Jon Reisman

When the news came in Sunday afternoon about the mass shooting in Buffalo, I had a sinking feeling. First, because I have a deep familiarity and connection with Buffalo, and second because I am all too familiar with how the left and their media cheerleaders use tragedy to attack their enemies and increase their power. Democratic politicians and the media confirmed my fears before night fell Sunday.

My paternal grandfather immigrated to Buffalo from Russia/Ukraine in 1908, and both his sons went to law (my father) and medical school (my uncle) there. My parents met there when my father was in law school and my mother (a Brooklyn girl whose grandparents emigrated from Germany in the 1870’s) was studying to be an Art teacher at Buffalo State Teacher’s college. The tensions between the families of the more established middle class and cultured German Jews and the more recent arrivals from Eastern Europe belied the fact that they were all of peasant stock. I was born at Millard Fillmore hospital in Buffalo during the Eisenhower administration. We left Buffalo for California in 1959, returning to the east Coast in Philadelphia in 1961, but my uncle’s family stayed (with a brief interruption for service as an Army doctor in Texas during the Vietnam War.) Only one of my four Reisman first cousins still resides in the Buffalo area

We visited Buffalo frequently throughout my childhood. It was an 8-10 hour drive through Pennsylvania and western New York with my sisters and I roaming unrestrained in our Dodge Rambler station wagon. We had travel detours to the Finger Lakes, Corning Glass and Kodak.  When my first son Asher (and first Reisman of the millennial generation) was born in 1987, we travelled to Buffalo to share him with his great grandmother and great aunt and uncle. My father moved back there in 2003, and several years later my sisters and I flew in to Buffalo to take a reverse road trip with my Dad back to Philadelphia. We visited our old house (yes, it seemed much smaller then I remembered) and Asher, then a student at Haverford. I grew up in Philadelphia and decamped for college and career in Maine. Asher grew up in Washington County, and decamped for college just outside Philadelphia. Of late, there has been some encouraging talk of returning to Maine. One can only hope.

Buffalo has fallen on hard times since it’s heyday as terminus of the Erie Canal and gateway to the upper Midwest in the 19th century and steel and manufacturing hub in the early to mid-20th. It always struck me as more mid-western then eastern. Buffalo was not immune to the racial tensions and strife that plagued New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Detroit and Chicago, but for whatever reason, seemed somewhat less stricken. Perhaps it was no different, I do not really know. I do know that my grandfather, who sold insurance for more than 30 years through the Great Depression and into the early sixties, had a diverse customer base, and chose to stay in Buffalo proper, eschewing suburban white flight.

Therefore, I recognized the neighborhood the shooter attacked, just as I recognized the media and Democratic maneuvering that almost immediately followed.

I watched in sad disbelief as one African American female media anchor immediately latched on and eagerly advanced the “white supremacist” narrative which the Democrats and the despicable Department of Homeland Security and FBI leadership have been promoting despite little supporting evidence. New York Governor Hochul, Senate Majority Leader Schumer and President Brandon all joined in blaming racist hate speech and, subtly and not so subtly indicting Fox news and Tucker Carlson for gun violence and hatred. The media, which characterized the Waukesha Christmas attacks by a black supremacist (never mentioned as such) as being done by an apparently driverless SUV had no such misdirection for the Buffalo shooter. The media instantly condensed his 180-page screed into “white supremacist”, ignoring his own self-description as a socialist, man of the left and eco-fascist, and downplaying his obvious mental illness. To put a cap on the double standards, President Brandon scheduled a visit to Buffalo within hours; he never travelled to Waukesha, citing security and scheduling concerns. There was no political advantage to be had there.

Brandon, Hochul and Schumer are again calling for the censorship of “hate” speech, which the now reviled by the left Supreme Court has insisted is protected. The Democrats hate free speech and the First Amendment now as much if not more than they hate the Second Amendment. Somehow, I do not think it is their own hate speech they envision banning. They want the power to control thought and action, and will use any tragedy to pursue that goal. Brandon has irrevocably broken his campaign and inaugural pledge to unite the nation, instead choosing to deliberately divide us.
We are in for a very rough six months as we move towards an electoral reckoning. The Democrats will do anything to hold on to power, but their monopoly hold on the media and narrative has been fractured, and a significant portion of the electorate no longer believes the lies spewing out of the legacy media. The lefts’ only hope is to steal another election, and I am sure they will try, but I hope and pray it will not work this time.

I put those last lines in to invite the Ministry of Truth and Big Tech to ban my column as dangerous hate speech and misinformation. I will expect the 6 AM FBI no-knock raid any time now.

Effective September 1 2022, Jon Reisman is retiring from the University of Maine at Machias after 38 years.  Mr. Reisman’s views are his own and he welcomes comments as letters to the editor here, or to him directly via email at [email protected].