Waging a war on civility and the rule of law

Like any good editorial writer, I’d like nothing more than to write this week about how our president turned his back on the idea of America First and tragically acted like his good buddy Vladimir Putin in illegally invading another country.

But how can I write about an illegal war thousands of miles away when there are at least two wars almost as bad being waged right here in Marion County?

Make no mistake about it. All the potentially illegal things county commissioners have been trying to do in recent weeks are nothing but collateral damage from various strafing runs over wind farms.

First, a commissioner made it seem to be a routine action when he nominated someone viewed as a wind farm foe to serve as a planning and zoning commissioner. He didn’t mention that the person would be replacing someone viewed as a wind farm supporter.

Not only was this a sly sleight of hand. It violated a key principle of planning and zoning appointments. Planners and zoners are supposed to be like judges, applying the law uniformly, without preconceived biases.

Once discovered, the slyness of it all caused other commissioners to rescind the appointment — which they in all likelihood can’t legally do. Instead, they decided to reappoint the commissioner the new appointee would have ousted despite that commissioner having already served as many consecutive terms as seem to be allowed by law.

When the flimsiness of their excuse for doing so was exposed, they then stayed that appointment — again, illegally — and opened up a new front in the war with equally illegal intent.

They’re now scheduled to vote next week — by ballot, not recorded roll call — on who will be their chairman for the next year. Again, it’s wind farm proponents against opponents. But by specifying that the vote will be by ballot, they’re about to violate a law that guarantees that citizens have a right to know how their representatives vote in meetings.

Bad as this may seem, it pales in comparison to the open warfare going on in Peabody, where last week’s city council meeting was an absolute spectacle, with the mayor-elect being pilloried by three of his soon-to-be subordinates on the police force. Among the comments were overstated claims that the county’s prosecutor — who completely denies them — was considering criminal charges.

Ever since chief Bruce Burke resigned after being given illegal orders to do whatever it takes, legal or not, to root out drugs in the community, Peabody has had as much luck with its police force as an NFL team marching through the season with an array of journeyman backup quarterbacks who can’t complete a pass.

Whether that’s cause or effect is unknown, but it’s led to an atmosphere in which new cops are followed while driving their squad cars out of town to questionable rendezvouses. It includes arrests like one a couple of weeks ago in which Peabody cops called for backups from both Marion and Hillsboro as well as the county, essentially devoting the entirety of the county’s on-duty law enforcement to a single case, much as happened with a greatly overblown report of civil unrest last year at the town’s youth center.

Now, battle lines are drawn, and various figures from citizens to fire chiefs are hurling steady streams of allegations against each other.

County residents understandably have tired of being regarded as living in a Hicksville hell hole in which overzealous officers like Gideon Cody tried to weaponize the law for political purposes. But it’s not just an outsider imported from Kansas City who’s giving our county a bad name. It’s all the people trying to weaponize the law in their Quixotic quest to ban windmills and on both sides of a protracted feud in Peabody that makes the Hatfields and McCoys look like conscientious objectors.

Political disagreement is fine. In fact, it’s to be encouraged. That’s how democracy works. But when people on both sides begin resorting to overwrought intimidation tactics, it’s time to stress that disagreement needs to be civil and aimed not at total domination but at reasonable compromise.

We can’t continue to blame our county’s bad image on one rogue cop in Marion. The fault, dear readers, is not in our stars. It’s in ourselves.

— ERIC MEYER