I’ve had a night to sleep on Brady Slater’s story about my candidacy. Its a good story. Its even a fair story. I already said I like the picture the DNT used of me. But on thinking about it I’m a little disappointed. Brady has taken the editorial department’s evaluation with me and run with it. I think he’s done it without giving one particular adjective much thought by calling me a “provocateur”.
The word is used like “saboteur” meaning someone who purposely destroys something like putting dynamite on train tracks carrying German troops to Vichy France or setting explosives under a bridge. A provocateur however, incites passions or maybe simply calls attention to something. Were America’s founding father’s provocateurs? You’re damned right they were. Was that bad? Is a President calling the nation’s governors “jerks” for not brutally suppressing peaceful marchers a provocateur? You’re damned right he is. What might the DNT editors say about him? Has the Tribune ever called this spade a spade? Before he was ever elected he flew around the nation in his billionaire’s jet lying through his teeth in front of adoring racist crowds claiming that President Obama was a foreigner. Why did the News Tribune, or its owners, fail to warn their vast Eighth District readership that under no circumstances should they vote for that kind of a provocateur?
Half the reason the Editors like to call me a provocateur is because, like Trump, I have no fear of calling them out for being slipshod……ONLY I NEVER CALL THEM OR THE NEWS BUSINESS “FAKE NEWS.” I think I hurt their feelings. But Donald Trump does all the time quite incorrectly. He points fingers at reporters at his rallies and calls them tools of misinformation. Unlike me Trump is evidently the Trib editors kind of guy.
If the damned editors of the Duluth News Tribune had a dangerous provocateur in Duluth they should do a better job exposing him, ME, for my provocations. Hell, I’ve put fifteen or twenty million opinionated words into my blog that everyone in the city with Internet access could have called me on for the past fourteen years. My excesses are so few that only rarely have my critics quoted me. For instance, when the Red Plan was adopted and paid for by firing teachers I said that the “gangrene” in Duluth’s western schools would spread to the eastern schools. What I said was provocative but looking at Duluth and its unequal education who can honestly say I was wrong to warn people even if the word “gangrene” was visceral? I meant to be provocative. Until the gangrene made the front pages the Trib turned a blind eye then they killed the provocative messenger.
I remember when I learned what the word “provoke” meant. I was in grade school and my school teacher grandmother would say, when something went wrong like cookies coming out of the oven burned, “I’m so provoked.” Provocation in this sense is being angry. Well, the world just saw four Minneapolis police officers murder a black man over nine excruciating minutes while their hands were casually tucked in their pockets as people in the neighborhood videoed their victim’s last cries of anguish before dying. Then they proceeded to keep a knee on their victim’s neck for another couple of minutes while telling an ambulance that there was no need to rush to the scene. That arrogant, immoral, incompetent, and murderous act has provoked people not just in the U.S. but all over the world to march in frustration with world’s former beacon of hope and progress. No Thanks to the Duluth News Tribune who’s editors failed to warn us of a real provocateur. Last night the man tear gassed peaceful protesters and chased them away from a church with armed troops so that he could grandly walk across Pennsylvania Avenue to wave a Bible in front of news cameras.
What were my provocations? I complained loudly and often that a half-billion dollar building program for the Duluth Schools should have been given to voters to decide in a referendum just like every other City in Minnesota. For five or six years I kept pointing out flaws in the design and the ignorance and arrogance of the School Board and a fortune 500 company that hid public information from the public about what was going on. Then I sided with a colleague, an admittedly quarrelsome colleague, who was almost railroaded off of the School Board for false accusations of racism, abuse of power and self dealing when his real offense was asking questions and making a stink when he was ignored.
And now I guess I’m being a “provocateur” by pointing out that a conspiracy of political operatives sucking in vast sums of untraceable money from a gaggle of billionaire proto-fascists has driven moderates like me out a political party my family has been affiliated with for four generations. That makes me a “RINO” in the eyes of these former Dixiecrats who put their stamp on the party that Ronald Reagan called on to be a “Big Tent.” Yes! I am being provocative. In the Bible it was called telling the truth or, as it says in John 8:31-31-32, “the Truth shall set you free.” That’s a line from the Bible that our Fake-News-decrying-President has never read.
Brady, I just hope your editors peek into the good book and notice this Presidential ignorance. There is another line all Trump News provocateurs ought to keep in mind before they go completely digital: “pride goeth before the fall.” That’s paraphrased from Proverbs. And by the way, I still get the print version of the DNT delivered to my door. I’ll miss its daily delivery.
And since I’m now officially in a race for Congress let me ask the incumbent the following related question:
Pete Stauber. What do you think of Minneapolis Police Union President and Trump confidante Lt. Bob Kroll?
