The Survivalist

This is an old post.  I wrote it back in March, but I never published it, since I wasn't sure I could be bothered.  But Bryan Cooper has been relentless in his continuing accusations of us in BP, and his quixotic campaigns elsewhere, and he has now attracted the attention of Stephanie Kienzle, who does a blog in NMB.  The blog address is www.VotersOpinion.com, and the relevant post is called "OMG!  There Really Is a Village Idiot!"



Bryan Cooper has been on the Biscayne Park Commission for almost four years.  In that time, he has articulated a number of positions, about various things, and in so doing, he has given us a profile of what his approach, and his leanings, look like.

If there's one thing notable about Bryan, it's that he's hard to please, and he doesn't bestow his trust lightly.  The fact is, he's almost never pleased, and he doesn't trust much of anyone or anything.

Bryan doesn't trust government.  He seems to consider it inefficient, abusive, and a waster of money.  He views it as antithetical to the interests of the public, sometimes even the enemy of the people.   A favorite governmental villain for Bryan was the former Village Manager.  And of course, Bryan generally doesn't trust his colleagues, with uncommon exception.  He seems cordial, and occasionally partially deferential, to one, and he has remained sycophantically devoted to a prior colleague.  There is one other colleague he is able to treat with something other than disdain, but since he finds himself telling her what to do and how to vote, it's not clear he trusts her, either.  He doesn't trust the Village Clerk, Finance officers, attorneys, or Code enforcers.  He thinks one Code enforcer was literally gunning for Village residents.  Yes, literally.  He thinks she carried a gun, which she used to intimidate residents.  "Enforcer," indeed.

And the best defense being a good offense, Bryan himself has resorted to a sustained attack of threats and intimidation.  Once, when he was doing battle with the Village Manager, and the Village as a whole, Bryan demanded an independent investigation of the Manager.  When the conclusions of the investigator, whom Bryan had approved, were not what he expected and wanted, Bryan declared the investigator corrupt: he didn't trust his own agreed investigator, either.  And to further his campaign against the Village Manager in that instance, Bryan communicated relentlessly with an administrative person at a County office, threatening to go over her head to jeopardize her job, or report her through a complaint to the media, if she didn't tell him what he wanted to hear.

Bryan also doesn't trust private enterprise.  He seems to view it as mistreating and taking advantage of the public.  Whether it's FPL or the organization (Bryan insisted on knowing whether this organization was "private") that is offering to help homeowners do "green" improvements, Bryan sees only self-serving mischief.

Bryan doesn't trust the residents of the Park.  He seems to view some of us as conniving, and the rest of us as stupid.  He has voted to hold elections when most of us don't vote, and he says most of us don't deserve to vote.  "I don't want them voting," was the statement he made, although he turned out to be strategically hypocritical about this stance.  And now he wants to introduce term limits, so even the few voters he approves of are limited in their opportunity to have the elected representatives they want.

And if someone says something with which Bryan disagrees, or which he doesn't want to hear, he declares that person a liar.  Bryan has shown repeatedly over time that for him, there are no differences of opinion, and certainly no honest ones.  He cannot be outvoted, or disagreed with, without concluding someone is being underhanded and dishonest.

It's a mystery what or whom Bryan trusts, apart from one past and one current colleague, and presumably himself.  But when you watch Bryan in action (inaction?,  Is that one word, or two?, as the joke goes), it's no mystery how paralyzing it is not to be able to trust anything or anyone.  It leads precisely to the isolated, embittered, embattled stance, and the bunker mentality, Bryan has shown us.