'Iowa Nasty' menaces Infowars reporter Kaitlin Bennett. Something larger, more sinister at issue.

From Liberty Hangout

"Iowa nice" is a pleasant-sounding descriptor our state's people embrace. But what Infowars reporter Kaitlin Bennett recently got here instead was "Iowa nasty."

"I was attending a @PeteButtigieg rally when two of his supporters violently attacked my camera crew and I for simply being conservative,"  Bennett tweeted, after the assault." I am calling on Mayor Pete to denounce the violence from his supporters so conservatives know they can feel safe at his rallies."

Cedar Rapids ABC affiliate KCRG said it, too, had reached out to the Buttigieg campaign for comment on his supporters' videotaped violence against a woman reporter.

One attacker was an older man, the other looked to be college aged. "NO BODY IS ILLEGAL" was the slogan on the flush-cheeked kid's white t-shirt.

He swiped at the camera, and knocked it off balance; his attempted blocking of a reporter recalled 1980s South African forces that defended apartheid. Blocking cameras was standard for them. 

The attack illustrated what has become usual for anti-Trump terrorists. Shutting off reporting and open view of public activity is de rigueur for wrongdoers. The Resistance and apartheid-era South African police share hostility toward open reporting and free speech.

From the KCRG report:

"The video that has been shared thousands of times, shows two men approaching Bennett and her film crew while giving them the middle finger. Bennett can then be heard asking, 'Do you usually treat women like that?'

"What follows, one of the men can be seen making physical contact with a camera, another man standing nearby and Bennett. The video posted online appears to have been edited.

"Cedar Rapids police tell TV9 the two individuals in question are believed to be from Illinois and that there were three victims in all..."

According to a page later posted at Bennett's Liberty Hangout site:

"The two men that attacked Bennett are believed to be Ethan Buhrow and his father Michael Buhrow, who traveled out of state from Illinois to attend the Buttigieg rally. Ethan is a political science major at Arizona State University and lists on his Facebook page that he was a Field Organizer for failed Democratic candidate Nancy Zettler, who ran for Illinois State Senate, last year and lost. Michael Buhrow produced videos for Zettler's Democratic campaign through his freelance video Company Edge Editorial, and appeared to have a camera bag slung over his shoulders when he and his son attacked Bennett in Iowa."

Bennett notes that she has filed a complaint against Ethan Buhrow with Cedar Rapids police, and that they are seeking a warrant for his arrest.

The Liberty Hangout page features numerous photos of Ethan Buhrow with national-level Democrats, including Nancy Pelosi, Bernie Sanders, Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, and Eric Holder.

Ethan shared numerous tweets by violent domestic terrorist group Antifa. Per Bennett's page, Buhrow made his Twitter account private. But a cached image of it showed Buhrow's bio claimed "all cops are class traitors and pigs."

(While preparing this piece, I contacted Edge Editorial for a statement from Michael Buhrow or that company itself. None was received by post time. Should a response eventuate, I'll include it in a future post.)

Among the ugly features of the emergent left that throngs city streets and rails against President Trump is hostility toward openness. Intellectual liberty, free speech, and a press able to present pictures of the world without limitations have inherent values.

That used to be understood. 

All of those are fundamentally important to citizen-directed government. People can't cast informed votes if they're unable to learn about situations and players as they really are, and speak their opinions as to what they've seen. Or voice unique perspectives and debate with fellow citizens.

Liberals once advocated for press freedom. They endorsed sunlight and transparency over secrecy and shadowy machinations. That the public had a legitimate right to know, was a cherished principle. 

But given progressivism's perpetual-movement nature, and the relish with which speech, assembly, and press freedoms are today under attack, I expect repression will soon become a mainstream fancy. Perhaps even a Democrat Party plank.

Today's Resistance isn't a logical extension of JFK/MLK-era liberalism. It is a sharp and hideous deviation from that path. The thinking seems to be: When out of power, agitate for minority rights. But once in authority, deny all minority rights and 'counter-revolutionary' liberties.

Hands thrust over camera lenses to shut out public witness was once rightly reviled as inimical to a free society. It was a dirty tactic employed by totalitarians aware that their ideas were unpopular. 

Its perpetrators were considered to be of the miserable variety. Nazi, communist, socialist, and apartheid troops that enforced oppressive rule at the barrel of a machine gun. Enemies of the people.

I recall Fidel Castro executing a 1990s dissident on the rationale that Cuba's interest in self-preservation made it just. Similar quack reasoning is probably already bubbling in America's academia and fringe political enclaves. 

"He tends to defuse heated situations with humor and an ability to talk to anyone." That description of Des Moines police officer Ryan Mann was part of a 2016 profile written by Des Moines Register columnist, Daniel Finney. 

By Finney's account, Mann is a committed law keeper whose compassion and sense of justice make him the sort of police officer every community would want.

All of those fine attributes may show in other circumstances. But they were not evidenced by the treatment Mann accorded Bennett, when she attempted to interview participants in the Saturday Des Moines Gay Pride rally.

As seen in a video  available now on numerous sites, drunken mobs of rally attendees harassed Bennett. They sought to impede her activity and broadcasting by loudly chanting profanities. At least once, the Infowars interviewer was physically assaulted. 

(Some tipsy miscreants identified themselves as affiliated with the local Blazing Saddle bar.) 

Mann was featured in a 2014 episode of TV's Cops. Which may explain his seeming camera-conscious performance here. He appears purposefully rude and disrespectful of Bennett, and even of the concept of possible disagreement with the event's philosophy. 

Mann seldom allowed the Infowars reporter to even finish a sentence, so determined did he seem to seize the opportunity for camera time. His manner was that of a programmed machine. 

It seemed, from his brusque and condescending comportment, Mann sought to communicate both subtextual hostility to Infowars' Bennett and his personal sympathy to the event. 

At least as depicted by the clip, Mann evidenced no interest in objectivity or fairness. As if he were, not a neutral public servant responsible to all, but a private security employee retained by festival organizers, one bent on exploiting authority to intimidate outsiders.

A larger and more sinister possibility, too, must be considered.

Mann did seem to pursue discourteous treatment of Bennett with officious zeal. His prejudice may have been encouraged by city leaders' thinking that, for financial reasons, the peculiar desires of a political-cultural interest group of seasonal fancy and adverse publicity potential deserved elevation over the time-honored Constitutional rights of every other Iowa citizen.

Iowa municipalities, and the state, itself, have surely long been conscious of the Gay community and its allies' potential for impacting revenues. And certainly, no local office-holder or tourism agent would want a boycott. A boycott would be all over social media, and hurt stores and restaurants, employees, politicians, and journalists. 

Iowa's fast-approaching, quadrennial moment in the national media spotlight, the caucuses, would also be affected. As would all involved in them, from candidates to organizers to location owners to hotels to taxi companies to TV stations and newspapers. 

It's not unthinkable that bad publicity on this subject would inspire new calls to change the caucus schedule and leave Iowa behind. Our state would be derided as unrepresentative of fanciful national mores.

So, it may be that, for such reasons, celebratory events like the one in Cedar Rapids are granted exemption from respecting all others' Constitutional rights. 

It is a low grade of public official that would sacrifice the traditionally safeguarded Constitutional rights and liberties of millions of good residents, and dance on strings pulled by a relative few with bulging purses. 

Indulging fascistic forces for their dollars is a disgusting and unAmerican posture for elected officials and related bureaucratic functionaries. The American left long stormed against 'Profits Over People.' But they now seem just fine with that.