Tolkkinen: When a natural disaster strikes, why would anybody want their governor to stay away?

You’d think that people in an area recently hit by a natural disaster would be happy when a sitting governor visits to get a first-hand look at what people are going through.

Not some folks.

When Gov. Tim Walz visited Bemidji on Tuesday, the comments section on the Bemidji Chit Chat Facebook page grew so hostile that one person mentioned bringing out guns and another suggested getting rope.

I saw the comments, but the whole post was deleted before I could get a screenshot, and Beltrami County law enforcement said they didn’t get any reports of threats against the governor.

Besides the threats, or veiled threats, were the standard trope of epithets aimed at Walz referencing tampons, his military service or the violence in downtown Minneapolis after the death of George Floyd.

“Go back to MSP,” one local woman wrote, one of the more printable comments on Facebook.

Yeah, that makes so much sense. Let’s bully the top elected official in the state, the one who can unleash emergency assistance and funds to this hard-hit area. Let’s complain that he visits because we just don’t like him, and then if he doesn’t come, let’s complain about that.

Let’s gripe if he arrives on Day 1 of the disaster because he’s getting in the way of the emergency responders, and then let’s complain if he arrives on Day 4 because he should have been there sooner.

It’s important to point out that not all the negative comments were from people who live in Bemidji. One commenter felt compelled to weigh in from Arizona. Others were from Wisconsin and other areas of Minnesota. Walz’s run for the vice presidency apparently gave him enduring national exposure.

I interviewed one Bemidji man, Jerry Serbus, who served stateside in the Army during the early 1960s. He had posted some of the negative comments on Bemidji Chit Chat and told me that he and a lot of people he knows don’t like Walz.

He conceded that the governor was doing his job by visiting Bemidji but said that he wanted to exercise his freedom of speech.

“People are saying what they want to say,” Serbus said. “I guess there’s nothing wrong with that.”

There were also plenty of local people who thanked their governor for coming, so we don’t want to tar Bemidji with one brush.

One commenter, Cheri Joy of Bemidji, said she rarely speaks up on social media but felt compelled to after reading just a sample of the horrible things people were saying about Walz.

“It doesn’t matter if you are left, right or somewhere in between,” she chastised other commenters. “Any help from anyone is needed and greatly appreciated. ... Negativity does nothing for us. Positivity gives us hope for our town’s future.”

I called Joy and asked why she had decided to weigh in.

“It just rubs me so wrong when people just have these negative comments,” she told me. “Politics doesn’t matter when you are a devastated community that is going to need help.”

Our political environment encourages us to hate. Hatred gets us out to the polls, erodes the electability of opposition candidates. I remember talking to someone who hated President Bill Clinton when he was in office and then believed, years later, that Clinton was actually somewhat likable. Hatred is only useful when someone has power. Afterward, the hate mongers drop the elected officials, and we’re allowed to see them once again as human beings.

I can understand why people don’t like Walz. He’s been governor during some terrible times in Minnesota and made tough calls, including blocking evictions and closing restaurants during COVID. If you took COVID seriously, you were grateful to him. If you believed it was a hoax, you resented him.

Walz held office during the violence in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death and didn’t call out the National Guard soon enough in my book.

But so many of the criticisms are exaggerated. “He’s putting tampons in boy’s bathrooms!” Not true. Schools have the option to do it if there are transgender boys who use the boy’s bathroom, but they don’t have to and many don’t.

“He thinks we’re all rocks and cows!” This one just makes me chuckle, because it tries so hard to be an insult. If a distortion of something he said is the worst you can come up with, maybe you don’t have much else to stand on.

If you don’t like him, don’t vote for him. Write letters to the editor. Donate to another candidate.

But to tell him not to come to an area under a state of emergency because you’re clinging to a caricatured image of him driven by political enemies? That’s cutting off your nose to spite your face.

I give Walz credit for stepping into Trump country. It’s not the first time he’s come and likely won’t be the last.

You don’t have to like it. Bring signs and protest if you want. But ... dang. If Trump visits a disaster area, I say great. Same goes for Walz.