Category: Essays

Representative Democracy (Where is Susan?)

NR24

March 18, 2025

Congress has a recess this week, so many of us are asking for town halls with our elected members (sign our petition here). This is an opportunity for the community to communicate with their representatives so that We the People™can have some faith in knowing that our government is representing us.

And that’s where this idea of “Representative Democracy” really breaks down. Susan Collins has yet to return a single message — not a phone call and not even a canned email response. Nothing. And she hasn’t held a town hall meeting with her constituents for years (Newsweek). There are petitions asking her to show up, but so far, nothing. I have spoken to aides or gotten messages back from Angus King, Chellie Pingree, and Jared Golden… but not from Susan. Where is she hiding? And more importantly, who is she representing if not us?

I guess we should hand in our Gadsden “Don’t Tread on Me” flags, because We the People are getting stomped on when our supposed senator is AWOL, carrying water to Mar Largo apparently. The fact is that we don’t have a representative democracy if our “representatives” never interact with us. And to anyone who revels in the half-truth that “We are a republic, not a democracy” — just like “Democratic Republic of North Korea” — it is well to ask the important underlying question: “How representative of a democracy are we?” The oligarchs pushing statements like that are not fighting for your freedom, so why green-light their power grab with a bumper sticker? Are you happy to give up your voice so long as those in power “stick it to the libs?” Are we really selling out our freedom and the essence of our country for a few shekels of vindictive dopamine?

Even if you love Susan Collins and you love Trump, wouldn’t you want to know that your priorities are being addressed by your representative? Or are we just going to hope she infers what we want? I for one demand more representation. Call me back Susan. Come to a town hall. It is literally your job.
Grief’s Role in Resistance Work

Molly Mulhern

March 15, 2025

It’s a fallacy to think we can keep doing the work of resisting the moves of the current administration without taking the time to process and move through the grief.

We’re watching the destruction of our government by an administration bent on their own power and greed. Don’t for a minute think otherwise. Things we thought could rely on here in midcoast Maine–accurate and timely weather forecasts, FEMA funds for storm-ravaged fishing piers, free food programs at the elementary, middle, and high schools–are being ravaged as I write this.

Your social security check may or may not come when next due. Your island hospital may or may not receive the medicaid funds it needs to stay open.

Our government, the richest in the world, is not supposed to become an object of carnage. But it has. And our souls feel it, our bodies feel it.

We need to grieve. We do that together–in the corner standout in Rockland on Saturdays; in the small circles of discussion happening in Belfast and Camden; in the powerful Just the Facts group organized on Vinalhaven. If you haven’t found a group you can grieve with (look at audacitycat.org) maybe create your own.

We are a social species, one that works best when we gather, paying attention and homage to our own grief and that of our neighbors and family. Find a friend and walk. Reach out to a new friend and see how they are. Write a note to a distant family member. Check in with yourself, too.

Contrary to what we might have been told as we were growing up, shedding tears for what we have lost empowers us. It reminds us what matters, it refreshes and resets our energy and balance, clears away the detritus so we can dig in and fight again.

Great Local Sightings

Here are some of the signs of resistance found on a walk in downtown Camden this week.

Your neighbors care. Your friends care. We care. You are not alone, we are not alone. You are making a difference in this fight for our country.

Concluding Thoughts

It’s not an easy time to live in this country. Yet I take heart in the signs of resilience I see and hear all around me. We the people can turn the tide on the cruelty and greed that our national leaders are displaying. We, in the midcoast, can make a difference.

If you haven’t yet listened to this powerful speech on the floor of the French senate, I highly recommend it. Pass it along. As he so eloquently stated: “the defenders of freedom have always prevailed.”

As we shall this time, too.
Dear Soldier

NR24

March 11, 2025

After one of our recent protests, a man identifying himself as a veteran called us “Nazis” and spat that we should serve in the military before we dare to criticize this country. Excuse me? Plenty of us protesters have served in the military. Go talk to Jon Soltz of votevets.org in Boothbay and you’ll get an ear-full. Some of the harshest voices of criticism come from veterans.

I am sincere when I say “thank you for your service”, but if military service were the only thing responsible for giving us our rights, then you’d think that China, Russian, and North Korea would have lots of “rights” due to their enormous militaries, but that is obviously not the case.

And just a reminder for anyone who has forgotten the bloody lessons from 80 years ago: Nazism advocates for the subordination of individual rights — it’s the state über alles. Nazis reject democracy and liberalism and promote a dictatorial leadership. They hate dissent.

So when we protesters are petitioning the Government for a redress of grievances through our freedom of speech and freedom of assembly, we are literally doing the most American thing possible. That’s as far from Nazism as you can get. Did Richard Spencer vote for Kamala? Do you think we protesters just came from harassing a performance of “The Diary of Anne Frank”? What exactly are you talking about?

What bothered me most about the interaction was that this soldier didn’t get how dangerously hypocritical his views were. For him, I guess America should be a place where everyone falls in line behind Trump and toes his party line, no matter how damaging or self-serving it is. Did this soldier heckle protestors who were dissatisfied with President Biden? Did he tell the “Let’s Go Brandon” guys they were a “disgrace?” I sincerely doubt it.

And what does it look like when soldiers silence dissent? Or when the leader is declared to be “above the law?” Or when a President censors the media by literally choosing who is allowed to report on his briefings? Or unflattering movies are stifled? Or when he praises dictators? If you guessed something out of the 1930s, there are a lot of frightening parallels.

So, Dear Soldier, I ask you as a neighbor and fellow citizen: don’t forget your duty. We need your help. All US military personal had to take an oath, and you among them. You took an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic. I will grant you that you also agreed to obey the orders of the President of the United States, but right now, those loyalties are conflicting. What to do when the President himself is the one attacking the Constitution? Checks and balances, the right to assemble, the freedom of speech — all of these things are under attack. I know a lot of soldiers are into the SECOND things (like the second amendment), but I would argue that the FIRST thing in your oath is more important: presidents may come and go, but the Constitution is what endures. And THAT’s what you fought for, and THAT’s what we are fighting for. So come join us. We really are on the same side.
When The Never Is Inside Your Own House

Peregrin Wood

March 2, 2025

Our certainty in shared values seemed justified in simpler times.

It’s easy to stand against Nazism when it’s an evil of the past. It’s something else when the Nazis have gained control of your own country, when they hold every major lever of power.

When Vice President JD Vance told the Germans that they must make way for a new generation of Nazis, he did so as part of a delegation that included Jack Posobiec, an American Nazi who now wanders the halls of the White House at will, who a year before had lifted a crucifix while speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference and declared,

“Welcome to the end of democracy. We are here to overthrow it completely. We didn’t get all the way there on Jan. 6, but we will endeavor to get rid of it, and we will replace it with this. That’s right, we will replace it with this, because all glory is not to government. All glory is to God!“

Glory to God in American politics is now shorthand for brutal totalitarian power. Glory to God in American politics has become an enemy to democracy.

When I learned the part that Posobiec played in the Munich conference at which support for Nazis in Germany became part of American foreign policy, I thought back to a sign I had seen lifted at a local protest in Ithaca, New York.

In a mittened hand lifted high, the hand-drawn sign warned, “Never Again Means Now”.

It’s easy to say “never again” when the Never we imagine is a foreign mistake that America fought against in a righteous war in the time of our grandparents. It’s an evil so specific, and so far removed in space and time, that it seems never likely to return.

When Never returns speaking English with an American accent, in the name of the most popular religion in the United States, it’s easier to ignore the stories of new concentration camps riddled with horrific abuse of prisoners.

After all, it doesn’t come with a ridiculous little mustache. It doesn’t present itself in grainy black and white films.

It speaks to our familiar American prejudices, our cozy hatreds.

It’s more difficult to resist the Nazi who stands under the American flag. It’s easier to just go shopping.

Resistance in your own country, in your own time, is not an easy choice. It’s not a glamorous fantasy.

Resistance isn’t resistance if it’s easy and painless. Resistance burns. Resistance aches.

Their power is totalitarian. Our resistance cannot be limited to an occasional thumbs up on social media.
Parent Complains to the US Department of Education About Rogue Sects Education

Peregrin Wood

February 27, 2025

Today, the US Department of Education set up a web site solely dedicated to providing a way for Americans to report public schools for the offense of having inclusion, equity, and diversity in their classrooms.

I could see right away why this project is such a priority for the US Department of Education. I mean, imagine what it must feel like for people to discover that public schools, of all places, are finding ways to include a diversity of students in their classrooms in an equitable way!

The web site is at a standalone domain at EndDEI.gov. The site features a rant by Tiffany Justice, a co-founder of the right wing extremist organization Moms For Liberty. She complains of “rogue sex education and divisive ideologies” influencing public schools.

Moms For Liberty, for their part, has been emulating the Nazis by forming committees of political extremists to demand that libraries and schools ban books. What a good example Ms. Justice sets on avoiding ideological divisiveness!

I like to think of myself as the type of citizen (Yes, I am a citizen of the United States of America. Please don’t send me to the concentration camp at Guantanamo Bay!) who shoulders his fair share of the burden of civic duty. So, as soon as I learned about the EndDEI.gov web site, I did my part. I sent the Department of Education a message informing on my local public school.

Citizens informing on each other in order to establish ideological conformity – that’s the American way!

The message I sent to the Department is as follows:

“I am writing to complain about discrimination on the basis of rates and sects.

The rates I am being charged in the grocery store for a dozen eggs here in Ithaca, New York has gone up dramatically since Donald Trump was inaugurated. I think all people should be able to eat a food as simple as eggs, regardless of rates.

I am also concerned about the growth of rogue sects education, as promoted by divisive Christian Nationalist organizations such as Moms for Liberty. This rogue Christian sect has attempted to push public schools to indoctrinate all students in Christian theology and to participate in Christian religious rituals such as prayer, even when students are from non-Christian families. Non-Christian families make up 40% of the American population, but here in Ithaca, non-Christians are 60% of the population, so I hope you see how that could be a problem.

I am also concerned about your efforts to end diversity in the Ithaca City Schools. How do you plan to accomplish this? Are you thinking compulsory re-education camps, ethnic cleansing, or just closing the public schools down? A combination of both?”

As a citizen informer to our new fascist government, what kind of report will you submit about your local public school’s insidious support for diversity?