The classic best-selling book on how to make friends and influence people is loaded with solid advice on how to appeal to the nobler motives of our fellow humans.
There are no recommendations to kill a person for disagreeing with you or threaten their family members.
It does not advice evicting tenets who would vote differently on political matters or wage a campaign of harassment to intimidate others to do your bidding.
Mostly because this behavior is how to make enemies.
Obviously, the book was written before the age of social media, wherein grassroots political party members are urging their fellow humans to contact legislators who don’t represent them but to urge them anyway to act on their behalf.
And some are taking it too far, and too personal.
Colorado Politics reports Republican U.S. Rep. Ken Buck has received numerous death threats that law enforcement is investigating, his family threatened, and his staff served with an eviction notice from his congressional office in Windsor.
Buck is one of the original eight lawmakers who voted to evict Speaker McCarthy from his office and is not supporting Jim Jordan to replace him.
Jordan has even less support from the GOP caucus than McCarthy or Steve Scalise, who pulled out of the race before a public floor vote.
Buck cites a constant barrage of threatening phone calls for the breakdown in support of Jordan in the GOP caucus.
“So far, I’ve had four death threats,” Buck said. “I’ve been evicted from my office in Colorado — I have notice of an eviction because the landlord is mad with my voting record on the speaker issue — and everybody in the conference is getting this, so it’s natural. Family members have been approached and threatened, all kinds of things are going on. There’s going to be some tension.”
Buck hastened to add that he isn’t suggesting it is Jordan’s fault.
“There are a lot of TV pundits or a lot of radio pundits or a lot of grassroots groups that are putting out misinformation and hateful information,” he said. “And it just stirs people up. There are a lot of people that are scared about the direction of this country, and they’re taking this to heart.”
We would encourage PeakNation™ to always lobby their own congressional representatives in a respective manner when registering political opinions.
Treat the young staffer answering the phone with kindness and respect, tell them your name and where you live in that district, and politely ask them to let the lawmaker know you are for or against an issue.
That’s it. Your call with matter.
Never threaten anyone with violence. It’s against the law, and in that case your call will only matter to law enforcement.
Buck’s office has put six staffers on phone duty, and still some 20,000 messages have gone to voice mail.
“Politics is downstream from the reality that we have in this country, and we have a country that is very divided at this point,” he said. “What we need to do in Congress is to make sure we don’t throw some gasoline on that fire. We need to make sure that we are talking in ways that soothe the tensions and not inflame the tensions.”
It’s not like Republicans are trying to elect Nancy Pelosi. Everyone needs to just chill out and let the Republican caucus go through the motions, which takes a while, to decide on their new leadership team.