The Great Sheboygan Fascist Crackdown--It Already Happened Here (and the right Cheddarsphere stood by and watched)

by folkbum

I wrote yesterday about the Great Sheboygan Fascist Crackdown of 2007, something I probably would not have done until Wisconsin's right-o-sphere all but double-dog dared me to. I didn't have much to add until they went over the top and assumed my silence was not mere complicity but partisan endorsement, which is stupid, given their own silence on abuses of power worse than one Mayberry Machiavelli's clumsy (and illegal) attempt to silence a critic.

In comments to that post, Michael J. Cheaney makes a reasonable point that the Great Sheboygan Fascist Crackdown of 2007 was worth outrage because it was in our own backyard, so to speak, and potentially then Something That Could Happen Here. (That is kind of what Wiggy's saying, too, I think.)

Indeed, such a thing Has Happened Here, as capper reminds us:

Curiously, the right did not have the same outrage when former State Senator Tom Reynolds and friends tried to use strong arm tactics on lefty blogger Gretchen Schuldt of Milwaukee Rising, when she was being a citizen blogger and investigating possible campaign violations from Reynolds failed bid to be re-elected.

Nor do I remember the outrage at Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke when he abused his position and authority in trying to strong arm deputies who didn't agree with him, or actively opposed his actions, even though they did so on their own time.

In fact, instead of outrage, Clarke was praised as was Reynolds, who McBride actually called "untouchable".

The left might not have reached the fevered zeal of the right regarding the Sheboygan blogger, but at least they weren't as selective with their outrages.

Click through, because he's got the links to prove it. You can also amuse yourself site-searching Wigderson, Fred, Peter, Pete, Patrick, et al. just to verify that they never seemed to mind the threatened legal action against blogger Gretchen Schuldt for her use of public documents to challenge Tom Reynolds, or the not-so-threatened action against the deputy who dared defy Clarke in a union newsletter.

Unless of course those bloggers want to insist that their silence was not, indeed, complicity, partisanship, or endorsment of Reynolds's and Clarke's actions when It Did Happen Here.