A tale of two haystacks, burned near each coast
By TATIANA PROPHET
Evaluating the quantity and news treatment of political violence can be tedious, if you do it right. The more information you gather, the more you realize that while ordinary citizens have bias, news outlets can magnify that bias simply by omitting details — either through being short-staffed, biased themselves, or not trained in thorough and fair reporting.
It’s impossible, however, when comparing the torching of political signs at farms in both Massachusetts and California, not to notice that one suspect is being held without bail (the one who torched the Democrat display), and the other is (or others are) still on the loose after doing the dirty deed of torching the Trump display twice!
Over the weekend, news broke that a Biden-Harris display at a farm in western Massachusetts had been set on fire Friday night. The news traveled a lot further on social media than local officials expected.
By Saturday morning, 49-year-old Lonnie Durfee was in custody and charged with one count of burning personal property at Holiday Brook Farm. He’s currently being held without bond in Central Berkshire District Court pending his “dangerousness hearing,” according to Mass Live.
Berkshire District Attorney Andrea Harrington highlighted the incident because of the message it sent.
“This is a sad reflection of the vast polarization in our country and in the Berkshires,” she said in a statement. “We believe Mr. Durfee destroyed personal property because he disagreed with the property owner’s political views," she said in a statement. "Our community will not accept those types of actions under any circumstances,” she said. “We will hold Mr. Durfee accountable and I hope the community uses this incident as a rallying cry to reject fervent divisiveness and hate.”
The weekend prior, in central California, the Tulare County Stockyard’s display of Trump-Pence and Devin Nunes political signs was torched for the second time, this time after about 300 motorists had passed through the area in a mobile Trump rally. The first incident took place Sept. 20, according to the Visalia Times Delta.
“It burned for hours on Avenue 384 and Road 80, near Dinuba,” reported Joshua Yeager. He added that the Stockyard fires were not the only incidents involvement defacement of Trump 2020 political signs:
“Onlookers said they were surprised by the repeated destruction of the signs, noting that most people in the area are ‘Trump people.’ However, over the last month, multiple signs supporting Nunes and Trump have been defaced or destroyed.”
Yeager also quoted a tweet by Congressman Nunes blaming “Democrats and Socialist rioters [who were] once again bringing violence right here to the Valley.”
The reporter then fact-checked Nunes: “No politically motivated riots have happened in Nunes’ district, which spans much of Tulare and Fresno counties.”
This time, the farm bureau of Tulare County expressed dismay that the act had been committed a second time. No suspect has yet been found, and it wasn’t clear whether there was any security camera footage available.
Another local paper, the San Joaquin Valley Sun, spoke to the farmer about his loss.
“Much like the first arson on his property, [Jon] Dolieslager doesn’t know who exactly is responsible for the thousands in damages to his property, but he isn’t uncertain their political bend (sic).
‘They’re undeterred to burn and loot,’ he said of the unknown arsonist.”
The Tulare County, Calif., fire.
As for the Berkshire farm, the community rallied around owner Dicken Crane, according to the Berkshire Eagle, hosting two Go Fund Me pages, one that raised $2,000 and another that raised $700 as of Monday.
Crane said he would use the money for the less fortunate. On Sunday he and others reinstalled the display, with letters that spelled “Unity,” “Peace,” and “Love.”
As for the California farmer, after losing what he called $10,000 worth of the last prime alfalfa of the season, he has rebuilt a third time, also with local help — using steel shipping containers to reinforce their message of support for Trump, Nunes, and the slogan “say no to socialism.”
