LEFT & RIGHT SHOW WEDNESDAY, JULY 23, 2020

David Jones, history teacher at Fryeburg Academy and instructor at Granite State College, sits in the left chair this week. I invited him on the show after he wrote a letter to the editor criticizing one of my columns. His letter is one of our topics.

As usual, we open with a question from the producer concerning recent arrests by federal officers protecting federal property in Portland, Oregon. It asks whether we agree that federal officials should be there to quell protests, and questions their tactics, allegedly including arrests without informing those arrests of the charges against them.

I’m against quelling protests, but believe strongly that resulting riots, arson, and looting must be quelled. Local, Democrat mayors and governors are sanctioning these crimes and that’s dangerous. If, as claimed, people are arrested and held without being informed of the charges, it’s a violation of their due process rights. Federal officials are constitutionally allowed to protect federal property no matter where it is.

David believes Trump might be playing to his base in this election year by deploying federal officials to confront rioters. It remains to be seen if that is politically efficacious for him. Citing effectiveness of the sixties civil rights protests in swaying public opinion, he suggests today’s swing voters are with Black Lives Matter protestors. 

From there we opine about President Trump and his policies, with me supporting the latter and David supporting neither.

At the end of the show we address David’s letter about my column’s claims that college professors are overwhelming leftist. I cite various sources including a wide-ranging statistical study indicating that the Democrat to Republican ratio of college professors and their political contributions in an election year is as high as 95:1.

David counters that the National Association of Scholars who did the study favors traditional study of western civilization. He asserts the more important question would be: does that bias manifest in biased teaching?

I cite the books used most in our prestigious graduate schools of education (like Columbia) as being overwhelmingly leftist. The best-selling book of them all is by Bill Ayers, an unapologetic, radical revolutionary who is proud of bombing banks and military installations during the sixties and seventies. He teaches teachers at the University of Illinois Chicago and he advocates “teaching for social responsibility” which he believes means turning out little revolutionaries across the country in our public schools.

David suggests that part of academic inquiry is reading those books that are on the fringe. He takes issue with the terms “anarchist” and “radical Marxist” and says there are no working definitions for them.

I say a Marxist is an anti-capitalist at least before we run out of time.

GRANDFATHERING

Every summer I try to spend quality time with my grandchildren and this past week has been filled with that. The girls aged nine and ten are easiest. We go to a pleasant place, talk about the books they’re reading, or just sit on the porch and be together sharing thoughts, stories, and feelings past and present. The boys, however, want to do something adventurous like fish, or ride in the woods on the ATV. They range in age from seven (twin boys) to twenty. The oldest grandson is out on the west coast these days but he comes back to visit regularly. The rest live here in Maine.

Last week the twins visited us at the South Portland house. Fishing is just about all they want to do in summer. They brought their salt-water rigs to do some ocean fishing. I’ve been taking them to various lakes and ponds around Lovell for the last four or five years where they’ve caught sunfish and perch using worms. In the early years I was mostly occupied making sure they didn’t hook one another or me. I was all day baiting hooks, taking fish off of them, untangling crossed lines, and trying to remove hooks and bobbers from tree branches.

Over the years, however, they’ve gotten more skilled. They know how to cast, bait their own hooks, remove fish, and they use lures effectively. Sometimes they put down the fishing rods to go about the shoreline catching frogs and snakes. I’m free to share their excitement and remember how good if felt doing the same things when I was seven with my best friend Philip at our local pond. Now I have time to take pictures of them, one of my favorite things to do.

Anyway, we all went to Willard Beach in South Portland. The women stayed on the sand, the granddaughters collected hermit crabs in some nearby rocks while the women talked. We boys walked over to Spring Point Light to fish off the jetty. I purchased sand worms which do not resemble worms we use in fresh water. Sand worms look more like centipedes and they can bite you with pincers on their heads. The twins used needle-nose pliers to hold them while baiting their hooks.

After loosing several rigs on rock weed and lobster trap lines, we moved over to the Southern Maine Community College pier. Following lots of casts and having multiple sand worms nibbled off their hooks, each of the twins caught a crab. I got a sunburn. The twins were happy and, though tired, I was happy too — because they were. The next day I saw a Boston Globe story about three teenaged boys who caught a giant tuna off the Maine coast in Maine and recorded the drama and their excitement on their smart phones. I posted it on Facebook hoping it would be shown to the twins. Their mother reported their differing reactions. Although hard to tell apart, the twins are not identical and their personalities are quite different as well. One was thrilled, my daughter said, and other “wants to legislate tuna fishing because the population is dwindling.”

Got a crab

Saturday I spent in the woods with my fourteen-year-old grandson. For probably ten years now, he’s been most interested to ride my ATV, so that’s what we do. First he was a passenger behind me. Then I got a smaller ATV that he could operate himself as long as I was right behind him on mine with a kill switch to his in hand. Eventually he outgrew that little one and now operates my big one with me on the back as a passenger where he used to sit. I quickly discovered it’s not as comfortable back there as it is on the driver’s seat. There are lots of trails in Lovell and neighboring Waterford, Maine and we explored most of them — so many that my ass was fairly sore by the end of the day.

In the woods

I brought along some old maps because the trails we traveled were once roads connecting now-abandoned neighborhoods. All that’s left are cellar holes which can be difficult to find when the woods are all leafed out. The first one we spotted on the back side of Sebattus Mountain belonged to a family named Kimball in the 19th century. It’s an old Maine family name and, as luck would have it, it’s also my grandson’s surname, though his branch spells it Kimble.

Posing by the "Hand in Rock" carving

After several hours, it was very nice to get back home and rest in my soft recliner on the back porch and hope I’ll still have enough energy to do it all again next year.

Left & Right Wednesday, July 8, 2020

Newspaper publisher Mark Guerringue again sits in the left chair. The first question from the producer asks about reports that Trump was ignorant of Russian payments to the Taliban to kill American soldiers. It’s no surprise to me, I say. Russians have been supporting the Taliban against US forces for nineteen years. When Russian invaded Afghanistan in 1979, the US supported Bin Laden and others against the Russians. I don’t see what the big deal is. Mark’s answer is circuitous. He talks about frequent communications between Trump and Putin, then mentions what he claims are examples of Trump’s racism like retweeting someone saying “White Power” from a gold cart in Florida. I asked what that had to do with Putin paying Taliban and Mark related what Trump aide John Bolton said about it: that Trump probably was briefed on the Russian payments but didn’t pay attention, that Bolton saw that often with Trump and his daily intelligence briefings. I bring up Trump’s July 4th speech at Mount Rushmore and outrageous mainstream media reaction to it, quoting headlines from The NYTimes and The Washington Post depicting the speech as “dark and devisive.” Mark quotes Trump saying there is a new far-left facism in corporate boardrooms.” I agree with that because corporation are kissing BLM butts and coming out in support. Mark claims 70% of the American people support BLM. I doubt that. Mark claimes: “Trump said angry mobs are tearing down statues of our founders, our most sacred memorials and unleash a wave or violence.” I ask, “You don’t agree with that?” “No,” says Mark. “What?” I say. “Have you been watching television?” It went on like that for the rest of the hour, quite contentious. See for yourself.

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?

OUT OF CONTROL?

Who is in control? Given events of the past few weeks and months, that’s hard to say. Another question would be: Is anyone in control? In his dystopian novel 1984, British author George Orwell created the character “O’Brien” a powerful member of the Inner Party who tells Winston Smith: "Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.”

Some literary analysts claim Orwell was depicting the Nazi Party in 1984, while others claim it was the Communist Party. All agree that Orwell was portraying a totalitarian party in complete control of past, present and future for poor Winston Smith, an ordinary guy trying to figure out answers to the questions with which I opened this column.

Journalist Tucker Carlson openly claims Democrats are in control of recent events in the streets of our cities. Other conservative journalists contend Democrats support Antifa, Black Lives Matter, and the hordes of anarchists who turn peaceful demonstrations into riots, and who tear down historical monuments across our country — the latter a dramatic, visible effort to control the past. We see it on our TV screens every night.

Last Saturday, Maine’s own Graham Lloyd, 37, was one of four charged with pulling down the statue of President Andrew Jackson in front of the White House. As of this writing I was unable to find where in Maine Graham lived or any other information about possible criminal or political activities in which he may have been involved locally.

Hannah-Jones with Henry Louis Gates

As a former US History teacher in Maine, I was surprised at the New York Times Magazine publication of the 1619 Project — an alternative US History curriculum contending the United States was founded not in 1776 when the Declaration of Independence was adopted, but in 1619 when the first African slave was brought to Virginia. I was also dismayed to learn that it was being adopted by public schools across the country.

The 1619 Project -- another effort to control the past -- is a creation of New York Times writer Nikole Hannah-Jones for which she was given a Pulitzer Prize. That’s curious given the dubious, racist, historical claims she’s made in the past. In a letter to the University of Notre Dame’s campus newspaper The Observer, she declared: “the white race is the biggest murderer, rapist, pillager, and thief of the modern world.” She called whites “bloodsuckers” and “barbaric devils,” and accused them of “pumping drugs and guns into the black community.”

Hannah-Jones also claimed that: “Africans had been to the Americas long before Columbus or any Europeans… [and] had the decency and respect for human life to learn from the Native Americans and trade technology with them…” She cited Aztec and Olmec pyramids as proof although historical evidence of these claims can be described as thin or none. Nonetheless, the New York Times and the Pulitzer Prize Committee consider her a respected historian.

One of the men beaten by Black Lives Matter

As a Roman Catholic, I’m further appalled that Black Lives Matter and Antifa are assaulting fellow Catholics and their statuary. When Catholics gathered over the weekend to say the rosary around the now-defaced statue of St. Louis — the saint after whom the city was named — the leftist mob beat at least three of them. I watched a horrifying video of three black men chasing down and beating a white Christian man following the rosary service but I’ll bet none of you readers ever saw it on CNN, NBC, CBS, ABC, or anywhere else. It doesn’t fit the “white privilege/systemic racism” narrative of our mainstream media.

Elsewhere in St. Louis, the leftist mob broke down a gate leading to a private home. In a video taken by Black Lives Matter protestors, a barefoot man was pointing what looked like an AR-15 at the mob. His barefoot wife stood beside him aiming a pistol. Both were warning the mob to leave. Thankfully it did before shots were fired. It was very tense and we can assume scenes like this are playing out elsewhere.

The Washington Post ran an article declaring: “St. Louis couple points guns at peaceful crowd of protestors calling for mayor to resign.” The homeowner, an attorney named Mark McCloskey, was interviewed by a local TV station and described the scene quite differently. He said the Black Lives Matter mob broke down a steel gate guarding the private drive leading to his house, threatened to kill him, his wife, their dog, and burn down their house. At least one had a semi-automatic pistol. He said the mayor didn’t live there.

Clearly this leftist-sanctioned violence occurring almost everywhere has reached a critical stage. Is it out of control already? One could make a serious case that it is. If so, can control be regained? By whom? Answers to these questions, or lack thereof, are likely to determine the outcome of the November elections.

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.

DON'T BLACK LIVES IN CHICAGO MATTER?

These are tumultuous times. Things are changing so fast it’s hard to keep up, much less put events into perspective. It’s reminiscent of a similar struggle to understand things during the sixties when a prosperous, stable, post-WWII America started unraveling with the Kennedy assassination in 1963. I was in 7th grade and lacked the experience and historical knowledge to interpret what was happening. By the time I graduated high school in 1969, societal decline had advanced.

My first year of college included basic courses in western civilization which offered some historical grounding, but my professors weren’t gifted enough to compare and contrast ubiquitous race riots, anti-Vietnam War protests, and ongoing civil-rights struggles with similar events in western history. My English Composition professor tried by offering writing prompts that challenged us to reflect on what was happening around us.

Things were changing fast and my professors hadn’t experienced such tumult before. They were flying by the seat of their pants. After two years I dropped out, worked various jobs, and found myself rubbing elbows with disciples of Saul Alinsky — community organizers who were trying to channel societal unrest toward a communist revolution. One put a copy of Alinsky’s “Rules For Radicals” into my hands — the first copy I ever saw.

Nearly all smoked marijuana and I did too. It was a leftist ritual of the era. At one point I found a half-dozen leftist radicals in the living room of a tenement we owned in Lowell, Massachusetts. Some belonged to the Socialist Labor Party, some to the Socialist Workers Party, and one was communist. All argued  vociferously about how to foment revolution. I wasn’t too stoned to notice how disorganized and contentious the left was.

Never did I want to make revolution or overthrow the government, but radical leftists around me spoke freely about trying to. I thought they were crazy and moved away from them, but that experience give me perspective on what’s going on in my country today. Again the left is trying to steer public outrage toward a communist revolution, and unlikely as revolution was a half-century ago, the widespread violence of recent months has me concerned.

Leftists still fight amongst themselves, but today they make up an increasingly large part of the Democrat Party which for decades has controlled the cities in which we’re seeing widespread rioting, looting and toppling of statues. Ironically, most of the statues depict historical figures who were Democrat slave owners. As today’s Democrat mayors and governors do almost nothing to stop the violence, the rest of us wonder if that’s because they’re afraid a strong response will trigger more or because they approve of it all.

Some of last weekend's victims in Chicago

After a violent Fathers’ Day weekend in Chicago when 102 mostly black people were shot, very likely by shooters who were also black, those shouting “Black Lives Matter!” sound increasingly hypocritical. White cops are not the problem. So-called “systemic racism” is not the problem. “White Privilege” is not the problem. Gangs of fatherless, young, black men are the problem.

Alleged shooters in Chicago last weekend

These shootings go on every weekend and have for years — in Chicago, and in many other Democrat-controlled cities. Where’s the leftist hand-wringing about that? We don’t hear it. The Marxist “Black Lives Matter” movement looks like a massive red herring to divert attention from what the real problem is: fatherless black boys from dysfunctional families — all the result of bankrupt Democrat social policies of the last fifty years.

It’s getting increasingly tiresome to hear over and over about George Floyd’s death. Yes, the video of his asphyxiation under the knee of a police officer was horrifying, but we keep pretending that the relentless murder of young black men by young black men isn’t far more horrifying. Calling attention to that, however, doesn’t serve the Democrat narrative that it’s a “systemic racism” extinguishing black lives.

Kerry in Lowell, 1972

In 1972 I arranged a meeting in my living room between radical leftist revolutionaries and liberal-Democrat congressional candidate John Kerry. Back then it was unusual for rising Democrats like Kerry to fraternize with leftist revolutionaries, but it isn’t anymore. Today’s Democrat Party willingly plays with fire as senior officials like Deputy DNC Chairman Keith Ellison and others openly support violent, leftist Antifa thugs and Marxist Black Lives Matter organizers.

While John Kerry was considered a far-left Democrat during his failed 1972 congressional campaign, he looks downright moderate compared to Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, Ilhan Omar, and the rest of today’s rising Democrat stars.

POINTLESS CMP CORRIDOR REFERENDUM

“The End Is Near!” was a recurring theme in the old Mad Magazine which ceased publishing last summer after a 67-year run. As a kid I read it religiously and was surprised it stayed around that long as I hadn’t seen a copy for decades. Turning pages of each new edition in the fifties and sixties, I’d see caricature variations of a gray-bearded man in a robe carrying a sign warning of impending apocalypse. MAD satirized everything; it was totally unserious and that appealed to me.

Some of that unseriousness is still in me, especially when hearing leftist Democrats preach variations of their “The End Is Near” rhetoric. They’ve long sermonized about doom from “global warming” or “climate change” during which the polar ice caps and alpine glaciers will ostensibly melt, flood the oceans, and kill millions unless we “Repent Now!” by abandoning fossil fuels, buying carbon credits, and totally switching over to windmills and solar panels.

Used to be they included hydroelectricity in their “clean energy” pantheon, but it seems to have fallen from grace. Nearly everywhere I’m seeing “NO CMP CORRIDOR” lawn signs after a referendum campaign put the question on Maine’s November ballot. Central Maine Power has plans to construct a powerline in western Maine to carry electricity from Hydro Quebec to Massachusetts.

Twice I’ve questioned champions of this movement about their reasons for opposing the line. Their biggest arguments were that, one: it would be unsightly, and two: it would cut trees along its route from the Canadian border to southern Maine. “What’s wrong with that?” I asked. “Well, trees absorb carbon dioxide and help prevent climate change,” was their answer.

I should disclose here that I’m not a believer in human-caused climate change and have written numerous columns over the years refuting it. When discussing the corridor issue, however, I didn’t proselytize; I just tried to understand the opposition. I’ve read the literature on their web sites like: https://www.nocmpcorridor.com and others and I’m still confused. The New England region needs more electricity and no combinations of solar panels and windmills can produce enough no matter how heavily they’re subsidized.

But this column isn’t about the deficiencies of “renewable energy.” It’s about trying to make sense of leftist/environmentalist opposition to hydroelectricity from Quebec. If they’re so worried about carbon emissions and global warming, what sense does it make to oppose hydroelectricity which doesn’t emit carbon? Yes, some trees would be cut down in a corridor for a new powerline, but other green things will grow there. Look at older power line corridors all over the landscape. There’s plenty of growth under the lines and it absorbs carbon too. 

Go to nocmpcorridor.com and look at the arguments; they’re the weakest I’ve ever seen in a political campaign:

“A 53 mile corridor the width of the New Jersey Turnpike would cut through western Maine, crossing some of the country's last native brook trout habitat, fragile wetlands, deer yards and ruining pristine scenic views,” it claims. Trout streams are not endangered. Neither are deer yards, or fragile wetlands. I concede that views would be compromised, but that’s it.

“Countless jobs in the biomass industry and related forest products industries would be put in jeopardy” the site claims. Really? How?

“Tourism is the number one industry in Maine, and this corridor will jeopardize those jobs,” it says. Really? Seasonal homes need electricity. So do campgrounds, hotels, restaurants, and just about all other tourist infrastructure. How, exactly, will a power line jeopardize those jobs? I can’t imagine.

The only plausible reason leftist/environmentalist groups oppose the CMP corridor is hinted at: “This corridor would jeopardize Maine’s renewable energy sector, which could lose hundreds of millions of dollars over the next fifteen years as a direct result of this project.” I guess they’re afraid that lots of clean electricity coming down from Canada would negate any need for additional “renewable sources” and, hence, the need for further taxpayer subsidies of their cherished wind and solar projects.

Wind and solar industries can’t survive without taxpayer subsidies because they cost more than they deliver and don’t produce energy on calm, cloudy days. To this writer, it looks like the NO CMP CORRIDOR movement is mostly afraid of losing its continued access to the government teat.

The whole campaign is tailor-made for a MAD Magazine spoof. Too bad it’s not around anymore.

ADDENDUM: Maine’s CMP Corridor was proposed after the “Northern Pass” project was rejected in neighboring New Hampshire.