When you live in a small town where everybody knows each other, you usually assume the best of people. We do this, because these are our coworkers; we attend the same churches; we shop at the same stores; and these are our neighbors. Not to say we don’t have town gossip; town drama or town politics; but most of us try hard to be civil, if not gracious, in our interactions with each other. So imagine my surprise when at the July 10th Uvalde County Commissioners meeting, one of our own neighbors and an elected official accused a group of Uvalde County citizens attending the same meeting of sowing seeds of fear; being Facist and compared us to Hitler and Mussolini”! I sat in that Commissioners Court Room that day and felt appalled on the one hand and mad as hell on the other!
How dare Carlos Lopez, the Uvalde County Democratic Chair denigrate grandbaby rocking grandmothers, God fearing followers of Jesus Christ and people who love their country and community. How dare Carlos Lopez use valid citizen concerns as a political gaslighting ploy to defend his position on the matter at hand. How dare Carlos Lopez have no shame!
Every person that stood on the opposite side of the “argument” to Carlos Lopez position who spoke that day, addressed the issue. Carlos Lopez however gave a speech framed straight out of the liberal left handbook, Rules for Radicals by Saul Alinsky and he used these tactics found in the book to spew his rhetorical vitriol.
RULE 5: “Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.” There is no defense. It’s irrational. It’s infuriating. It also works as a key pressure point to force the enemy into concessions. (Pretty crude, rude and mean, huh? They want to create anger and fear.)
RULE 12: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.” Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions. (This is cruel but very effective. Direct, personalized criticism and ridicule works.)
In a nutshell, Alinsky teaches to play dirty. In a nutshell, Lopez played dirty. All Carlos Lopez did, in classic left leaning style, was shift the focus of the conversation from the Elections Voting Systems vulnerabilities, which was the issue being presented. To insulting hardworking, upstanding, taxpaying citizens of Uvalde County, that happen to also be conservatives. I say to Carlos Lopez, and those of like mind; weak  minded, manipulative people always resort to name calling because they can never argue the facts or the truth.
The saddest part of this whole experience was the fact that the Uvalde County Commissioners did what they do best. They gave lip service to its citizens and then voted to maintain the status quo
