There was a time when Americans could disagree agreeably without calling each other dirty names, or questioning integrity or honesty or patriotism or even sanity. But that phase — and maybe that’s what it was, simply a passing phase — has vanished from public life. Within the past 24 hours, I had an opportunity to see the new phase in action: Once at the city council meeting last night and again on the televised hearings of Attorney General Loretta Lynch testifying in front of the House Judiciary Committee today. The hearings were at two very different venues, one local and one national, but both showing many of the same symptoms.
There is a battle royale going on in Point Dume and, from what I could see, everyone is angry at just about everyone else. There is apparently a major traffic and safety problem on the Point. People are driving too fast, kids are driving electric carts, some streets are very narrow, there are some questions about emergency vehicle access, the skies are dark but so are the streets, the sidewalks meander and then some disappear, and there are all sorts of encroachments into the public right-of-way. Some streets have humps or bumps, and some none. Some streets have parking and others, nothing. Some areas on the Point have many tourists. Some tourists are considerate and some are total slobs. Some homeowners are recent and have paid a small fortune for their new homes while others have been there forever and generally speaking are not crazy about any changes other than an increase in the value of their homes. It has all the ingredients of conflicting stakeholders, including a bunch of public agencies — and that includes the city. Some streets have problems, but the solutions for some of those problems don’t work for the neighbors on the next street who have different problems or different points of view.
From what I heard, the real dividing issue appears to be encroachments. Encroachments are things that have been put into the public right-of-way — not necessarily onto the street but typically into the area where a sidewalk might go, or where the city might want to widen a street. Point Dume is rural, and over the years gardens have extended into the public right-of-ways, along with fences, and stone walls, and mailboxes, and trees, and whatever. The city would like to put in some traffic fixes on Point Dume, which would probably require the removal of some of those encroachments and a considerable number of residents have gone ballistic, which I can well understand. Being ordered to remove something that’s been in front of your house for 30 years is very upsetting. Judging from the speakers at the council meeting, people didn’t just disagree — they charged the city had lied to them, or was distorting the facts, or there was some sort of chicanery involved, or the council was actually born in Kenya, or whatever. The council apparently was somewhat taken aback by the reaction and the attacks and said, “Ok, let’s hold off bit and do a Survey Monkey questionnaire and see how all the people on the Point stand on the issue.” Immediately, the survey was attacked as inadequate, incomplete and biased. I went online to look at it and, frankly, it seemed kind of bland. In the final analysis the council will probably find the opinions are all over the place, and may well begin to wonder why they got into the issue in the first place. We’ll follow it and keep you posted.
At the house hearing, Attorney General Loretta Lynch testified about her decision to not file any criminal charges against Hillary Clinton. She basically said that the Justice Department’s career prosecutors and career FBI agents had unanimously agreed there was no criminal case and she followed their recommendation. The house chair came at her in a dozen different ways, challenging her character, the federal prosecutors’ and agents’ characters, the suggestion that talking to former President Bill Clinton was somehow improper and suggested a fix was in and then he tried to get her to review the evidence with the house committee. She didn’t take the bait, merely smiled at him and in a very calm voice referred him back to the evidence given by the FBI director on the facts; after numerous tries without her budging, he finally gave up. Lynch is Harvard and Harvard Law educated, a career prosecutor herself and did her alma maters proud. I suspect the committee never thought she would break but just wanted to keep the issue on the front page as long as possible, figuring that it’s one that hurts Hillary. But it’s a small window of time, because their convention starts this week and the public’s attention will move on, but fundamentally, they accomplished their aim, which was to damage her character and credibility. The attacks, like the Benghazi hearings, ended not with a bang but just a whimper.