Dear Editor: My wife and I attended the Saving Democracy panel discussion on Friday night (June 29, 2018) at Twin Lakes Baptist Church. It was billed as a discussion of the dangerous and almost unprecedented polarization afflicting society today and the critical need for thoughtful, respectful dialogue among the warring sides. The panelists were billed as coming from “left, right and center.” We attended because both of us passionately agree that acrimony, epithets, disrespect and hate will take us down a path that I doubt anybody, regardless of political affiliation, wants to go. Here’s what occurred.
The panel consisted of former Democrat Congressman Sam Farr, San Francisco feminist activist Debbie Mesloh; USC and UC Berkeley politics professor Dan Schnur; Santa Cruz County Supervisor Zach Friend; communication consultant Spencer Critchley, and former Vice Chair of the California Republican Party Kristin Olsen of Modesto; Friend and Critchley are veterans of Democratic presidential campaigns. Left, right and center? It is true that Kristen was very centrist, reasonable and vanilla. There were barely any conflicting views expressed by the panel.
The panel discussion started with an opened-ended question by moderator Critchley as to what each panelist thought generally about the topic of saving democracy by engaging in a more tempered and respectful dialogue. Farr was the first to respond: He said something about the difficulty of engaging in such a dialogue with the “SOB that was elected president.” The undertone of the evening from the predominantly left leaning panel reflected Farr’s disdain for the duly elected president of the United States and every one of us who voted for him.
As hard a time as I had in putting my X beside the name of one clinical narcissist as opposed to another, I did so for one reason and one reason alone – SCOTUS, and I got what I voted for. I didn’t need the Honorable Congressman Farr and the rest of the Obama sycophants on the Saving Democracy echo chamber to try to shame me for my very well-reasoned electoral decision.
— James S. Rummonds