Earlier this year (Jan. 18) Another View promised to offer views that would annoy some people. If the incoherence of responses is any indication, we have been very annoying indeed. Now, it’s the “Right’s” turn.
While the headlines and chattering pundits obsess over trivial matters in Helsinki and Washington, the special session of the Maine Legislature has had immediate and negative effects on all of us. Our voices in Augusta are 3 million times as loud as they would be in Washington. Surely, nobody in Maine is comfortable with the dysfunction we witnessed in this Legislative session. I do speak with a good many legislators, admittedly Republicans all. Their level of frustration and fury defies polite description. If I were on speaking terms with any Democrats, I expect their frustration would be equal.
We often read that Americans believe divided government is a good thing and deliberately vote that way. I don’t know even one person who believes that or votes that way. Maine, like America, is deeply divided and the sides are pursuing antagonistic goals. Common ground is vanishingly small. Left and right are not seeking consensus or compromise. That’s impossible with one side on the offensive and seeking nothing less, or other, than the complete obliteration of all opposition.
Maine voters will make critically important decisions this year. The people elected to be our governor and our legislators will either continue in deadlock or move to decisively implement their agendas. I cannot speak for or to those on the left. What they oppose is screamed in the media and on street corners. The Republican agenda is also well known and includes both opposition to failed economic and social experiments, plus successful policies, time tested principles and specific future legislative solutions.
Too many vote irregularly, if at all. While that’s a simple fact, why they don’t, if it’s known, is kept in a vault at some undisclosed location leaving only anecdotes, speculation and supposition. Repeating, there is no message here for Democrats, progressives, liberals or socialists. But, my Republican, conservative, Libertarian, and capitalist associates, that fact better change for us this year.
Some may be frustrated by the primary results and others demand a career long ideological purity not found among real people. We must put aside those private, personal crusades. Nothing we want will happen if that “other” side controls either the Legislature or the Blaine House, and a very great deal we do not want will be imposed on us as it was during this special session and throughout the Obama years. We who appreciate Gov. LePage’s legacy are now responsible for protecting and defending it.
While working as an election clerk during the primaries, I witnessed one unenrolled voter who came in to vote on the referendum question. She came out of the booth saying she could not figure out, from the question, which way she should vote. Another voter received his ballot and asked: “Who are these people were and what do they stand for?”
Of course, it was too late. Sadly, for both sides, both people did vote. Election Day or even election week is too late to inform ourselves. Those who are too busy to do their homework will do a public service if they stay home in November, but they will do an even greater public service by not offering viewpoints regarding things about which they know not.
Now is the time to be searching for information, going to fairs or events near home and listening to the candidates’ own words. Now is the time to ask and answer questions concerning the effects on our economy and lives of Medicaid expansion, universal state paid elder care, open borders, the “Opportunity Agenda,” “Agenda 21,” government-run education, and radical fanatic bureaucrats (and courts) unaccountably regulating our lives and businesses.
In the coming weeks, we will be flooded with opinions, admonitions, threats, invectives and an occasional fact or two. Most is just noise. Ignore it.
Do your homework. Know the truth. Make informed decisions. Then stand up and speak up. Waste no effort to wake those only pretending to sleep or convince those who know but vehemently deny the truth. Ignore their insane rants. They are infantile hypocrites, and many are mindless bots and deranged, violent bullies.
Instead, engage, encourage and support other informed adults, make and own your choices, and then go vote!
Another View is a weekly column written collaboratively by Dale Landrith of Camden, Ken Frederic of Bristol, Paul Ackerman of Martinsville and Jan Dolcater of Rockport.
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