There’s an old axiom about what it takes to be a good journalist:

They almost all subscribe to it, or at least used to.

Journalists are supposed to “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.”

In other words, whether you cover City Hall or the stinky dins of the Washington, D.C. swamp, don’t coddle and curry favor with the power elites.

Our Founding Fathers grasped the importance of the press. That’s why they enshrined freedom of the press in the First Amendment along with the freedoms of speech and religion. They knew that an informed public was imperative if our republican form of government was to survive. To get to the truth, the press must feel free to ask tough questions and remain fiercely independent of those holding power and their cronies, i.e. the swamp.

But that axiom – comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable – has been turned on its head in recent years, and nowhere is this reversal of journalistic orthodoxy more palpable than in Macomb County. Local news outlets and the reporters who work for them for some reason feel the need to support the policies of the ruling elites, at least on certain key issues. Anyone who questions them must be ruthlessly put down.

If any citizen or group in Sterling Heights dares to challenge the prevailing group think that comes out of Mayor Michael Taylor’s office, they are immediately attacked on social media by the mayor’s apparatchiks.

Some so-called news reporters act more like shock troops for their friends in power. We ordinary folk are treated like uppity field hands who must be reminded of our rightful place at the bottom of the political caste system.

This despicable behavior seems to come to bear on some issues more than others. If you want to see the shock troops really get worked up, just write or speak out publicly in a way that dissents from their sanctified opinions on immigration or the new gender ideology that is invading our schools and public libraries. If you’re really brave, try suggesting in public that immigration should be legal, orderly and involve at least a minimal degree of assimilation. Or perhaps call out a particular immigrant community for tolerating female genital mutilation.

The holier than thou secular left, particularly those in media, will immediately condemn your words and pronounce you guilty of a mortal sin. You must be punished and do penance.

Just one of the many members of the shock troops is one Chad Selweski, a former longtime newsman in Macomb County who now authors a blog called Politically Speaking. He fancies himself a “centrist,” but saves the majority of his invective for hardworking Macomb County citizens, particularly those of the Christian persuasion. He loves to call names and issue edicts that pronounce us guilty of conservative hysteria, bigotry and narrow mindedness.

Has he ever called out even one hard-line Muslim in Michigan for their anti-Jewish hate speech? We know where he could find several examples of such hate in our section of the state. He need look no further than the city of Sterling Heights Ethnic Committee, among other places. We’re talking about obvious Antisemitism, written down with ink on paper. We’ve got the documentation, and we would be happy to share it with you, Mr. Selweski. But he won’t touch that story because it doesn’t fit his preconceived narrative that only conservative Christians born in America can be biased and bigoted.

He’d rather go after powerless citizens and bloggers. He’d rather afflict the afflicted. The folks who Mayor Taylor shuts down at city council meetings, who find their only voice in blogs and Facebook posts, these are the little people he goes after with his prosaic daggers.

He absolutely cannot tolerate citizen journalists like those who post at Macomb Politics having even this modest platform to voice their opinions.

And he saves his most extreme vitriol for those who dare to criticize Islam. It doesn’t matter if the criticism is true or not. They are automatically branded “anti-Muslim bigots.”

Selweski writes in a recent blog post about Macomb Politics: “Political observers assume the blog is backed by a radical slate of candidates from 2015: Paul Smith, Jazmine Early, Verna Babula, Jackie Ryan, Sanaa Elias and Joe Judnick.”

Who are these “observers” cited by Selweski. He doesn’t tell us.

No one named in Selweski’s article has anything to do with Macomb Politics. This blog is backed by We the People, citizens of Sterling Heights and Macomb County. If we are bound by a common thread it is this: We are all Constitutional Supremacists. We don’t take kindly to the new bullying tactics of elected leaders, bureaucrats and their media lackeys, who do their best to silence anyone with whom they disagree.

It’s interesting that the people targeted by Selweski for the most part have questioned two things – Islamic Sharia Law and female genital mutilation.

FGM has become a problem in Southeastern Michigan. We are home to the U.S. Justice Department’s first prosecuted case of FGM, where young girls have been trafficked in from other states to have their genitals cut by a Muslim doctor from India. If being against the torture of young girls makes us bigots, then sign us up. We’re guilty as charged.

And when it comes to elements of Sharia appearing in Michigan communities, it’s not just FGM that has us concerned.

Many of our political and corporate elites, even our churches, have already bowed to the first rule of Sharia – thou shalt not criticize Muslims or Islam.

In Muslim-majority nations like Pakistan these are called blasphemy laws. In Western Europe and increasingly here in the states, we have our own special form of these Sharia-based blasphemy laws. Rather than the state enforcing such laws, we voluntarily submit to them out of fear that we will be shamed by powerful Muslim groups like CAIR and their friends in the media.

How else do you explain a Baptist Church in Bloomfield Hills recently deciding to cancel a speaking event featuring a former Muslim who addresses the lack of tolerance for free speech under Sharia?

In the end, whether sharia is implemented by the long arm of the law, or imposed on society by the media and other gatekeepers using the tools of public shaming, it has the same effect. All other religions are fair game for the pundits and bloggers. Only Islam sits above the fray on a throne of supremacy, off limits to public criticism.

This looks to us like a recipe for a divided society, where, as George Orwell said, some groups are more equal than others. A divided society is an unhealthy society. And an unhealthy society is not sustainable. Eventually, the cracks and fissures in the social cohesion become gaping holes. That’s what we at Macomb Politics don’t want to see happen and that’s why we call for a level playing field, where all religions are judged by the same standards and everyone has freedom of speech. That’s true equality.

The visceral reaction by a member of the local media to this blog is proof that we are sliding into Shariaville.

Selweski chides those who have run against Mayor Taylor and “never won an election in their life.”

Yet, the mayor has never won an overwhelming election victory in a city where the voter turnout in any given election hovers around 15-20 percent. It is extremely difficult to unseat incumbents, who get showered with financial contributions.

Selweski mentions Smith and the “religious supremacists who support him shook the city to its core in 2015 as anti-Muslim demonstrations occurred near the proposed mosque site on 15 Mile Road.”

Let the truth be known, Smith had nothing to do with the protests. It was local Chaldeans and other Christian immigrants, along with some native-born Americans, who were protesting the location of the mosque in a residential zoned neighborhood and its massive footprint.

Selweski ends his diatribe with a thinly veiled threat. Not against the power elites, but against we the people. Remember, he is of the new breed of journalist who must afflict those on the lowest rung on the power pole.

After hurling every insult he can think of – including the tired made-up label “Islamophobia” along with xenophobia, bigot, etc. – he uses someone else to utter his most disgusting bare-knuckle epithet of all. He quotes Michael Lombardini, a Taylor sycophant, to create a false boogieman suitable for striking down. Lombardini is quoted saying: “Don’t get me wrong, even crazy people have their free speech rights, but you eventually reach a point where snickering gets replaced with a genuine concern for the safety of the city; and I think we’re about there now.”

It sounds like Taylor’s people may be gearing up for a fight that involves more than just words.

Let us repeat the words of Lombardini: “… you eventually reach a point where snickering gets replaced with a genuine concern for the safety of the city; and I think we’re about there now.”

If the safety of the city is indeed threatened, that means people get locked up. That’s where Selweski and the Taylor sycophants show their hand. They want those of us who disagree with them politically rounded up and locked away in jail cells, where they won’t have to put up with the annoyance of listening to opposing views.

Folks, if we ever reach that point, alluded to by Selweski, then we have indeed become a communist society. Thank God, we at Macomb Politics don’t believe we are close to that point, and the Taylor sycophants are just blowing smoke, hoping to intimidate those of us who aren’t familiar with our rights into going silent. Like they always do, they underestimate we the people, the unwashed, the deplorables.

We the people will stand firm behind the U.S. Constitution and the First Amendment, which gives all of us the right to protest, to petition our government, and to express our political views, no matter how unpopular they are among those who walk in the heady halls of power.

What fair-minded person would want a representative on the city’s ethnic committee who has a history of touting Antisemitism and Jew hatred? The city talks about diversity, inclusion and unity and then allows an anti-Semite to serve on its Ethnic Committee. Something is wrong with that picture. It’s called hypocrisy.

Selweski bashes us for reporting on the financing behind Welcoming Michigan, a chapter of Welcoming America, which was founded by David Lubell with $150,000 in seed money from a George Soros-funded foundation. That’s another documented fact, which Lubell has never denied. But lazy left-wing political activists posing as reporters aren’t interested in facts.

Welcoming America’s mission, along with that of its state chapters, is to spin one-sided tales about the economic and cultural benefits that refugees and illegal aliens bring into American cities. They place radio and billboard ads and help feed positive talking points about migrants to mayors and other officials in state and local governments.

Lambardini, for the record, is a political operative for Mayor Taylor who uses his blog to demonize and denigrate those who question the accountability of city officials. He often sits at the rear of city council meetings waiting to pounce on anyone who wishes to speak up and question the city officials.

Does this sound like a city that values diversity? Inclusion?

In reality, it’s city officials and their cronies who are the real hate mongers. Not we the people.

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