The Alexandria City Council released a statement on equality as part of the media’s violent reaction to Hillary Clinton’s defeat shortly after the 2016 presidential vote.
” Alexandria, Virginia, is a city of generosity and compassion”, the speech began. ” Our city declares itself to be a hate-free area. We are a welcoming and welcoming society where we treat each other with respect and dignity. In our society, there is no room for hatred. This is our city’s primary benefit. In recent times, many of our companions, families and children have expressed anxiety and fear, and there has been an increase in cruel and dangerous talk and works globally. Recognizing one’s First Amendment right to freedom of talk, we are even dedicated to freedom from fear”.
A Democrat advocate shot down a football field full of Democratic members of Congress in the state’s Del Ray area seven months later. No one was killed, thank God, but five persons, including then-U. S. House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, were shot. Scalise practically died. He was forced to undergo major surgery and conquered significant hurdles to move once more. Crystal Griner, a Capitol Police agent, was even shot. The community mostly pretended it had n’t happened.
The Del Ray area where the assassination attempt took place was described by The New York Times as “very calm, really charming, and very liberal.” The post featured a mark in the town written in English, Spanish, and Arabic that told audience that no matter where they are from, they are encouraged.
All but Sen. J. D. Vance and his younger community, that is.
No So Welcome
The supposedly calm, lovely, and forgiving relatives of Del Ray, who had moved his family to the community after his 2022 victory, warned him that he and his relatives were not welcomed.
The Ku Klux Klan used burning passes to find their “you’re no pleasant here” information across, but the Del Ray people use “yarn bombing“. The relatives knit whimsical signs promoting pregnancy, homosexuality, transexuality, and sexuality and placed them on wires outside the Vance house.
The neighbors expressed their joy over the family’s attack in a Facebook post, calling them” not so pleasant signs.” Charming, really!
One woman, the wife of a popular free-market think tank head, shared images of her Instagram with the message” Yarn weapons for the fresh cousin… a true Del Ray encouraged if there was one.” The girl noted that she had “every reason to believe this may turn into the same” for Vance and that Trump officials in the area, including Chad Wolf, the speaking country security secretary, had been the target of “big and destructive” home protests. She continued,” He obviously knew he was buying in a politically active and very liberal neighborhood,” as if she and other liberals in the area were incapable of being tolerant of those with different beliefs.
The pocket park directly opposite the Vance home will be closed for security reasons, according to a local news website last week. On July 13, former President Donald Trump survived an assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania. He made the decision to run for vice president two days later.
No protests occurred when Alexandria indefinitely closed the same pocket park for Covid-19, or when schools and their playgrounds were closed for years. Alexandrians are typically very happy to follow government directives to close public spaces for” safety.” This closure, however, sparked protest both online and in person.
The former Del Ray Citizens president characterized the purchase of a house next to a small park named in honor of a Blue Dog Democrat who had previously resided in the area as “weird.”
Instead of temporarily closing the park, Democrat activist Kevin Saucedo-Broach suggested that the entire family be moved from their home. Journalist Meghan McCarthy, who could n’t stop criticizing Vance and the location of his family home, said in a now-deleted post that he never should have relocated his family to a location with a park close by. One neighbor with “be good to people &, animals” in his X bio called for protest. Others were similarly outraged.
Last Saturday on the eve of the park’s closure, neighbor Becky Hammer, a left-wing environmental lawyer and local official, organized and made known a political protest there. The protest’s political bent was clear. She announced that there would be” Kamala friendship bracelets” and” cat lady costumes” along with other anti-Trump and anti-Vance features.
The Vance home was then identified as the gathering and she then shared a photo of it on Bluesky, her preferred social media platform. She did n’t do this on X, which she claims is “owned by a white supremacist who is actively spreading disinformation”.
Local media reported on the incident, claiming that Del Ray residents struggle to reconcile their unwavering hatred for Republicans with their self-conception of being welcoming to everyone. Another neighborhood media outlet characterized the neighbors ‘ hatred of Vance and desire to make him feel unwelcome using anodyne language. That article came to an end with the announcement that the Vance family’s yarn bombing intimidation tactics have continued. They include children aged 2, 4, and 6.
Authoritarians with a Blind Spot
Del Ray leftists are n’t alone in their authoritarian tactics— or in their inability to recognize their authoritarianism. A major lab is run by Grove City College psychology professor Luke Conway to study authoritarian tendencies in populations. He recently cited authoritarian tendencies found on both the left and the right, but only those on the left had a profound sense of authoritarianism.
To score high on Conway’s authoritarianism scale, respondents tend to agree that the country needs a strong leader, that” the leader should destroy opponents”,” that people should trust the judgment of proper authorities”, that people should “avoid listening” to dissidents, that” tough leaders” who can” silence troublemakers” should be put in power, and that” society should strongly punish those they disagree with”. They also have a tendency to reject the notion that their opponents have the “right to be wherever he or she wants to be” and” support the claim that the country would be better off if some groups just shut up and accept their… proper place in society.”
” When conservatives agree with those items, they subsequently admit ( accurately ) that they are authoritarian”, Conway wrote. ” When liberals agree with those items, they actually are more likely to say they are not authoritarian”. The more authoritarian they are, the less they believe they are authoritarian, he notes.
In a recent article, Conway explains why left-wing authoritarians find it uncomfortable to acknowledge their authoritarianism, but he also points out that” a political party is particularly dangerous when it asserts its own authoritarianity in the loudest way.” That’s because you ca n’t address a problem you do n’t realize you have.
We’ve “taintly raised a generation of liberals” who believe it’s normal for Disney to fire actress Gina Carano for holding a political viewpoint that some people do n’t support, and who also believe they are n’t authoritarian for it, according to Conway.
In Del Ray, there are armies of liberal bureaucrats and activists who believe it’s acceptable to criticize neighbors for holding political views they do n’t like, but also believe they do n’t violate any laws because of it.
Hate’s Home
That 2017 New York Times story ended with an intriguing anecdote. The Dairy Godmother custard shop is one of Del Ray’s most adored locations. During his presidency, President Barack Obama visited the store. Liz Davis opened the store 23 years ago, after falling in love with the “neighborhood of beatniks, artists and creativity”.
But as the neighborhood’s land values rose, she noticed that it had lost its appeal and diversity and had become stiflingly conformist. According to the Times article, she claims that the “homogenizing of the neighborhood” was a factor in her decision to move and sell the store. ” There is no diversity here”, she said. She feels unwelcome in a neighborhood that she now perceives to be unwelcome to those on the other side of the political spectrum, according to the Times. ” You should n’t have to have a sign in the yard to be kind”, Davis was quoted as saying, referencing the ubiquitous virtue signs in the neighborhood.
The plot comes to an end with her revealing publicly to a neighbor that she is coming out as a Republican.
In many ways, Del Ray is a truly charming neighborhood. The 2017 assassination attempt on Republican members of Congress took place there as well. And it is the area where neighbors cheer one another on as they attempt to turn the wrong kind of neighbors into enemies. Unfortunately, hate definitely has a home here.
