Officials should watch what they post

Social media gives everyone a voice, and how they choose to use that voice, or whether they use it, is up to them. But it doesn’t come without consequences.

Brookfield First Selectman Tara Carr, who saw her Twitter account suspended recently over posts related to the president of the United States and an apparent Chinese spy balloon, insists she is being misunderstood. It’s all about context, she said, adding that she never meant the president any ill-intent.

So let’s try to look at what she posted in that context. Carr said she was “shocked and critical of President Biden’s failure to act while a Chinese Communist Party balloon sailed over the USA.” That’s her right to be shocked, and to express that shock. (Never mind that the balloon, in addition to any number of other airborne objects, was shot down once authorities determined no harm would be caused by their falling to the ground.)

But that’s not quite what Carr posted on Twitter. In at least four separate tweets, she posted from her account some version of: “He’s aiding & abetting the enemy. Ready. Aim. Fire. One shot, one kill. That simple ...”

Who is the “he” is this scenario? The balloon? How does a balloon aid and abet anyone?

Then there’s “one shot, one kill.” You can do a lot of things to knock a balloon out of the sky, but hardly anyone would make reference to “killing” one. What context makes this make sense?

Whatever Carr was saying, Twitter itself wasn’t buying it, leading to her account’s suspension. Even in the new world of Twitter, where rules have been replaced by a billionaire’s whims, these posts crossed a line.

In a statement decrying the whole incident, Carr played the victim. “Unfortunately, some on the fringe of the political spectrum, who are more interested in engaging in vitriolic statements and fabricating their own truths rather than intelligent discourse, took these comments out of context and made ridiculous and false assertions that somehow, I was promoting violence against our nation’s President,” she said in a statement Tuesday morning. “This is a complete lie.”

Doesn’t she have a town she’s supposed to be running?

Carr was elected by a Brookfield electorate that was well aware of her views, which she has never been shy about disclosing. The “fringe” she accuses of attacking her is in fact the Democratic leadership in her town and others, people who are likely wondering why a first selectman is weighing in on such matters at all, let alone so recklessly.

First selectmen have free speech rights like anyone else. But even if what she said is “common vernacular” in the military, where she served before going into politics, it’s not common in the public sphere. In this world, she’s expected to represent her town and go about the business of running the government.

Social media gives everyone a voice, and how they choose to use that voice, or whether they use it, is up to them. But it doesn’t come without consequences. A politician posting in public something that could easily be construed as a threat against the president isn’t a problem for people reacting to it — it’s a problem for the person who posted it.

It’s not too much to ask public officials to be careful what they post.