This opinion piece was submitted by a resident of the community.
Republicans and commonsense Democrats must engage in local politics and take back control from the locusts. A vocal minority of noisy agitators and partisan keyboard warriors now dominate our community discourse and exercise an outsize influence on our economy and our schools.
We’re living in age of insanity. Widespread economic prosperity and comfort, combined with technology, and social media, have paradoxically created a mind virus which has rapidly eroded civility and reason. With material human needs largely met on a daily basis, such as shelter, health care, and food, some segments of the population are deeply unhappy and rancorous. Locally, Andrea Wittchen and her ilk embody this reality in our community. Along with her “Saucon Shenanigans” website and Facebook presence, we are treated to an unending series of underdeveloped missives, hysterical screeds, and emotion-based arguments. This steady drumbeat serves as a call to arms for what this observer sees as the same group of approximately 12 people, her amen chorus. In a coordinated fashion, this little mob gets wound up on Facebook, then shows up to noisily agitate at Township Council and School Board meetings to echo Wittchen’s agenda.
These are the Locusts of Saucon Valley. They swarm noisily and destroy all they touch.
After all, Ms. Wittchen passionately defended Mark Ozimek as her “friend” in the wake of the death threats leveled not only at a Council member but his wife and children. Bear in mind, this man was arrested for threatening to “put him in a pine box” not decades ago, not years ago, but on 10/31/23. In addition to this recent charge, his past history includes a prison stint for vehicular homicide. (Curiously and not likely to surprise anyone who witnessed the 11/7 voting machine shenanigans, he is also a poll worker in Lower Saucon Twp.) Her defense of this individual is positively indefensible, and the minimization of the arrest for death threats is equally abhorrent. Naturally, the first reaction to her defense from a follower: “I’m touched and inspired by your words. This world needs to change and you just pointed it in the right direction.” This is insanity.
The locusts are sycophantic and shameless as they nod along to every Facebook post. On the rare occasion someone deigns to express a different opinion or ask an inquiring question, Ms. Wittchen routinely pounces. “What exactly do you do?” or “Try reading something outside your own bubble.” This is a small taste of her self-grandiosity and narcissism.
The hypocritical nature of her cabal is regularly on display. Many of these people are soi disant “feminists,” yet they are the first to savage another woman who dares participate in local politics or holds opinions of her own. About candidate Susan Blair, one of the locusts comments, “Her husband occasionally goes to meetings. I expect he tells her what goes on.” The radicals often use terms such as “misogyny,” “unpersoning” or “removing agency.” And here you have a woman in Ms. Blair who has opinions that may differ from Wittchen’s received orthodoxy, yet she’s trashed as a dumb bimbo by this ‘tolerant’ group as incapable of independent thought and merely a tool of her big, strong husband. Such dismissive, marginalizing comments by Wittchen and the locusts are their stock in trade.
Her bubble is devoid of self-awareness and critical thinking. In one post, Wittchen says “And vote "NO" on term limits…. It's a violation of your democratic rights and another step on the road to authoritarianism.” Ah. So term limits = authoritarianism now, not let’s say, the exact opposite? Such Orwellian linguistic twists are patently absurd, yet routinely greeted by “thumbs up” votes from the locusts. This is how Priscilla deLeon remains on our township Council for 36 years. 36 years? Talk about a swamp creature.
Hard to know who is the ventriloquist and who is the dummy here. Certainly, Wittchen’s carnival barking is fuel to the mouthpiece deLeon, while enforcers like Ozimek get loud at meetings and polls to tamp down dissent with the backdrop of amen chorus Facebook locusts obsequiously parroting her agitprop. This closed loop echo chamber continues to perpetuate the cycle, while emboldening the bubble to get increasingly loud and aggressive by the year.
These busybodies have a common strain. They are angry and miserable, and they want control. While the rest of us are focused on family, business, and personal lives, others are dictating the path of our economy, our taxes, our kids’ educations, our parks, and our local well-being. Why – perhaps some of us find it distasteful to agitate, some are unaware of the growing scale and creeping pace of the woke agenda locally, some likely think “elected officials are all the same, so what difference will it make,” and perhaps others simply prefer to look away as if from a gruesome accident. We’ve seen what happens to once-great municipalities across America – lawlessness, homelessness, corruption, rampant crime, unlivable cities. It’s not my fight, one might say. And like the frog in a boiling pot life may seem, for all intents and purposes, unchanged for some years before the temperature rises. Or escape to locales such as Florida.
If we keep ceding ground, there’ll be no ground left to cede. Regular, everyday, commonsense citizens must engage in local politics to restrain these fringe locusts, or the gradual but steady march toward a financially-strapped, deteriorating community will continue. To paraphrase Pericles, you may not be interested in politics, but politics is interested in you. Stay uninformed and uninvolved at your peril.
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