When Zealotry Crosses the Line of Decency

Seattle Post-Intelligencer ^ | 8 October 2005 | Robert Jamieson

[Publius]

The tan-colored home in Shoreline shows signs of the times.

A blue sign near the window reads, "Bush-Cheney."

A large one near the front walkway declares, "Elect David Irons -- King County Executive."

Ken Potts, a Vietnam War veteran and Shoreline resident, has become the target of vandalism aimed at his politics.

An electronic display in an upstairs window scrolls these words in red: "Liberalism is a mental disorder."

"That's a quote from Michael Savage," Ken Potts, the owner of the home, explains, referring to the strident talk radio personality. "He's a little right of me, but he comes up with good stuff sometimes."

Potts leans politically right, and unapologetically so.

A strong Christian and an Army vet with three tours in Vietnam, Potts, a King County Jail corrections officer, considers himself a patriot of America.

This explains the handful of tiny American flags in his front yard, the neon American flag display in the front window and the 25-foot-high flagpole out front, flying red, white and blue.

One new message at the Potts household is as bold as it is unwanted: "BUSHNAZIS."

The word was spray-painted in 2-foot-tall black letters a little more than a week ago, when Potts was on a photography trip in Southeast Asia.

To see the writing on the side of the home is to bear witness to the rising temperature of our liberal-minded community.

As the war in Iraq trudges on, free expression comes with an unexpected cost -- attacks on private property.

What is worse, some people accuse Potts -- a man who tells me that he was thousands of miles away when the words appeared -- of having a hand in what happened as part of a politically motivated stunt.

I asked Potts about that. He reacted as if someone had cold-cocked him.

"When people question your integrity, your honesty," the Purple Heart recipient said, shaking his head as leaves rustled in his yard near North 185th Street, "it's worse than the attacks itself."

Note that he said "attacks," plural.

The anti-Bush scrawl on the house Potts has called home for 15 years prompted him for the first time to speak up about other recent vandalism -- incidents being investigated by the King County Sheriff's Office.

For months, unknown people have targeted the property. For months, the property owner has kept silent.

One night in May of last year Potts heard a thump-thump at midnight. He jumped out of bed, went outside and saw that one of his Bush-Cheney signs had been pelted with raw eggs. Part of his house was drenched in yolk, too. Soon afterward, someone poured gray paint on a pro-GOP sign.

His mailbox has been blown up twice with firecrackers. That was back in 2003 and 2004. Potts now has a heavy-gauge steel mailbox cemented into the ground.

Vandals have taken down his American flag three times. Twice it was stolen. A third time the miscreants tore it up and left the shreds in the yard.

Another time, Potts said, someone drew a swastika on his white 101st Airborne Division flag emblazoned with the division's screaming eagle symbol.

On the flag, the trespasser also wrote, in red, "murderer."

Potts, 58, couldn't fathom why someone would invoke such a heinous symbol. The 101st, which Potts was a part of when he suffered shrapnel wounds in Vietnam, led the charge to thwart the Nazis during World War II.

Not long ago, someone keyed the family's black truck -- the vehicle with the bumper sticker asking people to support U.S. troops.

And now this: BUSHNAZIS.

It all stems from ignorance, the kind of zealotry one finds in extremists of all political stripes, people who cross the line of common decency.

Potts' wife, Marytia, says vandalism is pointless.

A native of Vietnam, Marytia met Potts when he was a soldier. They have been married 36 years and have two grown children. Having come from an authoritarian Third World country, Potts' wife says she appreciates the freedoms and opportunities in the United States -- blessings that brave soldiers help to preserve.

The couple now fear that the people responsible for attacking their home might ratchet up the intimidation.

That is why they have installed security cameras.

So, it has come to this.

In America, civil people are supposed to be able to agree to disagree. In America, people are supposed to respect the private property of others.

What's been happening to the Potts is a display of the un-American way.

[sionnsar]

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[Publius]

Ping.

[trubluolyguy]

This article proves that in Washington State, free speech applies only if you are a lib-nut.