1. Bushart’s story is a case study in a malady that social media and the news media, with their deliberate pot-stirring techniques perfected over several decades, have created. I have many friends who suffer from it as well. They have become obsessed with political conflicts and self-righteousness, feel it is their duty to bombard everyone they know with columns, memes and news stories they feel “prove” their point, and think they are accomplishing something when in fact they are contributing to the disintegration of civil and functioning society.
I had a brother in law who turned into a Bushart after his wife died and before social media struck. He would mail us clippings from newspapers almost daily that fueled his right-wing fury. It drove my late wife to distraction: she ultimately asked her sister’s widower to knock it off. Offended, he never spoke to either of us again. A once close friend of mine, a singer who owed me quite a bit of good will since I had advanced her career, kept posting progressive rants by the likes of Paul Krugman and Charles M. Blow on my Facebook feed as if they were objective, independent truth-tellers instead of the shamelessly biased partisan hacks they were. When I insisted on pointing out–nicely, politely— the distortion she was promoting, she blocked me and hasn’t spoken with me in a decade.
2. A federal civil rights lawsuit has been filed by Bushart against Perry County Sheriff Nick Weems in his personal capacity. F.I.R.E is representing him. As of today, the court had not yet issued a final ruling on whether the sheriff’s actions fall under qualified immunity. The lawsuit alleges that because the sheriff acted as a primary policymaker and ratified the arrest based on a “false and contrived interpretation” of a social media post, he should be held accountable.
It seems clear that a lawsuit against Weems in his official capacity would fail because of qualified immunity, which in my view shows that immunity goes too far. Bushart’s attorneys argue that the sheriff is not entitled to qualified immunity because the arrest for the political meme violated “clearly established” First Amendment rights. Gee, ya think? Look at that meme! They might as well have arrested him for posting a “Peanuts” strip.
3. It seems clear that the Times is so thoroughly mourning the injustice of Bushart’s arrest and the effective chilling of his free speech rights because this is the Trump administration and the “fascist” restriction of speech is part of the Axis narrative. If the Times had the integrity to be objective, it would have been similarly indignant over the false charges Jack Smith and other Democratic prosecutors made against Donald Trump to silence him and cripple his ability to make life miserable for their party.
4. The reality is that law enforcement officials all over the country abuse their authority, make incompetent arrests, ruin reputations and careers, and it will ever be thus. It is not a partisan issue, as hard as the Axis is now working to tie the eternal truth that power corrupts to Donald Trump. The far worse Justin Carter case began with an arrest in the Obama administration, but the news media’s interest in exploiting it was minimal.
5. I would like to see disincentives for officials to abuse citizens like Bushart and Carter, if appropriate sanctions could be established without making more competent and responsible law enforcement personnel wary of doing their jobs zealously. I am not at all certain a benign balance is possible. I’m afraid this is another example of ethics zugzwang: whatever we do, the results will be bad.
Ethics Alarms 
He was not arrested by the Trump administration.
He was arrested DURING the Trump administration by evil conservative law enforcement. The public is not that discerning, ME.
Not a lawyer here, as I have said, but wouldn’t a civil lawsuit against the county, as opposed to against the sheriff personally, help to restrain the excesses of immunity? If a county had to pay big bucks, they might exercise more supervision over those they employ and caution over those they hire.
An aside or two:
It is sad that your late wife was driven to distraction by a family member’s ‘Bushartisms’. I have a dear relative who busharts (is that a legitimate verb?) regularly. I have unfollowed her on social media. When we’re together, I only respond to a discussion of issues and not to the proponents. Two persons, one with TDS and one with TAKS, can find agreement that way if the acronyms aren’t all-controlling.
Also, the NYT article reminds me of what I see routinely in The Washington Post — the practice by ‘reporters’ to write and get published mini-novellas. Often, the lede is buried and it takes an inordinate number of words to get to the meat of the story. My long-ago speed-reading instruction kicks in, in lieu of the TLDR impulse.
Boy, I agree wildly with that last observation. What happened to the classic news story template?
It started when Sgt. Joe “All we know are the facts, ma’am” Friday faded from the scene.
Or, more to the point, when facts conflict with belief, it becomes necessary to use story-telling to engage the reader.
As drummed into my head by a formidable English teacher long ago(along with other rules of composition) an article can only be written in news article style (the first paragraph is a repeat of, and a fleshing out of the headline and nothing more) if it’s a news article, no fluff or opinion allowed. If you’re reading an article which does not do this, it’s not news but something else. The hunt-for-the-lede type article has propaganda/fluff/opinion attached which disqualifies it as news, and so it cannot be written as such.
Case in point (one of the most egregious examples I can recall off the top of my head) was on a Chicago newspaper’s website. ‘Trump’s drone strikes surpass Obama’s’. I thought ‘That would take some doing’ and decided to read the article. Several paragraphs in after a lot of blabber (beginning with ‘If I gave you a pop quiz on recent current events’ and going on to mention Harry and Meghan and then onto a pop quiz on the drone program) was the list of countries droned and a total of 176 strikes. Thing is, they left off a country or two and cherry-picked to make the numbers higher for Trump. Any article that makes you look for the lede is likely faked somehow. (Obama’s drone strike numbers were over 500, by the way).
I think it’s misleading to state he was arrested solely for the above image meme, as there’s addadditional missing context.
If memory serves, he posted it as a reply to an announcement of future gathering that also had Perry in the name, and stated he hoped they’d get a similar crass eulogy.
Multiple organizers felt this was a threat to their own rights of lawful assembly. That doesn’t mean i think the arrest is justified–but it did justify contact and observation. Both he and the Florida man who was arrested simply for wearing body armor in the vicinity of a politician at a parade were unjustly arrested.
looked, I can’t find any images of other comments he had supposedly made to the post like I had seen before. All I can find that’s verifiable is what’s in the arrest affidavit, the words “This seems relevant today…” alongside the meme.
As crass and gross such posts are to a candlelight vigil for a public assassination, it doesn’t rise to the level of a credible threat that the affidavit (signed by a judge) says it is.
A couple of his other memes posted to that vigil post can be seen here:
https://wopclive.com/local-news/808311
The arresting documents are woefully incomplete. It’s true he was arrested for the pictured meme, but he also flooded the post with memes including stills featuring Kirk’s gushing neck, conspiracy theories about TPUSA funding, Paul Pelosi’s hammer attack and more.
He truly is an asshole. I still can’t find the whole context of the Facebook post, but did find one woman expressing concern that he’d show up and “cause trouble” at the vigil.
None of that is even close to criminal conduct. The assholes are the officials that had him arrested and jailed, and the judge who set bail. But you know that.
Yup.
The TN law itself is horrible too. It legislates a misdemeanor crime to have knowledge of a meme that could be construed as a threat yet not reporting such meme to the authorities. No distinction to who is a mandatory reporter.