Posted on 07/26/2017 7:33:59 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Earlier this week, PBS published a piece about three conservative women in the city of Portland. It’s an unusual perspective in a city that is overwhelmingly progressive. As you would expect, many of the locals aren’t kind to those with a different opinion. Helen Church became more active about her political beliefs after her son’s middle-school teacher told him that anyone who supported Trump was a racist:
Up to that point, Church’s activism consisted mostly of writing letters to local and state representatives, and sometimes the White House. But as she watched people on the left continuously denigrate Trump supporters, she also became more active online. She joined dozens of pro-Trump Facebook groups, and as she spoke up, she said, she began getting messages from women who told her they admired her courage…
As Church became more active, she was targeted online by people with opposing views; some even threatened to come to her house and hurt her. The comments unnerved her, but she mostly tried to ignore them. She knew that bullying happened on both the right and left.
That worked until one day last spring, when she posted a comment on a story online about how the Affordable Care Act had hurt people she knew. After she posted it, she recalled, she got a private message from someone calling her a racist and saying it was clear she wanted children to die.
Church, who also was criticized by someone on the right for not being patriotic enough, considered killing herself and might have if her husband had not intervened. Another woman featured in the story is Kathryn Townsend who lives in Washington state. She became a frequent attendee at conservative rallies after witnessing members of Antifa shouting at a Gold Star mother, i.e. someone whose child had died while serving in the armed forces. Eventually, she lost her job after Antifa posted information about her online:
Rose City Antifa listed Townsend as a person to watch in what the group called the area’s “racist rage revival club.” The listing included her photo and a warning that Townsend, who lived in Gig Harbor, Washington, a few hours from Portland, but visited regularly for rallies, was known for traveling “across state lines.”…
A few weeks later, as Rose City Antifa encouraged its followers to contact the employers of the pro-Trump rally-goers, to try to get them fired, Townsend’s employer received an anonymous message. The message asked if the company was aware a violent right-wing extremist worked there. Being listed and targeted at work scared Townsend, who offered to resign her position. Her manager accepted.
The last person featured in the story is Athena Brown a transgender woman who gradually got tired of the political correctness she experienced on the left and became a Trump supporter. But as she became more vocal about her views, she lost friends in droves:
In mid-2016, Brown decided to see if there were any Republicans in Portland with whom she could connect. She went to a Multnomah County Republican street fair, where she met a group of women who were immediately receptive. (The county includes the city of Portland and some surrounding suburbs.) “There was plenty of warmth and acceptance,” she said, more than she’d ever felt on the left. “I’m a trans lesbian atheist, and they are conservative Christian. But not one single time has my gender come up, unless I’ve brought it up.”
When Brown came out as transgender in 2013, only two friends stopped speaking to her. When she came out as Republican, soon after her trip to the street fair, she remembered being blocked by roughly 100 people on Facebook, mostly from the LGBTQ community, she said.
Portland is one of the most progressive cities in the country with one of the most active and most violent Antifa movements. It is also intolerant of people with a different opinion. That’s not a problem limited to the left of course, but it is one the left often pretends is limited to the right. In other words, the left’s self-image as tolerant and diverse doesn’t seem to hold up well in ultra-progressive Portland.
I live near Vancouver, Canada and it seems to me that all the large cities of the west coast region are basically crazed beyond repair. I think it must be something in the salmon.
The tolerant left hates any conservatives...I’m a proud Trump supporter.
“The left is the most belligerently intolerant bunch of people I have ever seen.”
Yup. And they are getting the vapors now that we are starting to “hate them right back.”
“The probability that Civil War 2.0 will erupt is growing stronger.”
It sure looks that way.
You know it is screwed up when Hollywood makes a series that makes fun of how weird you are (Portlandia).
I knew only two people who voted for obamy. Both were loony tunes. Cut even outside contact with them so can’t say if they voted for Hellary or not but heard one was slowly waking up.
I belive Vancouver residents who work in Portland have to pay some kind of tax
I meant if they live in Vancouver they would work there. Obviously if they worked in Portland they would be taxed by Oregon.
I am in the closet here in Hollywoodland. The hate could hurt me and my family.
It is unAmerican to not allow our fellows to freely express opinions we don’t agree with.
And frankly that is what I see mostly on this thread: the same immature intolerance of other opinions. Don’t think you are any better than the intolerant libs.
So true! Where are the #assassinateobama hash-tags? Why is the secret service overloaded because of Trump death threats? Where are the stories of right wingers showing up at Democrat functions trying to kill as many Democrat congressmen as possible and carrying a list of left wing congressmen he/she would like to kill? Where are the mobs of Right wingers rioting, burning local businesses and attacking police over some left wing speaker at the local college or university? Why is it that a conservative speaker cannot go to a college or university campus with/out security? There is no comparison between the massive violence on the left as compared. The same rule applies to veracity: the left considers lying a sport while the right considers the truth a virtue!
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