The Asheville mayor is a pleasant personality. She’s smart, articulate and capable. Our mayor is also an exceptionally competent people-manipulator.

A recent example includes a presentation to our community’s Council on Independent Business Owners during which she repeatedly bemoaned the city’s difficulty in recruiting police officers. One is reminded of a drug addict, who having made the conscious decision to use fentanyl, mourning their addiction and the lack of adequate treatment resources, free housing, health care and brotherly love.

By handwringing over the reality of Asheville’s severely undermanned police force, the mayor deftly stepped around the fact that she and her all-female, all ultra-liberal City Council members were most directly responsible for the collapse of our public safety department in the first place.

Job one

The number one job of government – local, state or national – is the safety of the public. Our city leaders forgot that or ignored that or didn’t know that, and in their stumbling managed to turn an already difficult undertaking into a disaster.

 The pretense of peaceful

One of the silliest fabrications in this leadership farce was the relentless echo that “peaceful protestors” have rights, too. That’s as red, white and blue as you can get, except those two words come as a package.

That is nothing peaceful about rioting, painting up streets and buildings, breaking storefront windows, blocking interstates, setting off mortar-grade fireworks on the ground, and attacking police with frozen water bottles and other paraphernalia. All of those are forms of violence, mob behavior, and self-indulgence at the expense of public safety.

One is curious about how many of these social justice warriors would have the courage to face what our officers face — without a mob to back them up.

Media lies and enabling

It will come as no secret that many of our local media outlets — most especially our local daily newspaper — are extraordinarily careless with the truth.

Most reliably their dishonesty comes in the form of cherry picking the facts to suit their agenda, avoiding opposing views, and skipping news they that may not make their chosen ones look good.

A case in the point on the latter was the recent federal lawsuit filed by three local citizens — including myself — against the city for racial bias.

It seems that while in the middle of ignoring their public safety charge, the city did find the time to give away a half-million public dollars to an Asheville schools scholarship fund specifically earmarked for black students.

Talk about stepping back in time, it has been illegal to apply public resources to students on the basis of color for six decades. The city was caught with their pants down and they knew it. They did not even bother to file a brief to the court and dropped the racial discrimination component as a consent agenda item that evaded public comment.

Racism is bias on the basis of color – that means any color.

What did our local daily newspaper do? 

They sent us questions when we filed the suit, then failed to announce the suit, much less share any of our responses. Same-same with the outcome. It’s a big deal when city governing agents get caught violating the law. The C-T didn’t think you needed to know that.

Hiding incompetence behind words and protection

Today’s political and ethical climate is conducive to electing actors versus leaders of principle. Talking smoothly while pretending deceptively reveals the former.

Joe Biden’s fuzzy thinking would appear to reflect significant cognitive decline. It also stands as example of what happens when you play CYA and tell people what they want to hear for so long you lose your ability to discern truth.

Our mayor and council’s inability to recruit new officers reveals a less experienced version of Joe’s condition. They have self-deceived so thoroughly that they do not get the reality of their failure – for good reason the law enforcement community neither trusts nor believes anything these chameleons have to say.

A refresher course on accountability, honestly walking your talk, and the hidden dangers of situational ethics might begin to change that, but don’t hold your breath.