Brian Grear announced yesterday that he will run for NYS Senate against Senator George Maziarz. While doing so on Scott Leffler’s WLVL radio show, he pointed to his frustration in attempting to run for Sheriff that motivated him to up the ante and run for Senator of NYS.
If I understood this correctly, according to Grear, because of Maziarz and Henry Wojtaszek’s stalling Beilein’s appointment at the state level, there was not time for him to petition to run for Sheriff in Niagara County. So if this is true, the rules were such or being used as such by the Republican party leaders, or, possibly Beilein himself, that he was prevented from exercising his right to run.
If this is true, this incident points to a third situation, that illustrates the decay of politics in Niagara County and most likely in most American communities. In Grear’s case, whether it was the party bosses, Beilein or the administrative campaign/election rules that stonewalled his efforts is irrelevant. Why? Because it is always people who make the rules and interpret if not manipulate the rules either to their own benefit and power or in the spirit of democracy. The American democratic community and civil society is in such a state of corruption and decay, that the latter is rarely a consideration.
The Republican leaders in Niagara County are suspect in accepting and nurturing this decadent state of affairs in local politics. It is sad if not frightening, that they have reached a point that our deeply deficient political ethos is thought to be normal and acceptable if not desireable. In fact the leaders of the Republican party need not have consciously intended to deceive and corrupt the process for the process to be de facto decayed and corrupt. It is enough that they have taken advantage of and thereby exploited an intellectually disenfranchised populace and a disempowered political process. They are still responsible but equally as unconscious and indifferent as the people to the disintegration of what we stand for politically and legally in America.
In short the meaning and spirit of American democracy is in disastrous disarray in the hearts and minds of the people. Rational participation in the life of a political community is forgotten. The Grear situation points to this travesty of democracy, this shell of democracy that passes for the real thing. But apparently Grear and his supporters have had enough with the Republican machine and aim to do something about it. Hopefully they will not also stoop to the level of manipulation, power mongering and patronage-manipulation of the people that seems to be our history, not only among Republicans but also Democrats.
However, if your memory is very short we need to stoke the brain cells and compare the Grear situation to the recent ouster of Joan Wolfgang without any credible justification from the Niagara County Community College Board of Trustees and the trumped up discontent that led to the administrative purging of Tom Christy’s very popular Legislative Journal program from the airwaves of LCTV Cable.
My point is that where there is the same smoke there is likely to be a similar fire. In each of the three cases of Grear, Wolfgang and Christy, upstanding, politically concerned members of the community were maneuvered out of their roles in the community by politically spurious if not devious means. The spirit of democracy was not taken into account in these occurrences. Undue influence, political manipulation and/or justification by power alone was enough to drive these three citizens from participation which, in a just and fair democracy, would have been considered an egregious and unconscionable offense against political norms, the integrity of the people and even common sense.
But the people remain unconscious to passionate, critical thinking and when “the people” has been reduced to a cretinized populace of abstract individuals, demoralized, disinterested and disinformed about the political process and events of the day, then such travesties of democracy and justice can pass, as they do, virtually unnoticed. When reason, critical thinking, sustained inquiry, historical reflection and motivated self-awareness of what is in the interest of the people and the good of the community is absent, and only the shell of democracy remains, surely then power, coercive legislative power blocs and politic threats can rule the day. When the people have stopped thinking and caring, then the integral rational political process that constitutes the heart of democratic discourse and deliberation appears to be a mere academic consideration.
These three cases surely seem not to pass the smell test for undue and coercive political influence. And I do use the word “political” here quite loosely because it has little to do with authentic democratic political process. But when such process lacks the organic community of citizens who alone can demand explanation and justification that holds water when such supremely questionable actions are taken, then the heart of democracy cannot beat. Then the people as a whole do not feel entitled to question, criticize and sustain the demand for reasonable action, justifiable governance and legitimate representation.
The cases of Grear, Wolfgang and Christy are symptoms of a pathologically depoliticized community and a de-communalized public sphere of civil society. They are signs of an educational system that has forsaken responsibility for concrete civic instruction. They are warnings of government leaders who have sinned against their long-since repressed pedagogical responsibility to honor, uphold and propagate the principles of democracy as opposed to taking advantage of our nihilistic state of political affairs and playing the shell game of control, domination and political pretense.
There must be a return to accountability in government and integrity in political process. Only a genuine community clear as to its identity, values and purpose can assure that this takes place. When political leaders will not help the community to return to and reconstitute its civic roots, the subsequent, long process of irrationality and disillusionment may itself lead to radical re-evaluation and the revolutionary action that our own Constitution guarantees and reminds us, in the end, is our duty.
Right on Larry. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. What I find depressing and unforgiveable is that the local newspapers are know enough and smart enough to know this shell game by the Republicans and do nothing about it. The power of the press, instead of exposing the continued actions of the Republicans, directly support it by doing and printing nothing. Which only leads one believe that they are in the pockets of the Republican power brokers and the county legislative majority caucus (a joke) When Updegrove says that they wanted someone on the NCCC Board that shares their management philosophy or words to that effect (the majority caucus'),he is really saying they want someone who will do what they want, don't ask questions, and run the NCCC board as politically as possible, just like the running of the County Legislature. And the newspapers sit idle = no balls!
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