, I really do not want to taint our beautiful community with the partisan divide that we as a country and community have found ourselves in, but at this point it needs to be addressed. One of the things I loved about this community when I arrived was that the partisan divide did not matter; without blindness to the reality that it still existed, it was bantered back and forth in a jovial, fun-loving way. It was not a war of good versus evil or the thought that we were each in a fight to save the world from the evil curse of the other political side. As a matter of full disclosure, I have great respect and admiration for the Grand Old Party of the past. This is the party I hold my allegiance to, a party that strives to respect the rule of law and fully embraces free speech. I believe this is the party that seeks to value every individual and the right for that individual to act, free from the shackles of government regulation and manipulation of commerce.

To be quite blunt, the Republican ideal of freedom is changing.

To highlight the changing definition of freedom, I recall a group of people I worked with forty years ago. In 1982, I started my short career with my previous employer, the Walt Disney World Corporation. Epcot Center was having its grand opening and I was hired to be part of the Epcot Main Entrance team. It was quite the opportunity to witness the influx of foreign exchange students that came to Disney from their homeland to staff the different countries in the world showcase. To hear these yearlong visitors talk about the absolute and authentic freedom of the US as they worked and moved around our country was enlightening. The Chinese were amazed and astonished that they, as foreigners, were allowed to buy maps (in their country it was a crime of national intelligence) or move around the country without a government tour guide. The French, Italians, and Germans loved the freedom of our far less stringent regulatory environment and lack of far-left and far-right political propaganda. They loved the virtues of free thought and the absence of public pressure to side with a particular political viewpoint. The Japanese loved that work was not everything and the value of social activities meant something here. They all loved the true freedom that existed without pressure from hidden agendas.

That freedom of thought and freedom from extremist pressures to take sides that the French, Germans, and Italians loved about America seems to have eluded us. Has our social evolution moved to something more akin to the political extremism that brought us the wars of the early twentieth century?

One of the more noticeable factors tearing our country apart is the divisiveness of language from our political leaders, both nationally and (more recently) locally, that have embraced national news talking points word for word. Although both parties are guilty of demagoguery, my beloved Republican party, while accusing the other side of mandating policy, is the actual party aggressively instituting policies and resolutions. There is no fear of showing their own lack of personal depth and independence as they quote Fox New reports verbatim. The networks have created a machine of manufactured stories. The result is a rallying call to their base to fight a non-existent enemy or, at best, an enemy of one extremist that has posted a view. In the world of social media, you can always find unhinged outliers, but that does not mean their view is accepted by the mainstream. Although the networks pose as defenders of our country and its freedoms, their relentless focus on fringe-dwelling extremists stirs up hate and anger toward those we used to regard, rightfully, as the loyal opposition.

One of the more noticeable factors that is tearing our country apart is how our political hack government officials both nationally and locally have embraced the national news networks talking points, word for word. The recent antics of two Surry County Commissioners provides a perfect example. During the May Surry County Commissioners meeting, one Commissioner repeated verbatim the chant and action plan of their favorite news network while the second Commissioner cheered him on. As the two Commissioners continued with their orchestrated word-for-word network rant, neither seemed aware or concerned about their comically obvious hypocrisy. While heralding the importance of free speech to our democracy, stating that we shouldnt seek out to silence opinions that we do not agree with. The Commissioner then, without missing a beat and in the same breath, tried to silence an opinion that he did not agree with by requesting a policy to punish Coca-Cola for a free-speech statement made by the CEO.

This behavior is anti-Republican and anti-American. It is one thing when people protest against a company but quite another when government agencies create policies which harm specific companies and its employees in an attempt to retaliate against a stance made by a CEO. Fortunately, three Commissioners in Surry County realized the hypocrisy of this censorship; they voted against removing the Coke machines. As they attempted to regulate free speech in the Coca-Cola case, our Republican party paraded the My Pillow Guy as a great leader and beacon of free speech. Are we really going to choose which companies are promoted and which companies are condemned and silenced into acquiescence? This behavior is very much akin to the actions taken by a regime during World War II which

penalized and regulated Jewish businesses and left them in the hands of loyalist that praised the regime. It is destructive to harm local citizens for a statement made by corporate headquarters. These public officials are holding our local workforce hostage to their governmental attempt at controlling speech.

The network inspired rant did not stop there. The second Commissioner, when talking about certain corporations which he didnt like coming to this area said, I dont know of any Amazon Hubs around here. Thank goodness, I hope not ever. I must put my foot down and state that they have gone too far. What these Commissioners are insinuating is that delivering the network rant is more important than their own Surry County citizens and the jobs that might be created if a corporation were to relocate here. It is common practice for corporations to conduct social media and internet searches when they are considering a move to a new community. Do these two Commissioners not realize that an online search for Surry County will resurface this attempt to censor free speech and the disparaging remarks made about one of the most successful US corporations? Should we not expect more from our officials than to be clones of the media conglomerates anger-filled rhetoric of the day? Give it another few weeks and the talking points and marching orders will be different, but you can be rest assured, those same elected officials will be touting the new line, word for word. We must demand our political leaders top priority be Surry County and the issues here on the ground, not mimicking, verbatim, whatever the national networks happen to rant about.

The government work most salient to our community is done at the local level. The network driven divide between the left and right has now leaked into the small-town communities within tranquil Surry County. We must wake up to the new reality that the hate-driven rhetoric, regurgitated upon us by weak-minded politicians who may actually believe they are destroying the enemy, is the problem. That enemy is a family member or friend down the street whose only sin may be that theyre willing to pay a little more in taxes to get more services. Are those friends and family part of a mob or are we being fed a line? The media tells us those to fear are those on the other side of the aisle, but lets start with taking a good look at the one on the other side of the mirror. If we can get that right, we can go back to spreading Gods love to our friends and family, and by extension, participate in the true freedom of America.

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America the Great - Elkin Jonesville Tribune