THE MAINE DIVISIONS

There are more “Impeach Mills” signs visible on Route 302 as I leave Oxford County, Maine and travel through Bridgton in northern Cumberland County. Every week I pass through on my way to South Portland where I  encounter no such political sentiments. Left-wing Democrat Janet Mills has been our governor here in Maine for the past year and a half. They love her around the leftist bastion of Greater Portland, but folks out in the hinterland of Oxford County and northern border region of Cumberland County have had enough and are obviously plotting her demise.

Also visible in rural Maine are “Bring Back [former governor] LePage!” signs and other evidence of left/right political polarization. In Greater Portland one sees lots of “Black Lives Matter” signs on the roadsides, on buildings, bumper stickers, and elsewhere. Also common are professionally-made lawn signs with multiple messages which would, taken together, convey coded progressive political sentiments.

For example, a very common lawn sign in Cape Elizabeth, Maine has: “WE BELIEVE” at the top followed by seven lines, each of different font size and color. One proclaims: “BLACK LIVES MATTER” followed by: “NO HUMAN IS ILLEGAL” which would seem to be a paean to open borders. Next comes: “LOVE IS LOVE” in lavender font which probably is a pro-gay, LGBT slogan. After that is: “WOMEN’S RIGHTS ARE HUMAN RIGHTS” which, given that abortion is most prominent in a list of women’s rights proclaimed by feminists, could transmit a pro-abortion sentiment.

Then comes: “SCIENCE IS REAL” which likely pertains to the controversial, progressive claim that 99% of scientists believe in anthropomorphic climate change. Following that comes: “WATER IS LIFE” but I’m not sure what progressive cause to which that might pertain. Last comes: “INJUSTICE ANYWHERE IS A THREAT TO JUSTICE EVERYWHERE.” Not sure of that one either, except maybe a belief that every injustice can be eliminated by a big government — with a resultant utopia.

Further along Route 302 another, anti-Governor Mills sign proclaims: “HEY JANET, IT’S A GOVERNORSHIP, NOT A DICTATORSHIP; OPEN MAINE NOW!” Which would pertain to her restrictive economic shutdown over the Covid virus. Another sign nearby says: “EVERY BUSINESS IS ESSENTIAL; END THE SHUTDOWN NOW! Near that sign, another says: “HOW MAINE SPELLS IDIOT: J-A-N-E-T  M-I-L-L-S”

Maine is very blue, along with every other New England state and so is adjoining New York state, but within each of those states is a divide between urban areas and rural areas. Each is a microcosm of the entire United States within which exists a similar dichotomy. Urban coastal areas of America are overwhelmingly leftist, while the rural interior is mostly conservative. Red/Green political maps of our country have reflected this for several presidential-election cycles.

 Jameesa and Bryan Oakley of Portland, Oregon

The progressive signs described above contain the logo of a Portland, Oregon company called https://www.signsofjustice.com. Visiting it, I saw they also made many of the individual “BLACK LIVES MATTER” lawn signs, bumper stickers, and T-shirts so visible around Greater Portland, Maine. The biracial couple who established the Oregon company states:

“Like many others on election night 2016, our family was left in shock and disbelief. How could a man who campaigned on hate become President of the United States?  What would this mean for our values of love, decency and inclusion? How could we rise above the oppression and make an impact?”

Another barometer of Maine’s political divide might be mask-wearing. It’s relatively rare in Oxford County, but ubiquitous in the greater Portland area, even on beaches. Last week, Governor Mills ordered business owners in Cumberland, York, and Androscoggin counties to enforce mask-wearing in their establishments. All employees and patrons sport masks, but several have pulled them down to their chins inside the store.

To deal with uncooperative Maine citizens like these, Governor Mills put up a tattletale web site for other Mainers to turn them in. Should you wish to do so, go here: https://appengine.egov.com/apps/me/non-compliance. It’s titled: “Reporting on Alleged Non-Compliance with Executive Orders,” and further states: “If you wish to report a potential situation of non-compliance to the guidance relating to COVID-19, you may report those details using this form. The information will be reviewed by appropriate agency or agencies and responded to as needed.”

Rural Mainers see that as Orwellian and wonder: what’s next?

LEFT & RIGHT WEDNESDAY, JUNE 17 2020

Civil War historian and newspaper columnist Bill Marvel again sits in the left chair. He doesn’t fit neatly into any political category, but agreed to appear on the show again to discuss political polarization in the America today and compare it to polarization in 1860.

Bill says he doesn’t fit anymore on the left, not because his views have changed, but because the Democrat Party has shifted dramatically to the left, making him appear center-right. We discuss specific examples of that.

Speaking of the tentative subject for Bill’s 20th book on the Civil War, he says that today’s political conflict and the one in 1860 both “started with an election that no one would accept.”

Bill says ignorance of history today due to the poor state of our public schools, prevents the public from realizing how quickly a society can collapse.

Bill reflected on a recent spate of letters to the editor in the Conway Daily Sun which lump the two of us as ideological twins, and suggested it was an orchestrated effort. When I questioned him about that he said,  “Unlike the clairvoyant cognoscenti of the millennial mob, I don’t know."

I love that impromptu phrase.

Conversation then ranged from the Rodney King incident to the Michael Brown incident to the George Floyd incident comparing and contrasting the incidents themselves and media reaction to them.

The producer asks who Joe Biden may pick for a running mate and we discuss those possibilities at some length.

We also discuss gun control and the 2nd Amendment in the context of leftist threats to ban guns.

Backcountry Resistance

Good will toward government is diminishing in Oxford County, Maine. There has always been healthy skepticism toward centralized authority during the forty-three years I’ve been in residence, but it has grown over the last month of coronavirus shutdown. When Democrat Governor Janet Mills announced her decision last Tuesday to extend the shutdown across the state through most of summer, it took off.

Saturday Demonstration against Mills (from Portland Press Herald)

Shortly after moving here in 1977 as a leftist Democrat from Massachusetts, I was elected to Lovell’s three-man Board of Selectmen on the floor of town meeting. The other selectmen were descendants of our town’s original settlers and we met twice per week. By the end of year one my outlook started moving toward center. By the end of nine years I’d gone past center into right-wing territory. I’d become a strong believer in local control.

The land of Bernie bumper stickers

The rest of Maine and New England, however, was moving in the opposite direction and now all six states are run by left-wing adherents of centralized government control. In early weeks of the pandemic there was little dissent over lockdown and social distancing, but as people learned more about both the virus and about different approaches taken by other countries, many now see lockdowns as ineffective and unnecessary. They figure most of us are going to get it eventually and only the elderly with comorbidities need isolate themselves.

Now that President Trump has allowed governors to make their own decisions about quarantine, Democrat governors, including Maine’s, are exerting what locals see as arbitrary authority over their lives and livelihoods. Maine has not been hit hard and what effect there has been is limited to southern counties of York and Cumberland.  As of last week, Oxford County had no deaths and only fifteen confirmed cases of which twelve have recovered — yet Governor Mills ordered restaurants, hotels, campgrounds, and many other businesses to remain closed.

Saturday's anti-Mills demonstration (from Portland Press Herald)

Tourism is the mainstay of our economy here and local businesses depend on the summer season to get through the rest of the year, so Mills is going to kill off many local businesses permanently. The question now is: will they roll over and die or will they fight? Rick Savage, owner of Sunday River Brewing Company in Oxford County was the first to openly defy Governor Mills. Two days after her order, he went on national TV with Tucker Carlson who owns a place in nearby Andover, Maine and announced he would open on Friday.

Governor Mills pulled Savage’s health license and liquor license immediately and the Boston Globe reported that he shut down again. During a protest at the state house in Augusta Saturday, Savage was interviewed by Newscenter 6 saying he would stay open, pay the daily fines, and fight the order in court. He said other businesses planned to join him. Has Mills’ intimidated them into compliance or will they fight too? It should be an interesting week here in Oxford County.

Saturday's anti-Mills demonstration (from Portland Press Herald)

On Monday Republican leaders declared that Mills didn’t consult them about her shutdown plan. They’re asking majority Democrats to call legislators into special session and end her emergency powers but Democrats refused. Tuesday, Mills’ press secretary said she did communicate with Republicans through a computer portal. Although America’s initial virus response was bipartisan, it no longer is. Efforts to restart the economy have broken down along party lines in Maine and everywhere else.

Maine was supposed to celebrate its bicentennial this year but that’s not likely. It’s nice to be free of Massachusetts but Maine has since spawned its own oligarchy with Mills at the head. What I see in rural Maine seems another manifestation of similar conflicts during Maine’s early settlement. Lately I’ve been reading Liberty Men And Great Proprietors, a 1990 book by historian Alan Taylor. Revolutionary War veterans who settled in backcountry Maine hadn’t been paid for their service and believed they had a right to stake out claims and settle in wilderness areas away from the Province of Maine’s coast.

Maine then was part of Massachusetts whose government and courts were largely controlled by Great Proprietors like Henry Knox, Charles Vaughan, Josiah Little, and their ilk. They claimed ownership of vast land grants — some going back to colonial times. These proprietors wanted veterans and other settlers — the Liberty Men — to pay them for the land. Lawsuits continued for decades before the political influence of wealthy proprietors in the Massachusetts statehouse eventually won out. Rural resistance to state control thus has a long heritage here in backcountry Maine.

Left & Right Wednesday, December 4, 2019

Jim Wilfong again sits in the left chair. He's a former Maine legislator and worked in Washington for three administrations in the SBA (Small Business Administration). We open with a question from the producer asking if we'd like to see the White House participate in hearings by the House Judiciary Committee on impeachment. Jim would, citing the House's constitutional power of oversight. I wouldn't, citing rules made by the Democrat Chairmen of two committees rigged against the president and his supporters and denying him due process rights. Jim contends the impeachment process is more political than judicial given that there's no jury of peers, and "Politics ain't beanbag," as Harry Truman said. That leads to a discussion of Harry Truman, his association with Irish gangsters out of Kansas City, among other things. Nonetheless, we both agree that Truman was a man of honor who respected rules, and that trust is the currency in virtually all dealings short of war. I contend that even Irish gangsters had rules which they strictly enforced. Then we discuss the erosion of trust, especially between citizens and government, and that the impeachment process is exacerbating that erosion. Jim says our situation in that light is analogous to the 1850s just prior to our civil war. I cite the red/blue map of the USA as being red in the interior and blue on the urban coasts. In a smaller way, more urban southern Maine is blue while the rest of Maine voted for Trump. Jim picks up on that. He believes the divide coincides with an economic divide, that poor, rural people tend to vote red and also join the military. The producer's second question of us asks if Trump was being childish when he abruptly left the NATO meeting after a video of other leaders ridiculing him surfaced. Neither Jim nor I saw the video or were aware of any impetuosity on the part of Trump. We discussed NATO and the changing nature of war today. Though NATO was formed to counteract a WWII-type invasion of Western Europe by the Soviet Union, few military experts expect any such wars now. Instead, they expect things like proxy wars such as we're seeing in the Middle East. Ideally, we both agree, use of diplomacy is best when backed up by threat of, or use of, economic sanctions as America is doing now with Russia, N. Korea, Iran, and others. It's most effective when backed up by the plausible threat of, and use of military force. In that context I cited a new book about Jeffrey Epstein which purports that he was an Israeli agent, among other things, and that he had a handler in Mossad. It also claimed that he was closely associated with Saudi arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi. I recall a visit to Israel a decade ago and seeing evidence everywhere of that nation being in near-constant state of war. Citizens are hyper-vigilant and many walk around with AR-15 slung over their shoulders, including what looked like 15-year-old girls. They probably were older, but they looked very young. When French President Macron claimed NATO was brain-dead, we speculated about what he may have meant. Jim guesses that he thinks NATO is stuck in a Cold War strategy and needs to change. Jim ponders motivations for US involvement in Middle Eastern proxy wars and suggests it involves control of strategic resources, which puts us in competition with China. I point to a former NATO official who is now a retired admiral in the US and speculates that Russia should be wary of China's designs on Siberia. We touch on with several other issues but end with using the next show to examine changing definitions of left and right, the title of our show. What issues define left and right? We will research the question.