Here is my opportunity to agree with Rick Rogers, who in his column of Nov. 26 chided those Americans, many of them young, who took to the streets to protest the election of Donald Trump as president of the United States. The physical furor was anything but a display of good citizenship.
And when some - not all - started throwing rocks and otherwise threatening other people and property, it was worse.
It was also a rejection of the example set by Trump's opponent, Hillary Clinton, in upholding one of this country's finest traditions, the peaceful and even gracious transfer of power to a new chief executive selected through means established by the U.S. Constitution.
Like those protesters, I did not vote for Trump. And like them, I was shocked to learn enough voters had chosen to put someone I consider an adolescent demagogue into the nation's highest office. But they did; that is the American way, and I hope it always will be.
I recall just after the 2008 election of Barack Obama when an old friend who had opposed him told me, "He's my president now, too." I admired her as much as I ever had, and I now owe her and my country the same sentiment toward our new chief executive.
That is a lesson many Americans are slow to learn. In fact, I wonder when Rick Rogers will.
It is easy for Rogers, who has made a practice of fighting local government in Asotin County, to disparage some people who were on the opposite side of him in the presidential election. And judging from the number of names Rogers employed to insult them - "crybabies," "spoiled brats," "numbskulls" and the like - he reveled in the chance to do so.
But when the shoe is on another foot, one stepping on his own sensibilities, how does he respond? Consider a couple of well-publicized examples.
First is his county government's struggle to meet a state requirement to control the flow of stormwater from properties within the county. Rogers greeted county commissioners' solution - to impose a modest fee to finance the undertaking, currently $4 a month on residential property owners - as more than a mistake.
The fee, he said repeatedly, was illegal, and the commissioners who approved it were "cowards" for not telling state government to go to hell.
Then, Rogers told county government to go to hell by refusing to pay the fee. He still says he never will, and has even instructed his offspring that if he dies, they are not to pay it. He insists he is within his rights to do so because the fee is unconstitutional.
Sorry, Mr. Rogers, but under this system of government, individual citizens do not get to interpret state or federal constitutions on their own, an invitation to anarchy. That is the job of the courts, and until he can get a court to agree with him on the constitutionality of the county stormwater fee, it is the law of the land.
In that, it is not unlike the Electoral College, a constitutional anachronism that permits someone who loses the popular vote for president, as Trump did, to claim victory anyway. I believe the Electoral College is an affront to democracy, but until an amendment removes it from the Constitution, it remains the law of the land.
A more recent Rogers crusade resulted from his partial construction of a garage near his residence, construction he undertook without the required building permit and on property not his own, but on public right of way. When the county, not surprisingly, sought the garage's removal, you would have thought it was Rogers whose property had been improperly appropriated.
At first, he delayed any action on the county's request, saying it was "unreasonable, capricious and arbitrary." And when he later was charged with two misdemeanors for his obstinance, he vowed, "I'm not going to jail, and I'm not going to pay any money."
He even chose to attack neighbors who told commissioners his unfinished building was an eyesore, labeling one "an uneducated idiot."
Only after it became obvious he would lose more financially through resistance to commissioners' demands than acceptance of them, Rogers had the garage removed from he what sarcastically referred to as "their precious right of way."
Today, this is the guy who presumes to lecture Donald Trump's election opponents on good sportsmanship and respect for governmental institutions and procedures? Surely even rock throwers in the streets of Portland deserve to receive that message from a better teacher, and a better citizen.
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Fisher is the former editor of the Tribune's Opinion page. His email address is cfandjf@frontier.com.
