The real fight, now Robert Reich Aug 26 Friends, I’m feeling optimistic about Kamala Harris and Tim Walz. I want to put this extraordinary moment into context. Like many of you, I’ve worked my heart out during elections. (My first one was in 1968, when I went “clean for Gene” — Eugene McCarthy — shaved off my beard and organized volunteers to go door-to-door for the anti-Vietnam War candidate.) And like many of you, I’ve been heartbroken by some election outcomes. This one feels different. Over my lifetime there’s been a shift in power: from small businesses, local and regional banks, labor unions, and political parties to giant corporations, Wall Street, and a handful of obscenely wealthy donors. Today, Kamala Harris and Tim Walz, and the Democratic Party, have a real chance to take back some of that power on behalf of all of us. In the 1950s and 1960s, America created the largest middle class the world had ever seen. It gave America enough confidence to pass the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act. It enabled people of color and women to begin to gain ground. And we had a Supreme Court that encouraged this. Then around 1980, progress stopped. The bullies began taking over. As a kid, I was always a head shorter than other boys, which meant I was bullied, mocked, threatened, sometimes assaulted. Over the last four decades, America has allowed fiercer bullying than anything I experienced as a kid. Wealthier Americans have bullied poorer Americans, CEOs have bullied their workers, white people have bullied people of color, men have bullied women, people born in America have bullied new arrivals and undocumented workers. Sometimes bullying involves physical violence, but more often it entails intimidation, displays of dominance, demands for submission, or arbitrary decisions over the lives of those who have no choice but to accept them. At some point, those who are bullied fight back. I remember the day I did, when I had had enough. I was 10 years old. One morning when I was waiting for the school bus, a local bully started shaking me down. He wanted my lunch box and the change in my pocket. He began threatening me physically, as he had done several times before. I felt power well up inside me. I quietly put down my lunch box and punched the bully in the nose. It was a mild punch. It merely stunned him. (It stunned me, too. I had never delivered even a mild punch before — nor have I since. ) But it demonstrated that I wouldn’t take his bullying any longer. And from that day onward, he left me alone. Donald Trump is a bully. He has used his wealth to gain power, and used his power to target people of color, harass and abuse women, lie, violate the law, trample on our Constitution, and rage at anyone who calls him on his bullying. Since Joe Biden passed the torch to Kamala Harris, Trump has been on the defensive. But make no mistake: He became president by exploiting the anger of millions of white working-class Americans who for decades have been economically and culturally bullied by corporate executives, Wall Street, and upper middle-class urban professionals. The bullied are still there; Trump is still exploiting their anger. For nearly a decade, Trump has channeled that anger into racism, nativism, and misogyny. He has encouraged his followers to feel powerful by bullying those with even less power: poor Black and Latino people, immigrants, LGBTQ+ people, Muslims, families seeking asylum, undocumented workers, pregnant women who can’t afford to travel to a state where abortions are legal. This bullying game has been played repeatedly in history by self-described strongmen who pretend to be tribunes of the oppressed by scapegoating the truly powerless, but who are actually fronting for the rich and powerful. In reality, Trump and his lackeys work for the oligarchs — cutting their taxes, rolling back regulations that protect the public but that cost the oligarchs, and dividing the rest of us into warring factions so we don’t look upward to see where most power and wealth have gone. The good news is that Americans are catching on. Kamala Harris and Tim Walz are part of a movement to make America more inclusive, strengthen our democracy, and stop the bullying. The real fight between now and Election Day is not between Democrats and Republicans, as the two parties came to be known in the decades after World War II. It is a fight that began to take shape in 1968 when Nixon won the presidency, that became bellicose after 1980 when Ronald Reagan took office, and that came into full view in 2016 when Trump won the electoral vote. It is between democracy and oligarchy, between self-government and tyranny. It is a fight between the bullies and the bullied. I have much the same feeling now as I had when I was 10 years old at the bus stop. I believe tens of millions of other Americans are experiencing it, too — including you. We are feeling the power well up within us. We are quietly putting down our lunch boxes and are about to demonstrate to the bullies — peacefully, through the power of our votes — that we will no longer take their bullying.

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Standing Up to Bullies

In the face of GOP attacks, public servants like Anthony Fauci and Alvin Bragg need courage just to do their jobs

STEVEN BESCHLOSS JUN 6

“I’m still getting death threats,” Dr. Anthony Fauci said this week. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

“He is not a comic book super villain,” Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin said Monday at the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic. He was referring to Dr. Anthony Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, who dedicated more than five decades of his life to managing public health crises, including the HIV/AIDS epidemic, the West Nile virus outbreak, Ebola, Zika and SARS. That all proceeded his impossible role as the public face of the government’s response to COVID-19 under the sociopathic Donald Trump (one of seven U.S. presidents he advised).

Now a private citizen, the 83-year-old public health legend—who helped save tens of millions of lives globally in his AIDS relief work alone—voluntarily agreed to appear before the committee. This despite the predictable idiocy that drove much of the questioning by Republicans determined to prove that he is evil incarnate—that he was involved in a malevolent plot to cover up the origins of the coronavirus, that he lied about the appropriate response to the pandemic in order to line his own pockets.

The questioning included evidence-free claims that he was secretly working behind-the-scenes to silence the theory that the virus was leaked from a Chinese laboratory and that he tried to influence the conclusions of U.S. intelligence agencies. While he has said that he believes the most probable explanation is that the virus jumped from animals to humans, he offered the type of rational response one expects from a trusted scientist. “I have repeatedly stated that I have a completely open mind to either possibility and that if definitive evidence becomes available to validate or refute either theory, I will ready accept it,” Fauci said.

THIS FROM THE JEWISH SPACE LASER QUEEN WHO DEFINES 'STUPID' each time she speaks!

Such rationality didn’t calm the worst among them, of course. Georgia’s own Marjorie Taylor Greene could be heard ranting into the microphone that “you belong in prison,” insisting he shouldn’t be called a doctor, condemning him for engaging in “repulsive evil science” and calling for him to be prosecuted for “crimes against humanity.” She also said he is “a monster.”

REPUBLICAN AREAS experienced HIGHER COVID DEATH RATES than Democratic areas - FACT! tRump left office with REFRIGERATED TRAILERS filled with COVID DEAD and the economy in free fall.

It was the kind of angry nonsense we’ve come to expect from her and other Republicans who’ve spent years gaslighting Americans. They have spread lies to distract from Trump’s role in convincing so many Americans to minimize COVID-19’s danger, pursue crackpot solutions and reject the vaccine. In other words, an unforgivable and deadly failure that cost hundreds of thousands of Americans to lose their lives.

Oh, how hard they tried to demean Fauci, the man who millions of Americans trust and admire. Surely, this public servant’s real purpose was to get rich off the pandemic, right?

“How much have you earned in royalties from pharmaceutical companies since the pandemic began in 2021?” asked New York Rep. Nicole Malliotakis.

“Zero,” answered Fauci.

After further pressing—surely, he got his share of the millions—the good doctor clarified his record. “I want to make sure that this is clear: that I developed a monoclonal antibody about 25 years ago that’s used as a diagnostic that has nothing to do with Covid, and I receive about $120 a year from that patent.”

This is one public servant who has refused to stand by and let his reputation be ruined and the truth be denied for purely partisan purposes.

But here’s the thing: The increasingly hostile and unhinged response from GOP elected officials is exacerbating the angry climate of violence. We have every reason to expect they will keep ratcheting up their attacks to defend the convicted felon and condemn Democrats for political persecution and government weaponization. That puts pressure on decent public servants like Anthony Fauci and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg to act courageously just to do their jobs.

On Tuesday, we learned that House Speaker Mike Johnson is readying a “three pronged approach” to go after the Justice Department, New York and other entities that are involved in investigating Trump. He asserted the House will cut funds intended for government appropriations among other efforts to weaponize the response to 12 New York jurors convicting the felonious Trump last week.

“We’re going to do everything we can, everything within our scope of our responsibility in the Congress, to address it appropriately,” Johnson said at a news conference in that insidiously polite tone of his.

In contrast, there was none of that tone from the convicted Trump operative Steve Bannon this week. He told Axios that Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg must be prosecuted and more: “Of course [Bragg] should be—and will be—jailed,” Bannon asserted, saying out loud what many Trump enablers despicably want.

As for Trump himself, he told Newsmax this week that he’s being pushed into taking revenge against his enemies that have prosecuted him. “It’s a terrible, terrible path that they’re leading us to, and it’s very possible that it’s going to have to happen to them,” the remorseless felon said about the conviction, five weeks before his July 11 sentencing. “Does that mean the next president does it to them? That’s really the question.”

In his mob-boss style, you can read the coded way Trump threatens—with just as much deniability if and when others act on his violent incitements. Tragically, his enablers and cultists hear it, with serious consequences for our collective future, whether or not they take power in November.

Let’s return to the Fauci hearing. Toward the end, Michigan Rep. Debbie Dingell asked the doctor to describe the threats he and his family have faced—this being the shameful price of public service since Trump became president and empowered the worst among us to harass those trying to do good. As he spoke, Fauci choked up, struggling to hold back tears.

“Everything from harassments from emails, texts, letters to myself, my wife, my three daughters,” he said. “There have been credible death threats leading to the arrest of two individuals—and credible death threats means someone who clearly was on their way to kill me. And it’s required my having protective services essentially all the time.”

Such threats, he added, serve as a “powerful disincentive for young people to want to go into public health and maybe even science and medicine in the public arena,” he added. “They say to themselves, ‘I don’t want to go there. Why should I get involved in that?’”

Monday night, Fauci described to CNN’s Kaitlan Collins how these threats play out. “It’s a pattern,” he told her. When someone in the media or in Congress “gets up and makes a public statement that I’m responsible for the deaths of x-number of people because of policies or some crazy idea that I created the virus—immediately you can, it’s like clockwork—the death threats go way up.”

Then he was more specific about his continuing reality, despite his retirement. “I’m still getting death threats,” he said. “When you have performances like that unusual performance by Marjorie Taylor Greene in today’s hearing, those are the kinds of things that drive up the death threats because there are a segment of the population out there that believe that kind of nonsense.”

It will get worse before it gets better. That’s a reliable prediction. This hostile environment is certain to cause more anger and vile behavior as the election nears and Trump’s fear of losing mounts.

But don’t be discouraged. Let this animosity nourish your desire to work for a massive GOP defeat in November, up and down the ballot. An overwhelming Democratic victory doesn’t mean that this fascistic mindset will fade away—a big loss will likely unleash even more madness first. But this is the only path to reasserting American values, regaining the primacy of democracy and ending the belief that fear and violence is a winning strategy.

 

The Trump-Musk Thugocracy Why do so many Americans support these super bullies? ROBERT REICH JUN 5 Friends, Elon Musk and convicted felon Donald Trump have been in contact several times a month since their private meeting in March at the home of billionaire investor Nelson Peltz, according to The Wall Street Journal. They’re discussing an advisory role for Musk if Trump wins back the White House in November — potentially giving Musk influence over economic policy. Musk has already briefed Trump about his plans to invest in a data-driven project to prevent voter fraud (which, as I noted yesterday, is almost nonexistent). And Musk has committed his social media platform, X, to host live video town halls with Trump ahead of the election. Musk is also using X to spread conspiracy theories that Democrats are intentionally “importing” millions of undocumented immigrants to vote in elections. Musk has accused Biden of “treason” and claimed that if Democrats win control of the White House and Congress in November, America “will become a permanent one-party deep socialist state.” What’s Musk’s motive? Not simply more money. Hell, he’s the second-richest man on the planet. He wants more power. Unaccountable power. One route to unaccountable power is to hitch his fortune to convicted felon Trump. Musk has been emulating Trump for years. Consider Trump’s MO of treating underlings like dung. In 2022, Musk fired half of Twitter’s 7,500 employees, including teams devoted to combating election misinformation — and did it so haphazardly and arbitrarily that most had no idea they were fired until their email accounts were shut off. This was after Musk fired Twitter’s executives “with cause” to avoid paying them the golden parachutes they were owed. And after he taunted Twitter and the law firm it worked with in its lawsuit against him, suggesting he would sue all of them. Musk’s concern about the dwindling number of people seeing his tweets prompted him to convene a group of engineers to discover why his engagement numbers were tanking. When one of the company’s two remaining principal engineers explained it was likely due to waning public interest in Musk’s antics, Musk fired the engineer. A few weeks ago, Musk laid off 14,000 Tesla workers. They discovered they no longer had jobs only when their keys to the parking lot no longer worked. In order to receive severance, they had to agree not to participate in any lawsuit or mass arbitration against the company or publicly defame Tesla.   Musk has also been copying Trump’s bombastic ridicule of anyone who gets in his way. When the British diver Vernon Unsworth rejected his help rescuing youth football players trapped in a cave in Thailand, Musk described him as “pedo guy.” When the Securities and Exchange Commission went after Musk, he tweeted that the “E” in the SEC stands for “Elon’s.” (You can guess what the “S” and “C” stand for.) Musk has copied Trump’s disregard for the law. During the pandemic, when public health authorities refused Musk permission to reopen his Tesla factory, he did it anyway. Musk has been just as shameless as Trump when it comes to padding his pockets. In 2018, Musk got the richest pay package in U.S. corporate history, then worth around $56 billion. Earlier this year, a Delaware court voided that pay package, finding that the process to decide on it was “deeply flawed” because Tesla’s board hadn’t properly disclosed it to investors and had “barely” negotiated it with Musk. In response to the Delaware court’s finding, Tesla’s board (that is, Musk) said it would ask shareholders to vote again on that same pay package at its annual meeting on June 13. In a letter to shareholders, Robyn Denholm, Tesla’s chair, wrote that the Delaware Court’s decision was “fundamentally unfair, and inconsistent with the will of stockholders who voted for it.” Fundamentally unfair that Musk hadn’t been paid the exorbitant pay package that a court found to be illegal? In effect, Musk got the giant multibillion-dollar package by extorting Tesla — implying that if the board refused to sign off on it, he’d devote even more of his time to his other businesses, like SpaceX or his xAI startup. The Delaware judge cited a meeting at which the board planned to ask Musk to commit a minimum level of time to Tesla but chickened out because, according to one participant, “‘that would have been like saying goodbye to Elon.’” ** Treating employees like dung. Taunting and ridiculing opponents. Refusing to be held accountable or be bound by norms or even laws. Bullying adversaries. Demeaning critics. Craving attention. Self-promoting. Making gobs of money. Impetuous. Unpredictable. Autocratic. Vindictive. Utterly lacking in empathy. Musk and Trump are different generations, of course. They possess different skills and occupy different roles in the bizarre firmament of America’s billionaire class. But both represent the emergence of a particularly ruthless and dangerous American power monger: the wildly disruptive narcissist. Their singular goal is to imprint their giant egos on everyone else — to exercise raw power over people. To make others grovel. They disdain democracy. Their politics might be called, instead, thugocracy. They demean America with their brazen assertions of untrammeled power to dominate and force others to submit. We used to call such behavior shameless. Now it’s just what Trump, Musk, and a few other super-rich (Peter Thiel, Bill Ackman, Stephen A. Schwarzman) do. It’s the new norm of the brazenly wealthy. *** Shame once reenforced the common good. Through most of human history, survival depended on extended families, clans, and tribes. To be ostracized often meant death. Charles Darwin, in his book The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, thought shame may have evolved as a way to maintain social trust necessary for the survival of a group and, therefore, of its members. In a 2012 paper, psychologists Matthew Feinberg and Dacher Keltner and sociologist Robb Willer found evidence that shame and embarrassment function as a kind of “nonverbal apology” for having done something that violates social norms. A display of embarrassment shows others that the embarrassed person is still aware of the group’s expectations and is still committed to the group’s well-being. “Ignominy is universally acknowledged to be a worse punishment than death,” wrote Benjamin Rush, a signer of the Declaration of Independence who also sought to put an end to public stocks and whipping posts. But shamelessness has gained a certain elan. Audacity, insolence, and impudence are welcomed. Irreverence is celebrated. Many Americans love Musk’s and Trump’s loutishness. *** Why are so many Americans enthralled with Musk and Trump? What’s attractive about their thugocracy? Why are billionaires who violate the common good treated like Wild West outlaw heroes? The answer, I believe, has a lot to do with America’s shameful degree of inequality. A large portion of the American public projects its needs and fantasies on these billionaire thugs. People who have been bullied their whole lives want super bullies capable of bullying everyone who’s been bullying them.

RSN: FOCUS: Dan Rather and Elliot Kirschner | Standing Up to Bullies

 

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FOCUS: Dan Rather and Elliot Kirschner | Standing Up to Bullies
Dan Rather and Elliot Kirschner, Steady
Excerpt: "Across the United States, we are facing an epidemic of bullying masquerading as lawmaking."

Across the United States, we are facing an epidemic of bullying masquerading as lawmaking. It is an approach to governance, or at least a distorted facsimile of the concept, that is rooted in cruelty. At the national, state, and local levels, we see a toxic brew of bad faith, hypocrisy, and sneering viciousness that is poisoning the wellspring of our democracy.

Instead of tackling this nation’s actual problems and challenges, instead of trying to unite and lift up the populace, instead of tending to the fickle flames of hope, opportunity, and community, we have political actors who use the power and privilege of their positions to debase, troll, and outright attack their fellow citizens. And like most schoolyard bullies, they seek to target, ostracize, and abuse the most vulnerable and marginalized members of society.

The laws they are passing — around “critical race theory,” LGBTQ rights, and now even tenure at state universities — won’t fix broken bridges, lower health care costs, reduce crime, or secure our environment. These purveyors of manufactured outrage don’t even pretend that they care about the myriad issues to which politicians usually pay lip service. For them, the act of proposing and passing legislation is merely another manifestation of an endless political campaign based on culture wars and calibrated — with lethal precision — to stoke the worst instincts of their base.

Bullying is what helped sweep Donald Trump into office. He showed he could smash every norm of polite discourse and not only pay no price, but be rewarded with the presidency. And then he bragged about it, with his signature shamelessness. On his scorched march to the White House, Trump mocked a disabled reporter, attacked the Gold Star parents of a dead soldier, and created juvenile nicknames for his political opponents (and that’s just the beginning of a long and sordid list). He had the cunning and instinct to recognize that if he was always on the attack, he could dominate news cycles. The more outrageous he acted, the more he obliterated the boundaries of what was once considered “acceptable,” and the more attention he attracted.

It would be giving Trump too much credit to say he was the first politician to weaponize cruelty. This is, after all, the playbook of autocrats and dictators the world over. American history is also full of examples of politicians rising to power by fomenting division. Our fitful journey to becoming a multiethnic, multiracial, multicultural democracy illustrates that the diversity of our populace has often provided fodder for those who recognize that there can be great advantage in playing to fear. Sadly, some version of “us” and “them” is too often a winning campaign strategy.

All that being said, I think there is something different about this moment. Where once politicians at least pretended that their objective was service to the people, many now spend most of their time tending to the bile of their Twitter feeds or ratcheting up the hateful rhetoric on right-wing media. All pretext for civility is gone. For many, there is little to no interest in going through even a pantomime of governing. It’s a circus of the absurd, with twirling stunts and carnival barkers who seek roars of approval as they distract, disgust, and dishonor.

One of the hallmarks of bullies is that they appear to possess all the power. They are usually stronger physically, or more popular, or wealthier than the people they pick on. They find and exploit the weakness and insecurities of their targets. But another hallmark is that they are often cowardly and insecure. The only way they know how to feel better about themselves is to make others feel worse. They go after those they perceive as weak, because they themselves are weak.

I have found that it’s not just in the movies or books that bullies can’t take a punch; it’s true in real life, as well. They hope that they can be so fearsome that no one tests whether the only thing there is to fear is fear itself. Now, we must be clear. Few emerge from a fight unscathed. Bullies can cause a lot of damage even when they are defeated. But the lesson is that they can be beaten.

I would submit that we are witnessing this dynamic in the war in Ukraine. Vladimir Putin is the epitome of a bully. And he came to believe the mythologies he told himself. Having bombed Chechnya and Syria into submission, he felt he could amass an awesome display of military strength, and Ukraine would cower in fear. He believed that NATO would appease him once more. He figured he was so tough that he would win by everyone else just letting him. Obviously he misjudged, on an epic scale.

We are far enough into this war that the conventional wisdom has been completely rewritten. But let’s try to go back to the early days. The consensus among much of the Western military establishment was that Putin would be doing a lot better than he is. Many expected Kyiv to fall, or at least to descend into brutal urban conflict. Almost no one expected that Russia would still lack air supremacy. Almost no one predicted the Russians would be so outmaneuvered and so inept in their planning and execution. Almost no one, except the Ukrainians.

The defense of Ukraine has come at a horrific cost to those who live there. The atrocities perpetrated by the Russian forces are sickening. They represent more than just the hell of war; they are war crimes. They include murder, terrorism, and probably genocide. And the Russians may yet prevail.

But in their courageous fight for their homeland, the Ukrainians are showing the world once again that bullies can be pushed back, even when they seem to have a preponderance of power. And that some fights are worth undertaking even if you are beaten. If you fight the right fight for a worthwhile reason, you can be beaten but never defeated.

What happens when we view our politics through this lens? I believe that the vast majority of Americans do not like bullies. That aversion is a big part of why Donald Trump was walloped in the popular vote in 2020, even losing states like Georgia and Arizona. His brand among the public as a whole was largely toxic, because he is toxic. And Republican leaders know it.

What they want is to have it both ways. They can play the bully to please the base and hope that the rest of the electorate looks the other way, preoccupied by inflation, COVID, and the war in Ukraine. If the trendlines of most midterm elections hold, Republicans figure they can win up and down the ballot merely by not belonging to the president's party.

But what if those who oppose these contemptuous tactics were to loudly and unequivocally call out the bullying, and the bullies? What if politicians, the press, and good and decent people across the country were to, at least rhetorically, punch back? What if the upcoming election focused on the fact that Trump's outrages have now infected large swaths of the Republican Party? Can we imagine what that might look like? Would it galvanize voters? Would it inject energy into the fight for the soul of America?

I subscribe to the maxim that it is better to show than tell. So today, I leave you with three video clips of politicians condemning the bullying in clear, unambiguous terms. Perhaps you have seen one or all of these; judging by the millions of views they have received, that is likely. Nonetheless, they are worth watching again.

This speech by Michigan state senator Mallory McMorrow has gone viral for a reason. It is an eloquent, unapologetic, and forceful rebuttal to the actions of a fellow state lawmaker — and an impassioned plea for decency.

Here, an openly gay Missouri state representative, Ian Mackey, addresses the real-world impact of a bill to ban trans girls from playing on female sports teams.

And in the U.S. Senate, Hawaii Senator Brian Schatz shined a necessary spotlight on the outrageous hypocrisy of Missouri Senator Josh Hawley.

These are the voices of conscience and outrage. This is a clarion call of “we have had enough.” This is standing up and pushing back. This is how bullies who have overreached end up losing, maybe not in the short run, but eventually, if enough people say this is not who we are and certainly not who we want to be.

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The rabbi who is neighbor to Mark and Patricia McCloskey speaks out: ‘They are bullies’

 

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The rabbi who is neighbor to Mark and Patricia McCloskey speaks out: ‘They are bullies’

The rabbi who is neighbors to Mark and Patricia McCloskey speaks out: ‘They are bullies’

When Rabbi Susan Talve heard that Patricia and Mark McCloskey would be among the speakers addressing the Republican National Convention, she decided she could no longer stay quiet.

“It’s so upsetting that they have a national audience,” Talve said. “It’s upsetting we make heroes out of people who hate.”

The McCloskeys are Talve’s neighbors. Their property’s northern wall abuts the property of St. Louis’ Jewish Central Reform Congregation, where Talve is the rabbi.

In 2013, the synagogue placed beehives along the wall to produce honey for Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. One morning they found the hives destroyed and all the bees dead. Mark McCloskey had taken an ax or sledgehammer to them.

His issue? The fence between them sat six inches inside the McCloskey’s property line. The hives were his to wreck.

“He could have picked up the phone and said, ‘Hey, those beehives are on my property,’ and we would have happily moved them,” said Talve.

Related story: That Time Donald Trump’s Father Was Arrested At A KKK Rally In Queens

She said children at the synagogue wept when they heard the news of the hives. The synagogue maintains raised bed gardens on its property that supply some 2,000 pounds of fresh produce to a local food pantry, as well as pear, fig and apple trees.

“We were going to have our own apples and honey for Rosh Hashanah!” she said.

She said the McCloskeys didn’t contact the temple at all before lashing out.

Instead, McCloskey left a note threatening to sue the synagogue for damages if the shattered hives were not removed at once.

“Civility,” Talve said. “I’m willing to speak out now because there’s such a lack of civility that’s happening, and I don’t feel like I can be a part of that, and silence is complicity.”

Talve paused.

“They are bullies,” she said. “The fact that they’re speaking at the convention is a win for bullies.”

Judging by their remarks at the Republican National Convention Monday night, the McCloskeys clearly don’t see it that way. They are the victims of a Democratic-run city that lets lawbreakers run rampant.

“What you saw happen to us could just as easily happen to you who are watching from quiet neighborhoods around our country,” Patricia McCloskey said to the convention.

“It seems the Democrats view the job of the government as protecting criminals from honest citizens,” said her husband.

When reporter Jeremy Kohler broke the storyof the McCloskey’s anti-beehive rampage in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Talve confirmed what happened but otherwise refrained from speaking out against the couple.

Image by Jewish Central Reform Con...

Mark McCloskey left this note after he destroyed bee hives owned by neighboring Jewish Central Reform Congregation

“At the time, we decided not to, because it was on their property,” she said. “They’re both attorneys. They’ve caused a lot of trouble for people. The advice that we got was, let it go. We live next door to these people that have guns and we have children. But every once in a while you have to speak up and say enough.”

The McCloskeys made national headlines by waving guns at Black Lives Protesters who neared their mansion on tony Portland Place on the evening of June 28.

But by then they already had a long and well-documented history of litigation, threats and neighborhood feuds.

They were locked in litigation to make their neighborhood association enforce a rule against unmarried couples residing there. Talve said they only cared because a gay couple had moved into the exclusive neighborhood.

“Certain people on Portland Place, for political reasons, wanted to make it a gay issue,” Mark McCloskey told The Post-Dispatch.

But Talve doesn’t buy it.

“Any chance they have to sow division they’ll take it,” she said.

She said the couple’s actions during the evening of the Black Lives Matter march are a case in point.

The protesters were peaceful, Talve said.

She said she knew this because many members of her synagogue marched with them, and she works closely with many of the local BLM activists.

In 2014, during protests over the police killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, Talve was the most outspoken Jewish religious leader at the scene.

In 2017 Talve’s synagogue opened its doors to provide refuge for protesters when a march against police violence itself turned violent.

At the time, a trending Twitter hashtag called on the police to #GasTheSynagogue.

Talve is certain such stances did not make her congregation popular with the McCloskeys or the well-armed people in the area who support them. During the June 28 march, she said BLM members stationed themselves in the parking lot to protect the synagogue from possible attack from militia-like groups.

Instead of the McCloskeys, Talve said the real hero in the June 28 confrontations is St. Louis circuit attorney Kimberly Gardner, who filed charges against the couple for unlawful use of weapons and pointing firearms at protesters, which is a class E felony.

“The protestors were not charged with a crime,” Mark McCloskey said at the convention, “but she charged us with felonies for daring to defend our home.”

President Donald Trump has also publicly criticized Gardner for prosecuting the McCloskeys.

“These are the values that this administration has been putting forward, values that sow hate among people,” said Talve. “They stand for a kind of white supremacist system. Our resistance is to love each other.”

McClosky