You will be incredulous when I say that it has been a great week for decency in America. Three days ago an aging white man walked into a synagogue with a collection of firearms and shot 17 people, killing 11. Three days before that, an aging white man shot two black men in a grocery store. Several days before that a different aging Caucasian man mailed bombs to a dozen critics of our current president. And of course this is all against the backdrop of yet another aging white man’s metronome of anti-semitic fear mongering about Latin American refugees and asylum seekers, who must have it pretty bad in Honduras considering they’re still on their way here.

That sounds a lot like the most indecent week in recent memory, doesn’t it? But while the drum of right wing violence beats on, the national dialogue is bending over backwards to appeal to reason, prayers, and decency, and to condemn violence in general on all sides. In the face of skyrocketing extremist Christian terrorism in the United States, a national news media has been cowed by those same right-wing extremists into providing “fair and balanced” calls for decency as vitriolic rhetoric continues to inspire violence.

As the right continues to defame the nature of news (truth, facts, etc.), centrist pundits and the mainstream left continue to bury their heads in the sand in the interest of decency and order, as though Dr. King never warned “that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice and humanity,” or that “the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice.”

The simple truth of the matter is that we in the United States have a domestic terrorism problem, and have since our foundation. It is a problem that ebbs and flows in the fringes of the mainstream, and today enjoys legitimacy on a national level unseen since the Jim Crow era. The legitimacy granted to right wing extremists by the rhetoric of our federal government has increased racial and right wing violence in America, and squeamishness on the part of the Obama Administration allowed it to flourish.

In 2008, Department of Homeland Security analyst Daryl Johnson warned that the financial crisis and election of a black man to president could lead to an uptick in right wing extremism and violence. His report was intended to warn and inform law enforcement agencies nationwide, but was leaked and triggered widespread political backlash from the right. He went on (recently, but before this past week) in a WashPo OpEd:

“Unfortunately, the Department of Homeland Security caved to the political pressure: Work related to violent right-wing extremism was halted. Law enforcement training also stopped. My unit was disbanded. And, one-by-one, my team of analysts left for other employment. By 2010, there were no intelligence analysts at DHS working domestic terrorism threats.”

In the interest of not hurting feelings on the political right, the Department of Homeland Security abandoned investigations into real, credible, and accelerating dangers of terrorism on American soil. Dangers that we have seen materialize into right wing terrorist violence in the decade since that happened.

The difference between active Christian Identity militias and Al Qaeda is their legitimacy in the local mainstream, nothing else. And right now a Republican State Representative in Washington state is advocating for a Christian caliphate to secede from the nation. The President of the United States enjoys the rabid support of neo-nazis and white supremacists. A robust disinformation campaign surrounds hot-button issues of immigration, gun rights, and religious freedom, and it hinges on ancient tropes of anti-semitism, racism, and jingoistic nationalism.

This is dangerous. And appeals for reason and measured response from the middle only allow the center to drift right and further endorse right wing extremism. Indecent actions and beliefs cannot be met with decency.

Talk is not cheap, words have meaning, and language matters. It’s time we use language that accurately describes the current threats to American ideals: religious extremism is religious extremism, whether it is Christianity or Islam. Terrorism is terrorism whether the zealots brandish the Q’ran or the Bible. And state-sanctioning of that terrorism is the same whether it is Saudi, Pakistani, or American.

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Well folks, this is it. We’ve been bellyaching and complaining about pretty much everything for two years straight now, and it’s time to put our money where our mouth is. We’re less than a month out from midterm elections, and if you vote absentee in Montana you’ve already received your ballot. If you haven’t had a look at the ballot yet, you can see a copy of it here. Let’s do this.

And you might have a few questions. Something like, “who the fuck are all these judges, anyway?” and, “aren’t both candidates for sheriff scumbags? Is there a chance we would actually be better off with bands of armed vigilante posses than with our current police departments?” and, “didn’t you just make an argument not that long ago that we don’t all actually need to vote?“. And these are all good questions. Let’s look for answers together.

So with no more pageantry, please consider this Gentleman’s Guide to the Midterm Ballot: Missoula Edition. It’s a long ballot this time, so stick with me – there’s important stuff in here all the way to the end. And if you don’t live in Missoula, then, well, maybe this post is like a time capsule only with space not time. Like National Geographic in the 1970s, or something. I don’t know. Keep reading or don’t.

For United States Senator

– Rick Breckenridge (L)

– Matt Rosendale (R)

– Jon Tester (D)

This is a big one. You’ve probably heard about this race, even if you don’t live in Montana. The incumbent senator is two-term Jon Tester, who is facing a full court press from Matt Rosendale, who’s pretty much your high school gym teacher with gobs of money.

All three candidates cut their teeth in the state legislature, and there is a stark divide between two camps. In the most recent debate, Senator Tester reiterated his background as a rancher and his public service in soil conservation and education.

Rosendale made his position clear that the government has no business anywhere, really, and that he would like to abolish the EPA, the Department of Energy, and the Department of Education. He went on, “Energy should be controlled by the companies that are out there producing the energy. The only place that we should have energy involved in government is the Department of Defense.” In fact, beyond the military, Rosendale’s position is that the government should only intervene in any way when it comes to women’s health, at which time the Individual should pretty much screw off. Ooh also as the Montana insurance commissioner he allowed insurance companies to sell policies that do not cover pre-existing conditions, which is pretty much like saying, “fuck you, kids with cancer.”

For his part, Breckenridge is right there with Rosendale on pretty much everything, although he’s surprisingly less hawkish on immigration. So if you hate clean water, public land for hunting and recreation access, education, and healthcare, but overt Racism-As-Policy is where you draw the line, then maybe Breckenridge is your guy. Also, he looks like this:

For United States Representative

– Greg Gianforte (R)

– Elanor Swanson (L)

– Kathleen Williams (D)

This is another one where you’ve probably got your mind pretty well made up. On the one hand, you’ve got the anti-public lands, anti-first amendment carpetbagger from Jersey. On the other, you’ve got Kathleen Williams, whose record shows her commitment to improving healthcare, education, and economic health for Montana’s residents. (Remember that education, not deregulation, is what drives economic growth.) Your call, I guess.

But then, of course, there’s Eleanor Swanson. Give her a look. If you think that polluters should be responsible for cleaning up their messes, that infrastructure investment is a principle responsibility of the government, and that women should speak for their own healthcare, but for whatever reason you can’t bring yourself to vote left-of-center, Eleanor Swanson might speak to you. She’s sort of like a leftist candidate who thinks that supercorporations will somehow clean up after themselves without the EPA, and that everyone should have a gun on them at all times. Neat.

For Clerk of the Supreme Court

– Bowen Greenwood (R)

– Rex Renk (D)

– Roger Roots (L)

What the hell does the Clerk of the Supreme Court do, anyway? That’s a good question. The C of the SC (as I started calling it) controls the docket and filings, manages the appellate process, and is the custodian of the Seal of the Supreme Court and of all official Court records and files for the public and the Court. Why is this an elected position? That’s a better question. I don’t really know. But here we are, voting for someone to schedule meetings and stamp stamps, and given that they control what gets onto the state Supreme Court docket, it’s one of those jobs that’s maybe a bit more important than it sounds like.

Bowen Greenwood – doesn’t seem like a bad guy. In addition to running for C of the SC, he advertises that he’s a martial artist, a marksman, a mortorcyclist, and a man of Jesus. He’s also a published author, and has released a suite of “clean thrillers,” or contemporary Christian fantasy. Sounds like a cartoon version of Ned Flanders, with a goatee. Cool. Of course he has zero legal background whatsoever, and his campaign page really puts forward his novel, Death of Secrets, and a career as a PR consultant. For comparison, here’s a bio of the guy who’s held the position for thirty years. Ouch.

Rex Renk – According to his campaign page, Rex has not written any YA fiction. But he has served as the Deputy Clerk of the Supreme Court (under the current C of the SC) for 23 years. He has experience in the office and leading initiatives to increase transparency and access to public documents, and also was the youngest of 14 kids, which, holy fuck.

Roger Roots – Roger does not have a campaign page, but he does have a Facebook page. Like another candidate on the ballot, he has written a book. Only his book is titled, “The Conviction Factory: the collapse of America’s criminal courts,” and he actually has a background in law. His platform is based in the belief of parity between the state and the individual, which, when it comes to access to court documents is probably pretty fair. He’s also got a record of holding corrupt law enforcement officials accountable, and again, if you can’t bring yourself to vote for the clearly qualified candidate because of the “D” next to his name, Roger may just fit the bill. Just do bear in mind he has promised that “every decision I make will be anti-government in order to equalize the imbalance of power in this [judicial] branch when it comes to the state over its citizens.”

For Supreme Court Justice #4 Full Term

– Yes

– No

Shall we retain or jettison Beth Baker? Justice Baker carries a laundry list of credentials from prestigious schools, and was recently granted an award for professionalism from the Montana Bar Association. She chairs the state Supreme Court’s Access to Justice Commission (which strives to increase access to legal resources for all Montanans). Wildly intelligent, qualified, and committed to ensuring that Montana’s disenfranchised have equal access to legal support? Um, your call, I guess.

For Supreme Court Justice #2 Unexpired Term

– Yes

– No

Shall we retain or jettison Ingrid Gustafson? She has a background as a public defender, a partner in private practice, and 14 years as a district court judge. She has been an advocate for sentencing reform to decrease Montana’s prison population, and initiated Yellowstone County’s Drug Court, which emphasizes rehabilitation over incarceration for non-violent drug offenses. All good stuff unless you own a private prison.

End of Part 1! (Get back to work, seriously)

Tune in next week for Part 2, wherein we dig up dirt on local magistrates, propose that a lawless hellscape is better than our current options for sheriff, and parse the really exciting ballot items: initiatives and referendums!

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Well, friends, the midterms are coming. You know the midterms. It’s the thing we on the left have been shrilling about for damn near two years. It’s time to get our shit together, now, and actually go do the thing. You know, vote.

That means we need to register, and make sure we haven’t been purged from voter rolls by right wing incumbents, and turn out in numbers so vast that we can cut against the lean of decades of gerrymandered congressional districts. It means that we need to know the ballot, the whole ballot, and not simply the well-financed names at the top. It means that we need to be informed on a breadth of issues and topics and initiatives and referendums, and for that we need a source.

A news source.

Unfortunately, “reading the news” isn’t as easy as it sounds, even if we wanted it. Generally, news content has shifted from print to online, and advertising revenue has cratered – the economics of reporting the news has grown increasingly dire.

Nationwide, we have watched as the news industry simultaneously consolidates and democratizes, and a few (incidentally conservative) conglomerates have spent the last decade acquiring local and regional newspapers and channels under names like Lee and Sinclair. At the same time, local alt-weeklies have seen a nearly 40% decline in circulation in the last five years alone. This explains why so many have shuttered in recent years, leaving a void of the kind of in-depth, long form reporting that is essential for understanding the complexity of issues facing voters today.

And while consolidation and profitability are not inherently wrong (in fact that’s pretty much the publisher’s entire job), there is a clear and present threat to our democracy when shareholder interests bleed onto editorial cue cards. I mean, remember this shit?:

This comes at a time when the President of the United States is literally taking pages out of 1984 as he tells us to reject the evidence of our eyes and ears:

There is no question that the constant, pernicious assault on the legitimacy of the news media is the greatest threat our county faces today. But what is most troubling about this is the way that an authoritarian leader has appropriated critiques of the industry that aren’t entirely invalid.

It used to be that it took significant resources to produce the news. It required a means of broadcast or physical distribution, operations of a huge scale that carried their own kind of legitimacy. Reporters and anchors were professionals, trusted by the public to unflinchingly report on current events. This implicit legitimacy that comes alongside the fact of broadcast has lingered in the public subconscious for much longer than it has necessarily been true.

It used to be that in order to get a byline or give an interview on television, you were vetted by checks and balances. Now, as the news model that has served our democracy for hundreds of years unravels, it takes only a blog and free time to pose as legitimate news. This goes for propaganda outlets on the left and the right, DemocracyNow! and InfoWars are indistinguishable, The Huffington Post is as Fair and Balanced as Fox News.

We have forgotten that what makes news trustworthy and reliable is not the resources to broadcast it, but an ironclad code of journalistic ethics, bestowed in an environment in which journalists are professionals. We are losing, laying off, buying out the professionals, and we are suffering as a result.

Without professional journalism every other possible disagreement that we may have is moot, because without legitimate, professional journalism we cannot possibly agree on even a common set of basic facts. Without real journalism the conditions for conversation are not met, and democracy cannot function without a conversation. This is a big deal, and the central threat to whatever American greatness ever existed.

The solution, of course, is that we need to pay for journalism. Not through advertising dollars that fluctuate at a whim and pander to a low common denominator, but through public funding and a commitment to independence. A free press is guaranteed by the constitution and needs to be funded publicly, for public benefit. Our very survival depends on it.

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