By Allison Hope, Greenwich
There’s something important you learn quickly as a parent. You must choose your battles. If you fight every pushback, unreasonable request or erratic behavior (the toddler screaming because he wants his favorite dinosaur but it’s already in his hand, anyone?) you will run out of steam before lunch time. But you also cannot ignore the important moments, the ones that simply cannot be ignored, because you don’t want your child to say, burn the house down, or go to school with no pants on.
The same logic might be applied to the current state of affairs with our sociopolitical environment. The extreme right-wing has adopted a platform of culture wars or bust (devoid of any actual solutions). Rather than talking about how they’re going to fix our crumbling infrastructure or ensure we’re setting future generations up for success with a strong economy and climate resiliency, they are talking about transgender people playing sports and whether students should learn that slavery was wrong. Note: transgender people’s rights and safety and learning about slavery’s abhorrent stain on American history are important, but are these the leading issues for most voters?
Our town is far from immune. The hostile takeover of the Greenwich Republican Town Committee (RTC) follows the same playbook we’re seeing play out nationally. Rather than focus on how we’re going to fix our school buildings, solve congestion and safety issues in our streets, or prevent future flooding and protect our homes, they’ve launched campaigns against everything from masks during a global pandemic, library books, teaching race and gender in school and the identical litany of social issues that extremists are pushing in towns around the country, and which most Americans do not think are the most important things our elected officials ought to be focused on.
Urgently, the culture wars the right-wingers are waging are hurting people, notably groups that already face higher levels of discrimination, disparities and now are facing off against higher rates of hate crimes, owed to the hateful rhetoric and disinformation the far right is perpetuating.
The RTC is inviting the face of extremism into town by hosting the toxic Florida Governor Ron DeSantis in September to raise funds for his presidential campaign. Concerningly, the leaders of the RTC in this town have pushed blatant lies, most recently calling an anti-LGBTQ hate crime a “hoax” and defending an antisemitic slur they used to describe a Jewish candidate.
It’s easy to dismiss the crazy on the internet who makes outrageous and unfounded claims, but when it’s the leaders of the party in power in the town in which you live, it’s a very real and terrifying proposition, and it needs to be called out.
Joe Montanaro, the vice chair of the RTC, said just days ago that the heinous homophobic and transphobic attack on the night of Greenwich Pride this past June was a “hoax,” inferring, with zero evidence, that perhaps the democrats staged it. I can say with certainty that is not something the party with integrity who cares deeply about all Greenwich residents would ever even consider doing. It says much more about the character of someone who would even dream up such a false charge. Most importantly, blasting out blatant lies is dangerous. It gives license to people to dismiss alarming signposts of threats to members of our community. One needs not look any further than Florida, where a mass murder targeting Black Americans follows a loud agenda to erase mention of racism or the stain of slavery. Our leaders should condemn bigotry, not claim it doesn’t exist.
What we’re seeing play out in this country and in our town is not just uttered falsehoods of a foolish few; or even the echoes of an embarrassing Trumpian presidency; they are evidence of a deeply concerning pattern that have haunting parallels to the very worst in our history — Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin. Making a mockery of the press to invalidate factual reporting. Distorting real events into questionable myths. These are the things the fascist playbook is made of.
The concentration camps were just labor camps. Slavery was good because it taught Black Americans valuable skills. Hate crimes are hoaxes.
The decision is no longer as simple as voting for the party that will keep taxes low (though the Dems have a plan for better fiscal management that continues to value low taxes). It’s about the soul of our town, our country, holding tight to our moral compass that is slipping fast away. It’s about preserving democracy so that capitalism and free markets can continue, so that our inalienable rights don’t get trampled while we’re looking the other way. It’s about reclaiming the republican party. It’s so that every Greenwich resident and every American can safely reach for their piece of apple pie.
The vitriol is dangerous. We cannot afford to allow this to continue. We must choose our battles but not sit idly by while the lies pile up. If we do, we may lose it all.