Editorial

Not An ‘Angry Man,’
A ‘Concerned Citizen’

By Michael Bradley

Very recently a public official in my hometown here on Cape Cod was quoted in the local press as declaring that this web site is proof that I am simply an angry man. The remark was made – I guess not surprisingly – by a very dedicated Republican, and in its local context was intended to discredit me from my participation in a town-wide recall effort designed to unseat that same public official. I am being castigated professionally for my activity as a private citizen and voter in my community.

This is not surprising.

It is in fact perfectly in accord with the tactics currently employed on the national level by the Republican Party. Pursuing civic involvement, the national GOP has made clear, is only acceptable when it is uncritical. If it is critical, then it is time to plug-in the smear machinery and seek to show that the individual who dared to speak up has character flaws, or in some other way his or her view should be discounted.

That politically this was the tactical approach of Stalin before he gained absolute power and could simply order people to the Gulag or to a shallow grave, and Mussolini as he used the press that he emerged from to smear his opponents, or finally Hitler in his rise to power seems to have been forgotten by the media elite of our nation.

The local official who took aim at me for daring to participate in the strongest form of local politics – an effort seeking a recall election to bring this official before the electorate again to justify current policies – took advantage of a public position to create an impression in the local media that myself and others involved in the recall effort are somehow all personally flawed in one way or another.

My particular sin is having created and maintained the Bradley Report, which has exposed various local political maneuverings in the past but which also had tried to give voice to what a great many people perceive regarding the politics we are all now enduring, thanks to all branches of the government having been taken over by the GOP. At least we now have a clear example of what can happen with one-party rule.

In some ways, I suppose, the GOP’s ‘Trickle-Down’ theory is working; that is, here is a local official on Cape Cod who has learned that if your policies and actions are contested, the smart move is to cast aspersions and if possible smear those opposing you in the hopes of discrediting any opposition.

That this is often successful doesn’t make it smart politics. It does make it cynical politics, and certainly we as a nation seem to be living in a very dark period.

The attack on me through naming this web site is supposed to be proof-positive of how angry I am as an individual. But of course that isn’t the case at all. I am afraid for our democracy and our Constitutional principles, and I am offended by the abuses of both that are so obvious yet which get such little coverage in the bulk of the press and mass media. But by asserting that my motivation is anger, this local Republican official strives to belittle me and compartmentalize me.

If this has the ring or aroma of national politics to it, then the GOP’s vaunted ‘Trickle-Down’ theory is finally working for the Republicans, much to the detriment of all of the rest of us.