Political players at the City of Port Townsend have made no secret of their desire to eliminate vehicular traffic in the city’s primary business districts in favor of a more walkable, bike-able, maybe even pedestrian-only commercial hub. When John Mauro was hired as city manager to replace 20-year manager Timmons, it was on the strength of his “green” credentials. As reported in the Free Press in October 2020 (Who is John Mauro, Port Townsend’s City Manager?), in his prior position as Chief Sustainability Officer for the city of Auckland, New Zealand:
“He gave interviews and wrote climate action plans and plans for planting trees and adding bike paths and eliminating cars from Auckland streets.”
A green and sustainable environment may be a laudable goal. Is the elimination of parking in PT’s Historic Districts — by awarding use of publicly-funded street rights-of-way to some business owners, to the detriment of others — the right way to achieve that goal?
When pandemic response began dramatically changing our local landscape, temporary “streateries” were developed to enable restaurants to relocate their indoor dining to parking areas outside their businesses — literally on the city streets. Naturally, the loss of valuable parking spaces meant potentially reduced traffic for all other businesses along those streets. But, hey, this was an emergency, and the burdens on folks in the food industry were especially onerous.
The emergency is past. It’s business as usual again. But the restaurateurs who have benefited from the expanded real estate do not want to lose it. The city is now proposing that these “streateries” are granted permanent status — benefiting a small coterie of restaurant owners while the majority of the business community suffers the loss of even more already-limited parking options for their customers.
Water Street “streatery”, removing 46 feet of parking, as well as public sidewalk space.
The city posted notification of an “Open House on Streateries” on their website. The presentation took place yesterday evening. According to the timeline on the city webpage, this is the fast-track schedule to codify their proposal:
March 21, 2022 Survey noted above distributed by Port Townsend Main Street
March 29, 2022 Open House at 4:30 at the Cotton Building
March 31, 2022 Survey closes
April 4, 2022, City Council Meeting reviews public feedback
April 18, 2022, City Council Meeting – Council will be presented with proposed code and receives public feedback
May 2, 2022, City Council Meeting presents any revisions of ordinance for the proposed code
Where was the public notice?
The public was never notified of this significant proposed change to city code in the newsletter that is included in all city utility bills each month. It was not mentioned in reports from either the mayor or the city manager. Will next month’s newsletter announce this plan, after the survey has closed and the City Council has already reviewed public feedback?
A press release is linked on the city’s page noted above, but we can find no mention in the Leader of this proposal or process. Nor did Main Street’s Word on the Street publicize it, though the timeline above states that Main Street distributed a survey.
That survey is also on the city’s website, here. It consists of 13 questions. Question 5 is “Do you support the establishment of a long-term program for streateries and parklets?” Free Press editor Stephen Schumacher responded:
“This feels like a theft of public streets by converting ‘temporary emergency’ outdoor dining into permanent space for preferred businesses at the expense of others, who may not have been given legally required public notice. These outdoor street structures are ugly and unnecessary and impinge on parking and reinforce the false narrative that some kind of ongoing ‘emergency’ is going on or may soon be resumed.”
Additionally he wrote, “I reject the premises of questions 6-11 because these illegal takings of public properties for private insider benefits need to be terminated not perpetuated.”
The only public notice of this proposal we were able to find other than the page on the city’s website was a March 16 article in the Peninsula Daily News (PDN), Port Townsend to consider permanent ‘streatery’ program. It notes that a Main Street survey conducted last year found that business owners complained about the loss of parking spaces “and about the way some of the streateries look.”
Unless a resident regularly reads the PDN or frequents the city’s website, one wouldn’t know this giveaway was in process.
The issues with parking, to which the city has turned a blind eye for years, have been an ongoing nightmare for some Port Townsend businesses. Harvey Windle, owner of Forest Gems, anchoring the busy downtown intersection of Washington and Adams, has been a vocal critic of the parking morass for eight years and has written the city multiple times about this proposed commandeering of public property.
His most recent letter, emailed today to Port Townsend’s city attorney, city council and mayor, and City Manager Mauro, questions not only the fairness of serving special interests in this city street giveaway, but the public process itself.
“Besides the negative proposed removal of even more parking spaces for insider special interests, the process looks to be extremely flawed.
My manager knew of the proposal only because she signed up on a mailing list.
Monday with only a few days before input cut off on the 31st I took what little time I could spare and spoke with 2 neighboring businesses. Bergstroms and the new owner of the Antique Mall.
Neither were aware of the proposed unknown final number (problem there as well) Streaterie and Parklet conversions and were shocked at the proposal.
Claims were made that businesses were given information. Where is the checklist of businesses contacted?
Why was this not in the local paper weeks in advance with both sides of the issue covered?
Robin Bergstrom asked me if there was something he could sign in protest. A class action lawsuit is where this is headed.
I contacted the City Attorney then and am now.
I believe most do not know of what is going on. Especially after speaking with other business owners.”
Today Windle spoke with even more downtown business folks.
“Stopped into Gooding O’Hara Mackey. Receptionist knew nothing about plans. Was disgusted that the streatery across the way has not been removed. Never used, she said. Also commented that she has to find parking daily.”
He also visited another business on Taylor “which was bustling.” The owner told him she went to last night’s meeting and “expressed that she did not want the streateries to continue or grow in numbers.”
There is also a safety issue. These are not quaint sidewalk cafes, they are in the roadway. Until (if) all vehicle access is eliminated, diners are literally feet from traffic negotiating the often busy uptown and downtown business districts. A side order of gas and diesel fumes with your meal, anyone? There isn’t even a curb providing a few inches of elevation to deflect a wayward car from careening into unprotected diners.
“Streatery” below the curb, in the street. Grills on the table tops and propane tanks at your feet. Puddles. Cars driving just inches away, some trying to park at the edge of the picket fence. A safe and pleasant dining experience?
The PDN states “streateries are taking about 10 parking spaces out of the downtown-Uptown equation.” Windle conducted his own survey and estimates that about a dozen spaces are being lost to these “temporary” outdoor dining spaces at present. But there are only three streateries currently installed — one outside of Alchemy on Washington at the end of Taylor Street, two along Water Street (photos at top and above). You can bet that with official city code inviting eateries to annex the street parking outside their properties, there will be many more to come.
Alchemy “streatery”, eliminating 5 or 6 parking spaces
If this proposed plan is codified, these three would likely be the tip of the iceberg. Taylor Street alone could have several streateries. Windle noted that until recently, there were “many others”, outside Sirens and Elevated Ice Cream among them. His letter to the city continues:
“In this case restaurants will think they benefit but where do their customers park?… Where are my special woodworkers spaces? And auto shops? And antiques? When restaurant owner Kristin buys a 6 million dollar parking-not-enforced building I think her losses are manageable without taking from me and others…
Several restaurants are owned by the President of Main Street, run under already compromised Mari Mullen under the influence of Mr. Mauro.
Mauro has a widely known lack of qualifications and has ignored parking issues from his beginning here. It is hard to claim that was not pre-arranged…
Mr. Mauro has no business further damaging limited parking. The City Council is responsible to keep him in his place and doing his actual job.
I am attaching 2 photos for the record of Mr Mauro and Mari along with restaurant owner Kristin’s attempt to close Taylor…
Even restaurant customers need parking. This is insanity. Helter Skelter Insanity against all visitors and business…”
Windle’s comment about “Kristin’s attempt to close Taylor” is in reference to the owner of Alchemy.* These are the photos he provided:
“Open Streets Initiative” on Taylor Street. All photos: Harvey Windle
If this “Open Streets Initiative” is the direction this current proposal is headed, there will be far more than a dozen parking spaces lost on Taylor Street alone.
The survey on “Long-term Proposals for Port Townsend Streateries and Parklets” — which the city didn’t announce in its newsletter and the Leader never reported on — closes Thursday, March 31.
Spring of 2020. Mere months before the Leader began censoring all perspectives that did not align with health department messaging, I wrote a concerned, fact-based letter to the editor challenging the mask campaign we were being bombarded with daily. Along with everything else Covid, I had been researching the effectiveness and dangers of masks intensively, and offered a counterpoint to the dominant narrative which was being parroted by neighbors and friends.
By that point, it was becoming increasingly obvious that the public was being lied to. Anthony Fauci, along with the CDC, had flip-flopped so often — and so much fear and anxiety had been generated around the “killer virus” — people were already falling into the mass delusional psychosis that we did not yet have a name for. (See my two prior articles here and here for an overview of the delusional state psychiatrists and psychologists have also called “mass formation”.)
The coordinated campaign being broadcast à la Orwell’s 1984 was already talking its toll, creating a level of hysteria resulting in the shattering of community bonds. “Generating fear that unmasked people are now a threat is one of the many ways communities are being fractured,” I wrote.
More and more letters were being published engaging in a new phenomenon: mask shaming. All of the letter writers echoed memes being promoted in the mainstream press. There was a carrot-and-stick combination of bogus feel-good soundbites like Your mask protects me, my mask protects you, alongside charges that anyone who didn’t comply was a potential murderer, not doing their part to help save lives.
The finger wagging ratcheted up over the months, with one writer opining that “to not wear [a mask] is selfish, irresponsible and sometimes deadly behavior.” The letter exemplified the kind of blaming and shaming that growing numbers of terrified residents were repeating to vilify those who challenged the narrative.
I had already experienced the schism developing in our community after writing privately to a few friends in an effort to initiate a conversation about the propaganda that was circulating. In response I received… nothing. No interest in discussing the issues, no debates, no response at all. Soon the mass psychosis would sanction removing discussion of any conflicting information from the public square entirely.
My letter to the editor, which focused on actual science, resulted in responses attacking my position for weeks afterwards. Some letters simply repeated media slogans. Some were outraged and angry assaults. One old friend (and a current Board of Health member) tersely dismissed my reference to harms from masks well-established in the medical literature as “ludicrous”. People I didn’t know, as well as decades-old friends, called my perspective “dangerous”.
In nearly half a century here, I’d never been so harshly attacked in this community. The certitude and righteousness were off the charts.
Not a single response addressed the substance of my letter — meta-analysis reviews of research showing that masks do not stop the transmission of viruses, and evidence that, in fact, masks themselves create health risks. Those two aspects of this most fractious divide are incontrovertible and will be examined in future parts of this series.
But this first part is an exploration of an element not addressed in my letter two years ago: the devastating mental, emotional and psychological repercussions of a masked populace.
Not protective, but a good reminder to be afraid of human contact
Concurrent with my letter, a May 2020 perspective published in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) regarding universal masking in the Covid-19 era acknowledged: “We know that wearing a mask outside health care facilities offers little, if any, protection from infection.” A month earlier, a meta-analysis review of the most relevant studies of laboratory and real-world performance of masks by the University of Illinois Chicago School of Public Health had come to the same conclusion:
“We do not recommend requiring the general public who do not have symptoms of COVID-19-like illness to routinely wear cloth or surgical masks… There is no scientific evidence they are effective in reducing the risk of SARS-CoV-2 transmission.”
Masks, however, were proving to be a great tool for prompting people to be anxious and fearful. The NEJM authors suggested that even though they didn’t stop the spread of Covid, there was ancillary value in public masking:
“Masks are visible reminders of an otherwise invisible yet widely prevalent pathogen and may remind people of the importance of social distancing and other infection-control measures.”
So masking was really a visual cue to keep the public in a state of anxiety over the invisible virus. Masks reminded us that fellow humans were not safe to be around, that we needed to remember at all times that a deadly virus was in our midst and to fear any contact with one another. While the NEJM authors opined, “one might argue that fear and anxiety are better countered with data and education than with a marginally beneficial mask,” that sensible voice was drowned out by more powerful forces driving the narrative.
The greater the fear and anxiety generated, the more demoralized a population, and the more easily the masses can be manipulated and controlled. For the global “leaders” and institutions calling the shots, the opportunity to further enhance their power was too good to pass up.
Dehumanizing society
The masking of our faces was arguably the most dehumanizing aspect of the Covid mass hypnosis.
Mental, emotional and psychic damage, especially to our children, has been incalculable. In addition to generating fear of invisible pathogens and fellow humans, masking is known historically to be an effective element of torture programs.
Prisoners at U.S. facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba
It’s long been recognized that both isolation and masking are tools of sensory deprivation. For decades, CIA “enhanced interrogation” experts have employed the forced wearing of surgical masks to increase discomfort while undergoing torture, to break a prisoner’s will.
The military has learned that if an enemy combatant looks different than a soldier, it’s 40% easier for the soldier not to feel things like fear, compassion, empathy and other human emotions. If the combatant has a face covering, it’s 60% more difficult to connect with that person. That’s just how we are wired.
Long before it was marketed as a talisman of safety and virtue, the mask was a symbol of subservience. It removes individuality, depersonalizes, and denotes submission.
The photo at the top of this article and the quote below it — I get to have a face. You do not. — comes from the piercing, insightful Bad Cattitude post Your Mask Ennobles Me / public health as a pretext for hierarchical validation. While the delighted adults all beam for the camera, you tell me if a single one of those children’s eyes are smiling.
“Masks are signs of subjugation. They dehumanize. They alienate.”
Bad Cattitude examines the hypocrisy we have seen repeatedly throughout this pandemic response. As universal masking was implanted into the mass psyche, a component of class privilege began to emerge.
Rules for thee, not for me: political theater
The ruling class demanded the plebes comply with a set of rules that did not apply to them. We saw politicians, corporate bigwigs and celebrities—thought leaders—put on a show of covering their faces for public displays while gathering in their private enclaves without masks or social distancing. There were the hot mic gaffes of public figures when they thought the cameras weren’t rolling, chuckling about how masking is just “political theater”.
When she thinks she is not being recorded, Pennsylvania state rep. Wendy Ullman tells Gov. Tom Wolf that her mask is just for show: “I’m waiting [to take it off] so we can do a little political theater (laughs)… So, that it’s on camera.”
A recent PTPF Facebook post notes that Port Townsend Mayor David Faber and most of the city council are still perpetuating this political theater.
“City Council Mask Rituals. Before city council meetings begin, people mingle without masks. When the meeting is called to order, all city councilors… and staff put on masks. But people who testify and attend don’t wear masks. Sometimes the masks come off when staff talks, then go back on. City Councilor Amy Howard wears a mask when alone during Zoom meetings. These are the people in charge of Port Townsend.”
Masks Off / Masks On – Port Townsend City Council Meeting, 3-21-22 Top: City Manager John Mauro chats with attendees just a few feet away, bare-faced, before the meeting starts. Middle: The meeting officially begins; Mauro (seated at left, now distanced) puts on his mask and joins the theater. Bottom: City Councillors protecting the public or virtue signalling?
Bad Cattitude calls this “performative virtue signaling.” And he points out the even more blatant hypocrisy of elites openly dispensing with their own face coverings in staged photo ops while requiring the workers around them, the lower class, to be masked for the camera. He says:
“Masks are not about public health.
Masks are about hierarchy.
They not only represent a high visibility in-group/out-group tribal marker, but they have wonderous potential as a form of separating the powerful from the powerless, the nobles from the commoners, the dictators from the dictated to.
It has become the opiate of the classes.”
This class stratification appears to be in full display in Jefferson County. A friend having dinner at a popular local cafe following the lifting of the mask directive was disturbed to see that while diners had faces, all the staff remained masked. She asked the owner Why?
“It makes the customers more comfortable,” was the reply.
Do some of those customers feel elevated by this “opiate of the classes” as the post suggests? The mass psychosis persists and some folks genuinely remain petrified that an unmasked person can kill them… but then why are all the bare-faced diners around them not dangerous? Is the working class whose livelihoods depend on their patronage the new unclean caste?
Teaching compliance
Most chilling is the imposition of this madness on our children. Bad Cattitude believes it to be another power play by those in control, contending that the subjugation, dehumanizing and alienation caused by masks are “WHY they are so attractive to so many.”
“This is why forcing them on kids to dominate them and force them into compliance with state over self or even parents is such a high priority goal for those that have collectivist plans for their futures. It establishes precisely who is in charge.”
Masks exemplify the number one demand of the Covid era: COMPLIANCE. The plebes have been divided into the compliant (good) and the non-compliant (bad). Children have little choice in the matter.
Kids in Head Start, for example. While authoritarian rulemakers are free to enjoy unmasked lives, the federal government mandates that millions of 2- to 5-year-old children in Head Start programs wear masks. As in the featured photo at top, the privileged think nothing of shamelessly flaunting that they “get to have a face” while the children they tower over do not.
Bad Cattitude unpacks this staged photo op with Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacy Abrams at an elementary school in Atlanta. Again, how many smiling children’s eyes do you see in this picture?
“Stacey Abrams is pro mask and pro vaxx mandate. And yet here she sits, the only one in the photo with a face… She does not believe a word of her own rules. It did not even occur to her how this might look…
Imagine what these experiences are teaching children about their place in the world and their relationship to authority figures.”
Then there are those situations with children where adults are also masked. That, too, is highly damaging, especially for our youngest in the critical early stages of development. It’s taken two years for the fallout to be so blatantly obvious that even the mainstream press is asking “How long will we continue to torture kids?” In the NY Post’s opinion piece, Making kids wear masks in school is torture, not safety, their Editorial Board writes:
“Doctors and psychologists are just beginning to study the effects of mask-wearing on kids, but the early signs aren’t good. Younger children in particular are missing facial cues and social development…
Democrats have tried to gaslight Americans by saying that masks are not an inconvenience, and anyone who suggests otherwise is a murderer…
Panic has replaced common sense.”
Damaging a generation of kids
Beyond terrorizing kids with fear that if they don’t mask they might kill Grandma, cognitive decline caused by masks has led to normalizing lowered standards for development. Autism specialist and certified speech-language pathologist Maija C. Hahn writes, Instead of Admitting Mask Mandates Harm Kids, CDC Lowers Expectations for Speech Development. Whereas children over the age of two typically have mastered significant vocabularies, she says, the updated CDC guidance states that a two-and-a-half-year-old child is now expected to say only 50 words.
“I am appalled the CDC would quietly lower long-held pediatric language expectations by normalizing significant language delays as “the new normal.”
Hahn says that special needs kids have been so severely impeded by mask mandates that they could be set back “for a lifetime of therapy.” But all children are suffering from the damage:
“The CDC’s mask mandates have severely affected an entire generation of American children and we are just now beginning to see the long-term consequences. Kids who were born in the era of COVID-19, have no idea what a world without masks is — we should expect to see even greater speech and language deficits in these children in the coming months and years.”
In October of 2020, a German university set up an online registry for parents, doctors, teachers and others to record the side effects of masking children that they observed. In less than a week, data on nearly 26,000 children had been recorded. From the article First results of a Germany-wide registry on mouth and nose covering (mask) in children:
“The average wearing time of the mask was 270 minutes per day. Impairments caused by wearing the mask were reported by 68% of the parents. These included irritability (60%), headache (53%), difficulty concentrating (50%), less happiness (49%), reluctance to go to school/kindergarten (44%), malaise (42%) impaired learning (38%) and drowsiness or fatigue (37%).”
Psychiatrist Mark McDonald, M.D., author of United States of Fear: How America Fell Victim to a Mass Delusional Psychosis, sent a letter to his patients in February banning child masking in his practice. Forcing kids to mask, he says, is child abuse.
“My first ethical responsibility as a physician is to do no harm to my patients, and allowing children to mask their faces has caused and continues to cause tremendous harm to them physically, emotionally, psychologically and developmentally. Any argument to the contrary is naive and irrational.”
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“Masks… may not leave physical scars (although they often result in painful skin infections that can lead to permanent facial disfigurement),” says Dr. McDonald, “but they do cause significant and possibly permanent damage to a child’s brain, retarding speech and language development, crippling social skills, and inciting a vicious cycle of emotional dysregulation leading to major depression, self-harm, and substance abuse. We would never allow someone to do this to our children directly, so why do we condone it through the vehicle of a facemask?”
“Since children began wearing masks at school, on the athletic field, in airplanes—essentially everywhere outside the home—I have seen a significant decline in their ability to make eye contact, speak clearly, and initiate face-to-face communication with other human beings. Emotional resilience has dramatically declined. Children have become dull and slow in their thinking.”
In Port Townsend, the irrational masking of children continues in our schools. The lifting of mandates created a mix of the masked and unmasked, leading to teachers at the high school talking of segregating the two groups and even of arbitrarily forcing students to remain masked. On March 11th, a group of Port Townsend parents wrote an urgent letter to the district’s superintendent, principal and board after learning about this from their kids.
“Many students said their teachers stated they ‘can make students wear masks if they choose to.’ Also stated was if there was a shortage of desks [unmasked] kids would be forced to sit on the floor.” (Parents Appeal to PT Schools: Are Students Facing Mask Segregation?, PTPF 3-12-22)
The mask theater, penalizing those who do not comply, also extends to school staff. There is pressure being applied to require unvaxxed teachers to continue masking, a source told us: “Despite the mandate being lifted, the PT School District is trying to bully non-vaxxed teachers into wearing masks still.” It is undisputed that the shots are a dismal failure in stopping Covid’s transmission, yet we see another message to students (and teachers) that the non-compliant will be persecuted.
Mask measures are not and have never been about public health. This is an exercise in social engineering — rewarding compliance, punishing outliers, and conditioning the masses to obey authority.
And “with the advent of the mask craze, mental illness is no longer invisible in the public space,” says Dr. McDonald. “What was once reserved for only a psychiatrist’s ears is now on flagrant display to any citizen with eyes to see it.”
Dealing with No-Mask Anxiety
After two years of this insanity, we are really in a bind. Not only has the disastrous global response to Covid traumatized a generation of children, but now a significant portion of the public have anxiety about being UNmasked.
The mental health team at Good Therapy tells us this psyop has been so successful that according to the American Psychological Association, “nearly half of Americans admit they have concerns about resuming in-person interactions.” They are afraid to bare their faces again. They have a newly-coined mental issue, “no-mask anxiety”:
“No-mask anxiety is a condition where people are scared about the prospect of taking off their masks in public.”
They “feel uneasy when they themselves don’t wear a face covering, and they can also be uncomfortable around others who are not wearing masks.” These are the folks who were so successfully brainwashed by the narrative, the mask is now their security blanket. Believing that masks protect against viruses, they remain in a state of fear and anxiety over the invisible threat.
Dr. McDonald notes that many adults in his psychiatric practice are beyond anxious, they are literally addicted to hiding behind face coverings:
“In my adult patient population, many have developed a fear addiction. I strongly encourage them to remove facemasks whenever possible, including when visiting my office, as a necessary first step in overcoming this fear addiction.”
In a post just this week — Masking the problem / once the needle goes in, it never comes out — Bad Cattitude discusses a segment of maskers so dependent on this fetish, they are equivalent to alcoholics or drug addicts. Those with untreated “social anxiety disorder” have gotten hooked on covering their faces.
“The anxious, agoraphobic, neurotic, and OCD have always been with us and always been among us… They hate being out in public and interacting with people.” Or they fear “disease or dirt” to such an extent, they engage in “extreme hygiene.”
Conditioning the public to believe masks represent safety, virtue, and societal duty provided a socially sanctioned way to alleviate some of that anxiety. “They could do what they wanted but had always feared to do because what had been low status behavior was suddenly elevated to high status.” Continuing the drug addiction analogy Bad Cattitude warns, “The needle went in. Getting it back out will not be easy for these folks.”
He addresses the current conversation about how to respond to people who demand that for their peace of mind others around them also wear masks. Is perpetuating paranoia or mental instability a kindness? Some provocative thoughts regarding the mask addicted:
“No one would feel like they were being respectful if an alcoholic asked them to ‘just get drunk with me, it makes me feel comfortable.’
Doing so would have bad outcomes.
Well, so does ‘just mask up with me, it makes me feel comfortable.’
People try to spin this as ‘being respectful of the needs of others’ and ‘just be considerate, just be kind’ but it’s not. It’s giving tequila to a drunk…
Imposing peer pressure to drink upon an alcoholic is abhorrent. But that is exactly what the mask enablers and alleged allies here are doing to the mask addicted.
I know it sounds cruel, but really, the best thing you can do for these people is to help them keep their sobriety.”
Are local businesses who require their staff to remain faceless because it makes even unmasked customers “more comfortable” sanctioning abuse and discrimination of the working class? Does indulging irrational patrons’ fears help them… or just reinforce the mass psychosis?
Whether out of fear of lost business or out of perceived kindness, those enabling this madness are giving power to a perverse lie.
At what cost, kindness? Architects of this insanity like Fauci and Gates promise us the next virus is just around the corner. By indulging paranoia, mask anxiety/dependence/addiction, or any other form of mask-related mental illness today, the pump is primed for even greater mania the next go-round.
This has been a psyop—”a psychological operation,” in military parlance, “designed to influence the perceptions and attitudes of individuals, groups, and foreign governments.” In this case, the psyop has been worldwide, using relentless information warfare to undermine the morale and will of humanity, local to global.
Author’s note: This article uses the term public discourse to describe a specific type of communication used to gain understanding about matters of shared public concern. Public discourse is a process that involves dialog among trusted parties to discover the best outcomes for a community. Civic discourse is the traditional name for this activity. Unfortunately, civic discourse and civil discourse are now often used to describe rules for civility, politeness and being non-confrontational instead of the productive exchange of knowledge and ideas.
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Washington state was a very different place not that long ago. Disease outbreaks ran their course without the authorities imposing a never-ending medical dictatorship. Where were the public debates about lockdowns and potential remedies for COVID-19?
There were public comments on these issues but not all comments are public discourse even if the speaker is addressing issues relating to governance. Most public comments at our local meetings are statements for the public record. While a three minute presentation is an appropriate format for rants and sales pitches, it is useless for sharing complex information like scientific studies or in depth personal experience in a trade or profession.
Effective public discourse involves dialog. It is a seat at the table. It provides a feedback mechanism that all complex systems require to continue functioning for their intended purpose. A thermostat is necessary to keep a heating system or vehicle engine safe and operational. Complex systems help control train speeds to prevent derailments. Public discourse prevents ignorance and corruption from driving a community off the rails.
Public discourse was once an integral part of the dominant culture in our region. From academia to local watering holes, contrarian views were welcomed and debated – not labeled misinformation and used as evidence to banish someone to the gulag. Over the past several decades, the cancel culture replaced discussion with ostracizing anyone who challenged experts and ideologies favored by powerful government and corporate interests. There is no role for public discourse in the cancel culture.
The Evolution of the Cancel Culture – From Tribal Cohesion to Totalitarianism
Shaming, shunning, and exiling outcasts are ancient tools for dealing with threats to a community like thieves and child molesters. The cancel culture uses these same techniques to enforce loyalty to a political ideology.
My personal experiences with the local cancel culture all involve over-the-top outrage inflicted on individuals who have not harmed anyone, broken any laws, used foul language, or even displayed bad manners. The attackers have no doubts that terrible humans must be purged from their community and they proceed with ruthless precision. The true reasons for the attack are rarely revealed.
One example is a boycott planned to run a small business out of town a few years ago that I was privy to. The owners provided useful services and appeared to support themselves with income from this small business. The alleged reason for the attempted cancellation? People were not comfortable with advertisements the offenders were running in the local Leader newspaper. The ads were cringe-worthy but I never noticed anything kinky or alarming in the ads or my interactions with the owners. I did not join the boycott. I never found out why these people were targeted but I have seen patterns in situations where I had firsthand experience with the cancel culture.
Refusal to join boycotts and hate mongering will mark a person as a potential problem. Questioning or opposing a popular narrative or majority political opinion is unacceptable. It means a person does not share “community values” and is subject to removal. I have witnessed (and thwarted) attempts to have an undesirable evicted from their apartment based on false accusations. Apartment dwellers and small business owners were ideal cancel culture victims in the pre-Covid era – disposable people easily pushed into financial ruin. When totalitarian societies treat people this way, it is called a purge.
“The essence of totalitarianism — regardless of which costumes and ideology it wears — is a desire to completely control society, every aspect of society, every individual behavior and thought. Every totalitarian system, whether an entire nation, a tiny cult, or any other form of social body, evolves toward this unachievable goal… the total ideological transformation and control of every single element of society (or whatever type of social body it comprises). This fanatical pursuit of total control, absolute ideological uniformity, and the elimination of all dissent, is what makes totalitarianism totalitarianism.” – CJ Hopkins,The Great New Normal Purge
Totalitarian systems are effective at controlling the population in the short run. They eventually fail but not before inflicting significant misery on their subjects. Covid tyranny appears more extreme in places infested with an existing cancel culture, for example, Jefferson County and college campuses. Even if the tyrants recently rode in on the SARS-COV-2 virus, they do not appear to be going away anytime soon. Dealing with totalitarians requires recognizing and repelling the destructive purge techniques they use to acquire and maintain power.
Cancel Culture and the Practice of Ritual Defamation
The journey to real and virtual gulags usually begins with character assassination. The technique used across time and cultures is often described as Ritual Defamation:
“Ritual Defamation is used to hurt, to intimidate, to destroy, and to persecute, and to avoid the dialogue, debate and discussion upon which a free society depends. On those grounds it must be opposed no matter who tries to justify its use.” – Laird Wilcox
According to Wilcox,
“the central element is defamation in retaliation for the real or imagined attitudes, opinions or beliefs of the victim, with the intention of silencing or neutralizing his or her influence, and/or making an example of them so as to discourage similar independence and “insensitivity” or non-observance of taboos. It is different in nature and degree from simple criticism or disagreement in that it is aggressive, organized and skillfully applied, often by an organization or representative of a special interest group, and in that it consists of several characteristic elements.”
Learning ritual defamation characteristics is useful for protecting your reputation in the community. Wilcox’s element 2 may be the most difficult and important one to deal with during an attack.
“2. The method of attack in a ritual defamation is to assail the character of the victim, and never to offer more than a perfunctory challenge to the particular attitudes, opinions or beliefs expressed or implied. Character assassination is its primary tool.”
The best defense against Ritual Defamation is to anticipate an attack or at least quickly recognize it is happening if you are taken by surprise. Don’t ever apologize or attempt to justify any alleged character flaw or opinion that has offended your accusers. If someone attacks your character instead of your ideas, they are probably not interested in your opinions.
Eventually these individual attacks eliminate effective public discourse. When the price of challenging a belief system is too high, silence is usually the best short term economic decision especially for someone with limited assets or employment opportunities. Even long term residents may be reluctant to risk their standing in a community that they, and often their ancestors, have built and nurtured.
Lessons from the 4th Grade Mean Girls Club
My grade school classmates defeated the cancel culture of their time. There is much to learn from their success.
Imagine being forced by law to meet with your worst social media tormenters every weekday – in person. That describes my first few months in 4th grade. Several girls formed cliques and started a practice called “blackballing”. This involved identifying outcasts by drawing a black circle on a slip of paper followed by a person’s name. It was never clear why anyone was being blackballed or who would be next.
One day, all the girls were invited to an important meeting after school at Marilyn’s house. There were no adults in the large living room when the three clique leaders stood together an announced the end of cliques and blackballing. The rest of the meeting was spent planning some fun things we could do together.
In the years between that meeting and 8th grade graduation, we had many wonderful times together – parties, picnics, trick or treating and hours playing kick the can in the network of ally-ways behind the school.
The 4th graders first rejected their toxic system and dismantled the leadership structure. They then started rebuilding their community with input from the experts – every kid there who had an idea about what they considered fun. Even though our situation is much more complex, this two part model is useful for evaluating problems and possible solutions.
No End in Sight to an Entrenched Medical Dictatorship
There is always the possibility that the upcoming elections will provide better leadership. Unfortunately, six more months of destruction to essential services could be devastating. Medical care, utilities and schools are mostly public in our region. They are political entities controlled by the Covid tyrants.
Reliable utilities and emergency medical care are essential services for almost everyone. Our local providers made the decision to prioritize Covid tyranny over the well-being of the people who depend on them. There does not appear to be any future here for those of us who cannot afford our own off-grid power system or a helicopter to fly us to trusted health providers.
The legacy news media and the majority of registered voters in Jefferson County appear to favor a medical dictatorship form of government. There are no plans to change the state laws (RCW – Revised Code of Washington) or codes (WAC – Washington Administrative Code) used to justify this abuse of power.
Most elected local officials do not have the capability to evaluate the Covid scientific data themselves. They accept information exclusively from official sources often staffed by bureaucrats with unreliable past performance. There is a preference for authoritarian governance that may not change anytime soon.
Building / Rebuilding
While a voting majority is necessary to rebuild some Covid captured institutions, there are many opportunities for building replacements and walking away from the ones which no longer serve their purpose. Education is the most obvious with the growth of homeschooling.
Another example is the Port Townsend Free Press, which has replaced the area’s legacy media as a source of investigative reporting. Their comment section is a rare local source of diverse opinions. This is a good place to sharpen the public discourse skills that are necessary for citizen-directed governance.
Anti-Police Politicians Now Desperate for More Law Enforcement. Realizing that a shrunken Port Townsend Police Department can’t protect the city, City Council approved an agreement with the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office to rent deputies and their equipment. The city will pay significantly more than it would for a fully staffed police department. The annualized cost of a rented deputy and his equipment comes to around $200,000. But, according to the mayor — who spearheaded recent anti-police actions of council — this is “the reality of a tough situation. We’ve gotta do what we’ve gotta do.” Even if it means breaking the city’s budget.
In the past eighteen months or so, the city has lost more than half its police department to transfers to other agencies, resignations, and opting for retirement. It lost another officer just last week. How did Port Townsend so quickly lose so many valuable, highly trained personnel? Not one of the City Councilors bothered to ask.
A Grim Assessment
At its March 21, 2022, business meeting council heard from Chief Tom Olson that the skeleton crew of officers are being forced to work overtime in order to maintain at least one officer on duty 24/7. City Manager John Mauro stated that having just one officer on duty is “becoming very, very challenging.” In order to maintain minimal yet admittedly inadequate and unsafe coverage, the department has “greatly reduced,” as Mauro put it, services the police department normally provides. Chief Olson anticipates that it will take 12-18 months to get to “where our staffing levels are much closer to where they need to be.”
The Sheriff has in the past helped fill occasional gaps in PT’s patrols but has not been called upon to make up for anything like a greater than 50% shortfall in PTPD’s roster. The agreement approved by council is a renewal, but more costly renewal of the pre-existing arrangement. Neither the city manager nor the finance director was able to answer questions from council members on how much more this pricey arrangement will cost than had been budgeted for a police department staffed with 15 regularly employed officers in city vehicles.
Port Townsend Police Chief Tom Olson
Chief Olson could only predict that it was going to cost “a lot more.” This means the city will exceed its 2022 budget for law enforcement and will have to take the money from elsewhere. City Councilor Libby Urner Wennstrom called this “going into debt.” (To her credit, she recently did a ride-along and found she was patrolling the city with the only officer on duty that night.)
The $200,000 annualized figure was calculated by Mayor David Faber using the $93.34/hour “fully loaded” rate the city will pay for use of county deputies. “Fully loaded” includes the deputies’ rate of pay under their most recent union contract, and also the cost of their equipment, including their vehicle, and county overhead. On holidays, the “fully loaded” rate jumps to $121.63/hr. The figures Faber used are available in this staff briefing for council.
Why Has the City Lost More Than Half Its Police Department?
City councilors did not ask this question. The answer points at them.
In the summer of 2020, City Council launched what many members of the police department and surrounding law enforcement agencies viewed as a hostile and unfair “review”. It was clearly a pretext for anti-law enforcement measures council members openly discussed. The former mayor hoped — it was that obvious — for evidence that she thought would show bias by law enforcement against minorities. (The evidence was not there, though she kept seeking it.) The current mayor Faber, then a member of council, proposed disarming police by requiring them to lock their weapons in the trunks of their patrol vehicles. The current mayor initially sought to strip officers of their qualified immunity, meaning they would lose insurance coverage for even good faith mistakes made in a high-stress, high-risk situation, thus exposing themselves and their families to the ruinous costs of litigation and possible judgments. Other officials, like city councilors, would retain their qualified immunity and insurance coverage, even for acts of gross negligence, such as approving the Cherry Street Project. See “City Council Threatens Port Townsend’s Public Safety,” PTFP 7/29/20. (Former Chief Surber and his staff did a brilliant job fending off this attack on the department by convincing council that PTPD was already the most “progressive” department around.)
During 2020 elected officials in the city and county enabled and encouraged efforts to humiliate and disparage local law enforcement personnel. See “Reckoning with ‘The Reckoning,‘” PTFP 8/3/20 and “Black Lives Matter Sought to Humiliate Sheriff, Police Chief,” PTFP, 9/25/20. Anti-police protestors requested a police escort for their march down Sims Way and Water Street. Was this to humiliate police? Their motives were unclear and contradictory. The city gave them preferential treatment and police stood guard as marchers with “ACAB” (All cops are bastards) placards passed by. The leader of the event, a man known to law enforcement because of his long police record (including stealing a truck followed by a high-speed chase, followed by hitting a horse) was the keynote speaker. He was applauded by city leaders. That speech repeated numerous lies and baseless attacks on police in general. Ironically, this man’s life was saved by one of the law enforcement personnel he attacked in statements to The Leader. Unfortunately, due to threats and harassment of herself and her employer, a member of this law enforcement officer’s family was driven out the city where she had grown up.
The city’s anti-police animus continued through 2020. The city broke its own laws to rush through painting of “Black Lives Matter” on Water Street but rebuffed a request to honor law enforcement with a similar street painting.
In the face of this official hostility towards their husbands, fathers and sons, wives and mothers of local law enforcement officers organized what proved to be a massive “Back the Blue Rally” that attracted around 400 cars, truck and motorcycles. Instead of offering support, city officials and leaders (including the current mayor) were furious. It was reported to this author that the city manager was overheard yelling at the former police chief and demanding that charges be filed against the organizers — the wives, mothers and daughters of officers and deputies. As reported to me, the former chief stood his ground because the rally organizers and participants had broken no laws. (Laws were broken by anti-police protestors who blocked Water Street to interrupt the rally, but no charges against them were ever lodged.)
City council in their anti-police fervor was bent on eliminating the school resource officer. Why? Because they objected on ideological grounds to police in schools. The Port Townsend High School principal had to plead with them to keep the valued and beloved officer in her hallways. “PTHS Principal Tells City Council to Keep Police in Her School,“ PTFP, 9/28/20. (That particular officer has since left the Port Townsend Police Department.)
In September 2020 first responders had to fight the city to commemorate the sacrifice of firemen and police officers who died rushing into the Twin Towers on 9/11. Since 2002, they had been ringing the old fire bell at the hour when the planes hit the Twin Towers. This was the first time they had ever been denied permission to hold their modest ceremony.
In 2020, Officer Mark DuMond sustained such severe head injuries in the course of protecting a nurse at the hospital he was incapable of continuing to work as a police officer. While he was honored by the department and awarded two rare departmental Purple Hearts for lives he saved, city council telegraphed its hostility toward law enforcement, or at least its indifference to DuMond’s sacrifice, by doing nothing to recognize his suffering and service to the city. See “The Violence that Cost Port Townsend a Man Who Saves Lives,” PTFP, 12/6/20.
But now city leaders are concerned they don’t have enough police on the streets and are so desperate they will break the city’s budget to rent law enforcement services from the Sheriff.
Mayor David Faber blamed the alarming contraction of the police force on difficulties for new hires finding housing. Chief Olsen said nothing about qualified officers turning down job offers due to housing concerns; Faber resorted to what is becoming the go-to cause of every problem in the city, true or not. In this case it is not true. It does not explain why so many good officers — who already had housing — left the force in such a relatively short period of time.
Faber failed to acknowledge his own contribution to the city’s dilemma. Who wants to work for a city that treats police so badly? That city will likely hang you out to dry when it suits them. Chief Olson said he has not been able to hire the kind of people who meet his standards. Other communities are also looking for men and women who can fill the holes in their police rosters. Officers can choose a community that appreciates their professionalism and sacrifice, or they can work for a city administration that recently talked about disarming them and exposing them to personal ruin.
Communities across Washington state are finding it difficult to hire police due to the “police reforms” passed by the Legislature, measures that amount to little more than handcuffing police and giving criminals “drive away free cards.” Men and women who want to protect and serve can find better places to risk their lives.
Not long ago, PT City Council and its current mayor were talking about a smaller police force. They thought that turning against law enforcement was the smart political move. It certainly played well to the angry mob. Now taxpayers must pick up the tab, yet again, for the costs of council’s irresponsibility and ideological foolishness.
As you know, the censorship window has been closing on all forms of free speech and alternative views for some time now. You may not know that the Free Press website mysteriously crashed on Thursday, March 17th.
Anyone who attempted to log on saw a skeletal version of our homepage with a “critical error” message at the bottom.
Our website administrators say it was probably triggered by a WordPress update, thus they don’t think it was a hack (or St. Patrick’s Day leprechauns). Given the warnings we’ve received on our Facebook page over the last year, we remain agnostic on that determination, but we do ask for your input on the new look.
Please let us know in the comment section if you find the home page more or less inviting or accessible than the previous format. As we move forward, your views will weigh heavily in the website’s design.
We are so grateful for your ongoing interest and active engagement. Thank you, thank you.
