In the Trump era, a friend told me, all political sins are wiped clean in a day. Details and new developments are blurred within a news cycle that moves at the speed of light. Reversals from campaign promises are dismissed with a condescending shrug of the shoulders and a smile. Attempts at intelligent discussion are made at the risk of being ridiculed and/or cancelled for triggering the smug preciousness that seems to have replaced a desire to understand.
Minds are already made up.
“I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters …,” old orange-puss said on the campaign trail during his first run for office.
Did he get it right or what?
Yeah, he did. But before we get too smug about the endless examples of MAGA arrogance, it might be wise to look in the mirror to see if there are any signs of smugness and condescension on our own progressive faces.
Take, for example, our treatment of Portland City Councilor (District 4) Mitch Green.
I can let go of some of his lesser infractions. The delinquent property taxes, the back yard bush burning incident in July (with forest fire conditions at extreme levels), the charges (later dropped) of funding campaign-like Instagram posts with city dollars, the secretive backroom participation in discussions to reopen PGE’s request to mow down large swaths of Forest Park for new transmission lines may all point to bouts of sloppy decision making and shoddy ethics. But we all make mistakes, right? Remember how similar campaign complaints, later overturned, brought down Rene Gonzalez’s 2024 mayoral campaign run? I didn’t like it then and I don’t like it now.
But how in the world has the treasure trove of tweets that Green deleted before running for City Council, now recovered with the help of Recalibrate Portland’s Max Steele, not been splayed across the front page of every serious newspaper across the land? How is that Bill Maher isn’t highlighting Green’s tweets as but another example of the far left’s desire to turn this country into a vassal state of Putin’s Russia? Where is the relentless Oregonian treatment that demolished Gonzalez’s run for governor?
Here are some of the more egregious tweets for your consideration. I urge you to read Recalibrate Portland by Max Steele for greater detail and analysis.
Mitch Green hates the police:
“All cops are bastards.” (July 29, 2020)
“…police are shit and absolute monsters. Just the fucking worst type of people.” (Aug. 8, 2020)
“Taking my mind off of my pure hatred for the Portland police by watching 1989 hit “The Wizard,” starring Fred Savage and Jenny Lewis on VHS with my wife.” (Sept. 7, 2021)
“… cops are infamously cowardly. Why would a washed up cop act any differently? I think if you just immediately refused to comply and went berserk they’d lose themselves, and maybe tazer [sic]themselves to death in the balls or something. This is well known.”
“When I say “defund the police”, what I really mean is abolish policing. For me it’s short-hand for a step in that larger demand. I certainly do not mean reform police, because I actually want to do away with the institution altogether.” (Dec. 3, 2020)
Mitch Green hates Portland merchants:
“It’s hard to imagine a more effective way to waste $1 million in public money. First, a concerted effort to remove graffiti will just invite more graffiti. … business owners need to learn to be more self sufficient.”
“The moral argument that justifies profits is the notion that entrepreneurs take on risk. Well, this is the risk! Clean up your own mess. You operate in a city, this is what happens in cities. Stop whining …”
“It’s high time that business owners stopped leeching off the community and started pulling their fair share. Try producing something for a change, instead of just living off the value your employees create and handouts from your daddy ...” (June 10, 2021)
Mitch Green supports violence and destruction of private property:
“… I think the left should riot more.” (Dec. 22, 2020) “Pro tip for future rioters: it’s easy to find out where the rich people live. You just drive around until you see tacky accoutrements and other conspicuous displays wealth.” (Dec. 17, 2020) “Property destruction is not violence.” (Sept. 11, 2020)
• Mitch Green is beholden to the DSA platform, not his Portland constituents:
“Their [The DSA] intention was to never organize to get me in office and then walk away … The expectation is that if I do something way out of line with the values of the organization, I’m going to hear about it.”
“As a socialist … I only view electoral politics as a means of wielding power and not an end in itself. The end, of course, is socialism.” (Oct. 26, 2020) “Market socialists are not your comrades ... Building a socialist future requires rejection of disembedded [sic] notions of money, and rather bringing it in close to the politics of class struggle.” (Aug. 14, 2020)
“… it’s not feasible to create a fairer distributional program than a Soviet-style queue for cabbage. If you need some cabbage, go over there and get some cabbage.” (Feb. 5, 2021)
“I think all housing should be held in trust by the state.”
Green admits to authoring all the above. He hasn’t retracted any of it. He did concede that they were “spicy’ and “not a good look, especially for a sitting elected official.”
Um, yeah.
Green has been outed. It appears that he is going to get away with it. He thinks this is, at worst, an optics issue. He thinks he can sweep it all under the rug. Now that he knows that we know that he is seeking a total revolution of the American system of democracy, he will only become more empowered to drive his agenda for completing the complete dismantling of our city.
Don’t let Mitch Green get away with this. Hold him, and his DSA comrades, accountable at the voting booth.
Step back a bit. The All Cops are Bastards and Death to Cops were familiar tags downtown during the Pandemic. Why is dehumanizing a whole group of people ok? Creating a stereotype that makes us believe they don’t share the same emotions we do. As a liberal I try not to do that to any group. Society has basically three options to maintain order to assure that our actions we do to benefit ourselves do not result in serious harm to others doing the same. Those are Guilty, Shame and Coercion. Guilt is certainly the best because a shared set of values regulated us most of the time. The population self regulates itself most of the time and when it fails, Shame ignited by others takes over. Those of us who have traveled to Japan can see this in action. It is our attempt to use Shame that led to the rise of Trump and MAGA. Us “woke” folk became the problem. Unfortunately, we have become more divided than ever and our value system has taken second seat to our political affiliation. In Trump’s world Democrats are evil. We have completely lost track of a value system. Now we have new means of coercion: attempts to substitute shared human values with persistent social propaganda combined with self inflicted surveillance.
I do not see the Portland Police as a negative. I see them as the best hope we have at this moment in time while we work to rebuild a value system we can share again.
And violence is violence, even against property. Once you start it it has a life of its own with many unintended consequences.
Joe, thank you for this public service. Mitch is the poster boy for elitist progressives who ignore the fact that we have access to not only their statements but we can also recognize whose character is suitable to our values.