{"id":4128,"date":"2019-07-22T11:23:47","date_gmt":"2019-07-22T15:23:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/?p=4128"},"modified":"2019-07-22T11:29:47","modified_gmt":"2019-07-22T15:29:47","slug":"kurt-griffith-on-the-case-against-vilification","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/?p=4128","title":{"rendered":"Kurt Griffith on the Case Against Vilification"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Five years ago, Kurt Griffith moved from New York City to Berkeley Springs to escape New York\u2019s skyrocketing property tax rates.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/RYMa_iRJvig\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>\u201cAs a result of the Bush tax cuts, the federal government started paying for fewer things that towns and counties must now provide,\u201d Griffith told Russell Mokhiber, host of <em>This Week in Morgan County.<\/em> \u201cThus local governments had to raise property taxes.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He moved from a blue state to a red state. But he is irritated by the vilification on both sides.<\/p>\n<p>Griffith&#8217;s coping mechanism in a supercharged political environment?<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI try to be polite and even handed. Don\u2019t be a jerk. So much of our political dialogue is devoted to people being jerks to each other.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>How deep is the vilification?<\/p>\n<p>\u201cPerson to person, not particularly,\u201d Griffith says. \u201cGroup versus group, tremendously.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhen we abstract the others side as an anonymous them, we can tell all kinds of horrible things about the other side. We call them wingnuts. We call them libtards.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhen we work person to person, I don\u2019t care how you voted. Are you a decent guy?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhen you have people who are in distress, people who don\u2019t see a future, people who feel abandoned or left behind, that is fertile ground to plant every kind of hate that you can imagine.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI don\u2019t believe the Democratic National Committee and the Republican National Committee particularly care much about racism. But they happily use those issues to manipulate the public.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI don\u2019t respect either the Democratic or the Republican national parties. Both parties use very decisive social issues to manipulate the electorate, but they vote and pass laws supporting neoliberal and neoconservative policies that can be barely differentiated.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Griffith said that he abandoned the Democratic Party when he moved to West Virginia. He is registered as an independent.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/sos.wv.gov\/elections\/Documents\/VoterRegistrationTotals\/2019\/Mar2019.pdf\">(According to the most recent report from the West Virginia Secretary of State (March 2019), of the 13,588 registered voters in Morgan County, 21 percent are registered Democratic, 44 percent Republican, 31 percent No Party or Independent and 4 percent other.)<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf the Democratic Party stood up for democratic principles, I might still be a Democrat.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>How do we get out of the cycle of vilification?<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhen was the last time you convinced anybody of anything by screaming at them and calling them nasty names?\u201d he asks.<\/p>\n<p>Griffith says that you have to realize that \u201ceven Trump voters, and there are a lot of them here, are not particularly attracted to Trump himself &#8212; they are more disenchanted with the establishment.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cPeople are discovering that screaming and shouting is not helping. It\u2019s only making things worse.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Five years ago, Kurt Griffith moved from New York City to Berkeley Springs to escape New York\u2019s skyrocketing property tax rates. \u201cAs a result of the Bush tax cuts, the federal government started paying for fewer things that towns and &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/?p=4128\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4128","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4128","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4128"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4128\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4133,"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4128\/revisions\/4133"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4128"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4128"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4128"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}