and some of the residents... Things are getting too dangerous with all this rampant tribalism that relies on violence to coerce everyone else to do their bidding.
There is a “mob mentality that’s been created and is being created,” said Lawrence Schoen, a commissioner of Blaine County. People in town have heard the demands of Sen. John McCain, an Arizona Republican and a former prisoner of war, that Bergdahl be punished. People have also heard Donald Trump, a Republican presidential candidate, regularly call Bergdahl “a dirty, rotten traitor” who should be executed or simply pushed from an airplane without a parachute.
The valley that surrounds Hailey is a relatively affluent and liberal sliver in a deeply conservative state, which added to the sense of being under siege in the immediate aftermath of Bergdahl’s release.
“There’s some really ignorant people who live some places in the West,” said Fritz Haemmerle, the mayor. “They’re very right wing, they’re very militant, they’re very uninformed and they’re people with guns and with an attitude.”
The harassment of people here may have tapered off since the weeks after Bergdahl was released, Schoen said, but the overall threat remains. “Am I concerned?” he said. “Yes. And is the level of threat serious? It is.”
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