Page 27 - Flathead Beacon // 1.14.15

FLATHEADBEACON.COM OPINION CLOSING RANGE Dave Skinner
W Bait and Switch
ITH STREETS TO day was pretty much the whole “rain- maintain (and plow), Taj bow” of left-wing “diversity.” MaCityHalls to fund, infra- So, here we are in Whitefish. Our bait
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structure to plan and emergency servic- es to provide, what pressing issue is the Whitefish City Council about to plunge into? A non-discrimination ordinance – NDO for short.
Good luck, council. Last year Billings council wasted eight months bickering over an NDO, only to vote it down. But supporters are still hammering away – taking time from the kind of things small-city leaders are elected to do.
Frankly, I don’t care how much time Whitefish wastes putting together an NDO, even if it passes or fails. Yet I must admit a sense of being down this road be- fore, of watching a classic political bait and switch.
I’m half Jewish, born on Manhat- tan Island, “Noo Yawk.” As a little kid, I’d play chess in the park out front of my grandparents’ place in Washington Heights. My opponents were old geezers with tats they didn’t get in the Navy.
With my mom’s second marriage, I became part of the Air Force fam- ily. Now, at a big base like Malmstrom, there’s definitely some rank (class) sep- arations. Like the clubs (officer, NCO, enlisted), officer housing was definitely a step up from NCO or enlisted family housing – but we all went to the same Great Falls schools, especially Loy El- ementary.
At Kalispell AFS in Lakeside, all ranks lived in the same neighborhood, went to the same schools – white, black, brown, red and yellow. We made each other bleed, and ate in each other’s kitch- ens. It was a neat way to grow up.
The net result is, I’m unfond of neo- Aryans or bigots of any kind.
While working in Colorado, I’d heard about a conference on “human rights” in Colorado Springs that featured activ- ists who’d been going up against Aryan Nation leader Richard Butler’s bums in Hayden Lake. So – I took the human rights bait, happy for a chance to hate on neo-Krauts.
I knew I was in the wrong place when this lanky-but-interesting brunette stood up to speak. She/he sounded just like James Earl Jones. The rest of the
is one Richard Spencer, who got in some kind of chairlift tizzy with one Randy Schuenemann. These fellows are both Washington DC Beltway political veter- ans – for them to meet in boonies Mon- tana is strange enough.
Spencer had worked as an editor for Pat Buchanan’s American Conservative magazine, while Schuenemann’s histo- ry included John McCain’s presidential campaign. Buchanan was a strong oppo- nent of Gulf War Two during the time- frame when Schuenemann was promot- ing the same war.
Knowing that, I’m not surprised the esteemed gentlemen had words on the chair – and I’m sure they both ran home and Googled each other. Well, Schuen- emann learned that Spencer had moved on from conventional Buchananite con- servatism to, um, ah, “identitarianism.” For “Europeans.”
Ah – the Prussian Blue mindset, just fancier. Most of us would note and file such information for future reference: “Do not associate.” But Schuenemann decided to “out” Spencer publicly – and it didn’t take long for the baiting to start.
So, with the Whitefish council prom- ising some form of “action,” here comes our switch. The discussion has jumped off a topic (racism and neo-racism) where most everyone agrees and run off into the more-expansive matter of “non- discrimination.” Hey kids, if you want to convert Whitefish into a snowy version of the Castro in San Francisco, say so. If you want Big Mountain to be Rainbow Atheist Peak, let’s discuss that.
The part that irritates me the most is how difficult it is to call a spade a spade in politics. Everything is in code: “Gun safety” is code for gun control. “Identi- tarianism” is Aryan code for white na- tionalist. “Non-discrimination” is pro- gressive code for gay rights. Every word seems to mean something else.
The way things are going in White- fish, I must ask: When will “pothole” be- come code for something else? What will a Whitefish NDO argued in code, mean in reality?
“THE DISCUSSION HAS JUMPED OFF A TOPIC (RACISM AND NEO-RACISM) WHERE MOST EVERYONE AGREES AND RUN OFF INTO THE MORE-EXPANSIVE MATTER OF ‘NON- DISCRIMINATION.’”
Mike (Uncommon Ground) Jopek and Dave (Closing Range) Skinner often fall on op- posite sides of the fence when it comes to political and outdoor issues. Their columns alternate each week in the Flathead Beacon.
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