Affirmative Action: What's It Good For?

 When it comes to Affirmative Action (AA), we tend to see the proposition from the point of view of our own individual experiences or from an eagle's eye view of large numbers and statistics.

August Macke 

Currently, I am working my way through Melvin Urofsky's book, "The Affirmative Action Puzzle," and it has changed my mind in some important ways, but the biggest controversy is over applying AA practices to schools and there I'm not quite moved.

When labor unions excluded Blacks from being firemen or plumbers or electricians, the harm that did Black men and their families could be measured in dollars and cents.

When the Dixiecrats made sure Negroes did not get VA loans and so could not buy houses after World War Two, the effect on family wealth was measurable.

But if a Black kid cannot go to the University of California at Berkeley,  or Harvard or Brown, or Princeton what has been lost is less clear. The Ivy League colleges have guarded follow up data on their graduates tightly for generations. What you would want to know is how much the 4 years at college changed the financial fates of the students who graduate.  After the Second World War, when so many veterans went to college, often the first in their families to go to college, a whole new middle and upper class was established as a college degree became a passport to upper level management jobs. It's not at all clear that going to Princeton does that any more--children of rich parents who send their kids to Princeton tend to become rich and upper class but is that because their families made sure of that or because they were transformed into leaders at Princeton? 

What we assume is that going to a highly selective college is getting your ticket punched and you are launched into the upper classes. Not at all clear this is true.

The concept of admitting people to schools (or jobs) BECAUSE they are members of a particular group, race or ethnicity collides with the notion that, in America, you should advance yourself because of your own personal qualities, your individual drive and willingness to work hard, not because you are White or the son of a rich man. We aspire toward a "meritocracy." 

As Michael Sandel has noted, that idea of meritocracy is not as benign as we thought.  For one thing, the whole idea of pulling yourself up by your bootstraps means if you find yourself poor, working in a dead end job  then it's your own fault because in a meritocracy all you have to do to succeed is work hard. So, if you're poor, you deserve to be poor and miserable.

In my own family academic achievement was the top priority. My parents didn't care if their sons were good athletes or if we could sing or dance or make money; what they cared about was our grades and our test scores.

So, it came as something of a shock, when, in my freshman year at college--an Ivy League college, no less--a student asked the professor of English if we could interrupt our scheduled discussion of the play we had read to discuss the important issue of whether our college should commit to admitting to the next freshman class 12% Black students--as that was the percentage of Blacks in the national population.

This struck me as ludicrous: If Blacks wanted to go to our college, let them apply and compete as we all did, playing by the same stupid rules we had to play by, study for the SAT exams, grind away coloring maps and taking quizzes and exams to earn our "A's" and get in the same way we all did.

Making the goal achieving some outcome, like 12% Blacks in our classes seemed absurd. If 100% of the class turned out to be Asian, I said, that was fine with me, as long as we all played by the same rules.  I noted that nearly 100% of our basketball team was Black, and nobody suggested we have 88% white players on that team to reflect the general population.

The goal should not be 12% Blacks in our classes but the goal should be that every body who got in had the same chance when they applied.

Of course, what I did not appreciate was how thoroughly the Black kids had been disadvantaged and for how long in the training for the races and contests which would "qualify" them for admission to our college.

The other thing which nagged at the back of my brain was the rules, the criteria, the colleges used to judge who was talented and desirable and who was not.

As a junior in college I tried to be exempted from taking a calculus course required for my major (Biology) and I had to see a dean who also happened to be the Dean of Admissions. During our discussion, he reached into a file cabinet and retrieved my admission folder, scanned through it and he expostulated: "How did you ever get in here?"

I wanted to be exempted from that course, so I did not say: "Well, I've been in the top 10% of my class since first semester freshman year, so maybe you're not much of a judge of talent."

The fact is, since the California system eliminated AA, the campuses have seen only minor changes at the state schools, Chico State, Fresno State, which are more like community colleges where kids live nearby and often commute, but the number of Blacks at Berkeley fell by half and Hispanic students fell by about 25%. Asians have increased slightly but not overwhelmingly. 

The loss of places at universities is only important if what happens at those universities really makes a difference in the lives of students.

For me, at least, college was broadening, maybe transformative in some ways, but looking at most of my classmates, I doubt this was true. Apart from the engineers and the pre meds, most of the students I could see who majored in the humanities or arts did not change much or get enough out of college to say that denying them that experience would have hurt them much.

Macho Republicans vs Snowflake Democrats

W hen FOX heard about a college which had offered kittens to cuddle to stressed out freshman, FOX  ran with it. 

Who knows what the real story is? Did a real college actually do this? Or did FOX simply invent it because it is so perfect for the FOX narrative? 

 Mad Dog was intrigued to watch the FOX ladies, on their white leather couches, crossing their legs conspicuously and inveighing against these colleges where elite, effete liberals try to raise and groom snowflakes.

 Kayleigh McEnany asserted that when she was in college, all she needed was a cup of coffee and a library. Another panelist said all those kids needed was a slap in the face.

How very FOX.

Of course, Mad Dog has been appalled by the very notion of "safe spaces" in colleges. Colleges are not supposed to be comfortable or safe, in the sense of this is where you get your ideas challenged and must learn to defend them. College is about conflict and learning to resolve conflicts. So Mad Dog had some sympathy for the cant, even if he doubted the veracity of the actual kitten story.

But this whole episode is so characteristic of what FOX and MAGA sells: We are the tough guys, the realists. Democrats are soft, unworthy of leadership.

Watching political ads on TV, Mad Dog hits mute and tries to guess if it's a Republican ad or a Democratic ad.

If there is a person holding a huge gun, showing some arm tattoos: it's Republican.

If there is a soft focus of a woman, or especially if she is cradling a baby or hugging children:  that's a Democratic ad.

Republicans are the party of warriors, manly men, violence, shoot 'em up and you don't need no friggin' education to understand what they stand for.

Women like these manly men; these men make them feel safe.  And they know they can control boy/men like this, because often those are their boyfriends and husbands. Big backs, small brains.

Pete Buttigieg, Eric Swalwell, Adam Schiff, Corey Booker--none of these guys is threatening. They are all soft, speak in complicated sentences and appeal to the warm, soft side of women. There are no hard edges among Democratic males, except for John Fetterman, and he's so hard edged he refused to take coumadin despite having been warned his atrial fibrillation could cause a stroke.

In fact, this is why Obama scared the beejesus out of the Republicans: He was just so lean, hard, fit and Black!  Could not accuse Obama of being soft and, in fact a little soft in a Black man is ok, because it runs against the grain.

In fact, Democrats eliminate manly men from consideration. They discourage the bold and insist on the meek. They begin their introductions with, "Hi, I'm Sally, she/her." 

(But that's another story: How Democrats charged headlong into the transgender trap laid by Republicans.)

When Chris Pappas ran among 10 other candidates for the open  US House seat there was another candidate, Terrence O'Rourke, who stood out among all the others. O'Rourke is a lawyer for the town of Rochester, a tough, blue collar place. He had won a Bronze Star in Iraq as an officer. (Unlike Ron DeSantis who struts around in his camouflage fatigues, but who was a military lawyer and never had a shot fired in anger at him, O'Rourke took fire and returned it.) But local women Democrats recoiled from O'Rourke. "He just seems too angry!" Several of my Democratic women colleagues told me.

Terrence O'Rourke

"But we NEED angry," I told them

Made no difference. Democratic women aren't looking for a warrior, they are looking to cuddle kittens. 

So the house cat, Chris Pappas got elected. 

Now, we're hearing, "He's not tough enough."

So, we'll have Kevin McCarthy as Speaker, Mitch McConnell back as Senate leader, Jim Jordan running Congressional witch hunts for Dr. Fauci and Hillary and Ms. Boebert, Marjorie Taylor Greene and Matt Gaetz flouncing around posing with big guns on Twitter for the next two years. 

The Supreme Court will kill affirmative action, and that may not be all bad. There will be a national abortion ban, but the pro choice people, who all the pollsters have told us for eons are in the majority will simply have to deal with it, as Mr. Bolduc has suggested. Abortion may be embraced by 60% of Americans, but it isn't nearly as important to them as gas prices, inflation, talk of crime and the "border crisis" and having trans people playing on girls' high school teams. 

The big question is whether that will be enough exposure to undermine the resurgence of Trump in 2024. If the Republicans get enough sunlight, they may get disinfected. But Hitler, after whom Mr. Trump fashions himself, made good use of his time in jail after his attempt at a coup failed, and we'll see how closely Mr. Trump can make US history imitate German history.

It Doesn't Take A Genius

 

"I didn't spend my life defending this country to let a bunch of pansies squander it away."

--Don Bolduc

Mad Dog has never claimed to be the sharpest blade in the drawer, but he does appreciate some simple things:  For any democracy, especially a republic, to be a democracy, the citizens must believe in voting.

Without accepting the notion that by voting people can elect folks to represent their concerns and point of view, there can be no democratic government, no republic.

This, of  course, requires that citizens believe their votes are counted and tabulated honestly and without manipulation. Mad Dog has worked at the polls and seen how mail in ballots are accounted for and how they are processed, in a procedure he can only describe as "scrupulous."  There is no monkey business in vote counting or voting machines in Hampton, New Hampshire. But what happens to those tabulated votes once they are reported up the chain, Mad Dog acknowledges is beyond his observation.

At some point, we rely on others, not our own personal observations. As Alex Jones' lawyer once asked, "Unless you were present at the morgue, how do you know any children actually died at Sandy Hook." Yes, Mr. Lawyer, we do have to invest belief in some things we cannot verify ourselves, personally. 

But I still believe children were killed at Sandy Hook and I still choose to believe Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump in 2020. 

When President Trump said that he would not accept the results if voters voted him out of office--as in, 

Q: President Trump will you accept the vote if you lose? 

A: "We'll see." 

And when he said he could not possibly lose, then he was saying, one would have to accept, that he had no intention of leaving office, no matter what. No matter the verdict of the voters.

Only Donald Trump's opinion about the validity of the announced votes matters. Only he is allowed at the morgue. 

But how can anyone really know if the voters' votes were actually counted accurately, fairly?

That requires some faith. Faith in news reports, faith in voting observers, faith in courts to examine whether or not there is credible evidence--as opposed to simple statements of belief--for "voting irregularities."

Now, there are any number of Trump acolytes--most visibly Kari Lake in Arizona--but also Tudor Dixon (whose name alone ought to be disqualifying anywhere but FOX world)--who say they "cannot" lose their elections and if it is claimed they have lost, then voters ought to know, in advance, the election was stolen from them, which is to say, there is no point in going to vote because the decision, at least in MAGA minds, is already a fait accompli. Ipso facto, if I run, I win. Why bother with all the expense, time, effort of actually holding an election?

This attitude has been dignified with a category name: "The Big Steal."

This is, of course, what January 6th was all about.

If you somehow KNOW that Trump actually got more votes than Joe Biden and not only that, if you KNOW that he won key states, then it is entirely justifiable to launch a revolution against the Big Steal.

This is a form of simple faith. If you BELIEVE, then all things are possible.

Evidence is a dirty word. For the true believer all that matters is faith, or the word from the only source that matters: Der Fuhrer. 

This sort of rationale is routine in some African countries, where the losing side simply refuses to believe the votes were counted honestly.

In America, we have shaken our heads when viewing videos of post election mayhem in third world countries, those "shithole countries" Trump so despises, countries where you see crowds rampaging through the streets after election results are announced, tires burning in the streets, crowds of young men in rhythmic dance headed toward the Presidential palace to overturn the election. 

Until, of course, we saw much the same thing here in Washington, DC with the Proud Boys leading the charge wearing shirts saying, "Stop the Steal" and "Camp Auschwitz" and "Veteran: Capitol Hill War" and "The Civil War Starts Now."

These folks are true believers in the Trump victory and no amount of evidence or persuasion will ever change their minds. As Lincoln said, "Twelve angels blowing Horns, the clouds parting will not convince them otherwise."

Locally, here in Hampton, we go door to door and we try to perform our civic duty of talking to our fellow citizens. But we work for a Democratic Party organization which wants us to follow a script, even as they say the best sort of campaigning is neighbor talking to neighbor. But they want us to say to our neighbors certain things, to ask specific questions:

1/ We are supposed to ask (and record the answer)  if the citizen at the door intends to vote for Maggie Hassan and Chris Pappas. This is not an attempt to have neighbors talking to neighbors, but to have neighbors reporting on neighbors, perform polling duties, which actually undermines the whole effort to "reach" citizens where they live.

Most people come to the door annoyed. Someone is intruding on their Saturday morning or their Sunday watching the Patriots game, probably trying to sell them something. 

Good canvassers know to begin by making connections: Oh, your daughter went to Winnacunnet with my son. And then move on to "What matters most to you in this election?" 

2/ But that does not satisfy the Democratic bureaucrats, because now comes the second questions the Party wants asked:   canvassers are told  to present a blue post card for the home owner to sign saying they promise to vote for Democrats on November 8th. Will you sign this commitment to vote? 

Thus neighbors talking to neighbors is  transformed into a transaction; this friendly discussion morphs into a sort of sales promotion and the looks on the faces of most homeowners at being asked to sign some card on their porch says it all: "Oh, and here I thought you were my friend."

So the Party brass, the Ray Buckley's squander the opportunity to allow local citizens to engage in conversations which they know will be more effective than the Party line. Our candidate, Maggie Hassan may read from a script, may avoid getting negative for fear of offending, but local folks do not have to do that. Local folks can say "We are not pansies. Bolduc wants to kill Social Security and Medicare. He denies Biden won the election. He doesn't believe in democracy! He says COVID vaccines are a way Bill Gates can get microchips into us. He says facemasks do more harm than good. He says Democrats want schoolchildren to use kitty litter in schools. He wants to ban abortions and IVF." 

Of course, some of us do that, but most do not, which only feeds into the image of a toothless party of pansies. 

Democrats thought, last August, that the decision killing Roe would be the big moment, the thing that swept all Republicans from the field, but that is now so yesterday. Three months later canvassers found abortion was hardly in the top five of what voters said motivated them to vote.

All the outrage, all the certainty that THIS would finally be the thing which defeats the Republicans, gone now. 

"Oh, I don't like that," voters would say about Roe. "But I'm more pissed off about gas prices right now. And the economy and crime."

And of course FOX has managed to sell a lot of people on the notion that crime is rampant--which is statistically untrue--and that President Biden has the power to lower gas prices if he really cared.

So, here we are in the 21st  century, with a republic we may not be able to keep because, well, the Democrats are simply not bright enough to know attack ads win elections and door to door canvassing does not matter, especially when done wrong.

And there is no Democratic Party propaganda machine like FOXNEWS.

And, well, maybe we've just got tired of democracy, which takes so much time, effort and thought. 

We'd rather watch the Patriots game.

New (York) Amsterdam vs Old (Current) Amsterdam

 A week ago, Mad Dog was in New York City, USA. 

Hampton, N.H., USA

Today, he has just got back from 5 hours walking around Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

What he is most struck by in Old Amsterdam is what is not there.

The noise, of course, is the most striking thing. Emerge from a bus at Port Authority or a train at Penn Station and step out onto a New York City Street and you are blown back by a tsunami of sound, mostly auto horns blaring, but car engines reviving and people shouting. To the uninitiated this must sound like a tidal wave of anger, but it's just normal, angry New York.

In Old Amsterdam, there is the silence of bicycles and the low purr of the occasional trolley. The streets, filled with people, are remarkable quiet.

In New York City, you pick your way down the street stepping past or over the bodies of homeless people.

In Old Amsterdam are are no homeless to be seen, not even at the train station.

In New York City, you walk by beggars with their hands outstretched, their pleas invoking instant guilt, but nary a pan handler in Old Amsterdam.

In New York City, the trash bags are piled up on the sidewalks in front of restaurants.

In Old Amsterdam, they apparently generate no trash, or in good Dutch engineering fashion,  they turn it into energy or wound dressings for hospitals.

Every block in New York City you hear angry people shouting at one another, or at least people shouting, angry or not. 

In Old Amsterdam you simply do not hear people raising their voices. People may not display harmony, or even a lot of joy, but they do not display much hostility. 

In New York City everyone belongs to a tribe and they display their team hats, (New York Yankees  or New York Mets) or their Hoboken High varsity jackets or their Harvard sweatshirts. 

They must have teams, at least soccer teams, in the Netherlands, but people do not walk around in jerseys with the names of their favorite players.

Amsterdam is filled with people on the streets, walking, talking, dodging into restaurants or little bistros that make french fries as their sole product, but there is little palpable, visible anger.

New York is all about anger. And joy. More anger than joy, but emotions are raw and very much out there. Amsterdam, people smile, they chat, but nobody much looks ready to engage in mortal combat. In New York people live on the verge of a nervous breakdown, and they seem to like it.

Dutch women do not look bold.

New York women look bold.

Obadiah Youngblood (Not VanGogh)

Dutch women strike Mad Dog as concerned about their looks; false eyelashes are very common. Dutch women in this city dress stylishly, but not daringly, for the most part. It is as if having long blonde hair, high cheekbones and no weight problems is not enough. 

Waiting outside the women's bathroom at the Van Gogh Museum, Mad Dog was fascinated by the cluster of Dutch women who stood in front of a mirror fussing with their hair, striking poses, turning for a left side view, a right side view. It went on and on. Mad Dog could not see the mirror which had claimed their attention, but it was clearly what stopped them for all the preening. It was placed there so they could check themselves out before leaving the bathroom. 

The men's room had one, too: you could see if your fly was down on the way out.

The women's room mirror could show you if you were insufficiently beautiful from any angle.

The Van Gogh Museum is wonderful, by the way. Even if the bathrooms had no mirrors, it's worth going to the Van Gogh Museum to see a hundred Van Gogh paintings, from all along his career is stunning. They also have a flair for display, with Large walls plastered with out takes from his paintings.

You do not see all the Van Goghs you know and love from calendars and posters and that's a downer, but then you realize the reason not every Van Gogh is in that museum is because they are hanging in museums from New York to London to Melbourne to Paris to Berlin. He painted a painting a day at Auvers during the last year of his short life, but even those 300 plus paintings cannot all be in Amsterdam; too many people around the world want the thrill of seeing them.

                                                         ***

The Dutch have their political problems: Geer Wilders stokes hate for immigrants and his followers have occasionally claimed the second most seats in the Dutch parliament. But, somehow, the Dutch quietly seem to do well.

Once, at an Endocrine Society Meeting in the United States a Dutch physician described how they manage patients who become addicted to testosterone medications, a sort of male version of anorexia nervosa. After he outlined all the steps an American physician remarked, "God, they would never let us do that in the States! You'd have the DEA or the sheriff in your office inside of a week."

"Well," the Dutchman said. "Everything's easier in the Netherlands."

Hamsterdam

 When Baltimore police in "The Wire" try to explain the concept of a geographic area where drug sales and use are tolerated, one of them tells an uncomprehending corner boy, "It's like Amsterdam: Everything's allowed there."

Central Park, NYC

The locals, of course, hear this as "Hamster-dam," and that becomes the name for this experimental enclave where the police have herded all the drug dealers, users, freeing the rest of the city from the blight of the drug culture. 

Later, the author of this radical experiment, Major Howard Colvin, a Black police officer who is sick of the hypocrisy, ongoing impotence of the city's policy of "drug war" gives the future mayor a tour of Hamsterdam and he says, "It ain't pretty."  In fact, as the camera follows the future mayor along the streets of Hamsterdam, it looks like something out of Dante's inferno, with parentless children wandering lost among fighting adolescents and adults, druggies staggering, falling down stair stoops, crashing onto the pavement below and bodies lying, ignored on the streets.

Allowing anarchy to devolve into chaos ain't pretty. Civilization, for all its restraints and oppression, may have something to offer, after all.

Mad Dog is currently wandering, like Mayor Carcetti, through the dazzling streets of the actual Amsterdam, its rows of pristine townhouses and shops and it's impossibly tall people.  It looks like the polar opposite of Hamsterdam. 

So far, the major danger is the bicyclists.  "You need to put your head on a swivel," his brother in-law had warned him, and within seconds of setting foot on the street, Mad Dog understood the sagacity of this advice. On the brick sidewalks, along the defined bicycle paths which line the streets where cars and street cars stream by, bicyclists shoot by the pedestrian, like comets,  from every direction. Silent, swift and lethal, the Dutch bicyclist is an ever present death threat. 

And Mad Dog loves bicycles and owns five. 

These Dutch bikes are very civilized, even if their drivers are a menace. They all have fenders which prevent mud splatter and bikers can dress in office attire and arrive for work without a splash on their clothes.

Above, an August Macke painting, A German artist inspired by VanGogh.

At least in Amsterdam, the Dutch look like a fit lot, especially compared to the rotund New Englanders Mad Dog lives among, who drive their cars to go a single block to Dunkin Donuts for coffee. In Amsterdam, as in New Amsterdam, the Dutch walk everywhere they do not bike.

Dutch, heard along the street, has the same cadence as--and many cognates with-- English, so you find yourself trying to eaves drop on conversations only to realize they are not conversations in English. 

Parks weave in and out of the city streets, but mostly what makes Amsterdam different is the concentric circles of canals. You walk a few blocks and you find yourself crossing a canal on a bridge overpass and trying to figure out how many circles from the hotel you have traversed. 

If there are multiple circles of Hell, that idea did not likely derive from Amsterdam, as the place is not Hellish at all, unlike Hamsterdam. 

It may not be Heaven, but it is certainly one of the best cities in the world, at least on short acquaintance.

As in any free society, there are different opinions, and the Dutch version of Trumplings are evident--they even look like Trumplings, with slogan embroidered baseball hats and a bloated, beaten look. Geer Wilders is a sort of messianic Dutchman would be cult leader, a blonde Hitler wannabe, who rails against Muslims rather than Jews, but still sells the same load of the "other" who wold defile and destroy the real Dutch with an alien stain. The Dutch, like the Scandinavians have a part of the body politic which has reacted to the influx of dark skin immigrants with horror and revulsion. It's a changing world and they want to circle the wagons and defend their white, insular world against the dark other.

Today's plan is to visit the Van Gogh museum, which is placed among several other museums, but is the most difficult to gain admission to. Van Gogh was a revolutionary in his time, eccentric and misunderstood and underappreciated, having sold almost no paintings in his life time. 

But he speaks across the ages to us today and Mad Dog can hardly wait to commune with him.

Out Knocking on Doors

 

Mad Dog has long questioned the value of knocking on the doors of voters in his town. Most people fall into one of two categories: 1/ The already convinced, the church choir who need no reminding or encouragement and will vote Democratic no matter whether we knock on their doors or not.  2/ The "undeclared" voter who really does not like having to deal with people on his/her doorstep trying to "sell" him/her a pitch about who to vote for. These people feel violated, intruded upon and get more and more hostile the more you ring their doorbells.

Now, it should be noted exactly how a voter's name gets on the list of nice names to be knocked upon: The computer has identified them as having voted in a Democratic primary, meaning they are either true Blue Democrats or they declared themselves Democratic for purposes of voting in one primary and then, most often, changed back to "undeclared."

It is among the members of this group we often hear, "I'm still doing my research" when we ask the question our Party insists we ask: "Are you planning on supporting Maggie Hassan."

The fact we have to ask this question at all is a problem, as far as Mad Dog is concerned. It transforms this friendly, "I'm just your neighbor urging you to vote on November 8" into a poll, which is asked for the tracking purposes of the Party.  The soft sell of, "Gee, I wouldn't tell you what to think or how to vote, but do vote," into a "So, can I count on you?" This is supposed to be followed by the question, "Will you sign this 'Commit to Vote' card which presents the homeowner with a card which might sign away the mortgage and now the canvasser on the door step looks like a salesman, con artist.

How the Democratic Party organization came up with these procedures is beyond Mad Dog, but it makes him question his faith in the Democratic Party higher ups.  If anyone can pull off these depradations and make it seem friendly and innocent, it is his partner in canvassing, Olivia Ostrich, but Mad Dog suspect 90% of those who try to get away with this only alienate voters.

What Mad Dog would like to say when a citizen says she is still doing her research on Karoline Leavitt who she might prefer to Chris Papas is to simply read her these Professor Google statements:

Here is the person you would be voting for rather than Papas:

KAROLINE LEAVITT

WHAT SHE STANDS FOR

1.   “PRIVATIZING” SOCIAL SECURITY

2.   STOPPING ALL FEDERAL SPENDING OUTSIDE OF DEFENSE AND HOMELAND SECURITY (CANCELING MEDICARE, SOCIAL SECURITY)

3.   REPEAL THE AFFORDABLE CARE ACT

4.   REPEAL OF GUN FREE ZONES AT SCHOOLS

5.   OPPOSES ANY RESTRICTIONS ON ANY FIREARMS

6.   AGAINST INFRASTRUCTURE FOR ROADS AND BRIDGES AND AIRPORTS

7.   INSISTS DONALD TRUMP WON THE 2020 ELECTION

8.   RESTRICTING RIGHT TO VOTE, DENYING VOTE TO COLLEGE STUDENTS

9.   “CLIMATE CHANGE IS A HOAX MANUFACTURED BY THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY”

10.                     ABOLISH THE IRS

11.                     ABOLISHING EVERY FEDERAL AGENCY WITH 3 LETTERS (IRS, EPA, FAA,DOD,DHS, DOJ, DOE,FBI)

12.                     BLACK LIVES MATTER IS A “MAXIST TERRORIST GROUP”

13.                     WISHES NH HAD A DON’T SAY GAY LAW

14.                     DEFENDS JAN 6 AS A “PEACEFUL PROTEST”

And for those contemplating not voting for Maggie Hassan:

DON BOLDUC

1.    ABORTION:

         NO EXCEPTION FOR RAPE OR INCEST

 

2.    TROOPS TO URKAINE:

“WE NEED AMERICAN BOOTS ON THE GROUND OVER THERE.”

3.    2020 ELECTION WAS STOLEN

“SO, I SIGNED A LETTER …SAYING THAT TRUMP WON THE ELECTION AND, DAMMIT, I STAND BY MY HORSE. I’M NOT SWITCHING HORSES, BABY. THAT’S IT.”

4.    CALLED CHRIS SUNUNU “A CHINESE COMMUNIST SYMPATHIZER”

5.    ANTI VAXXER

“THIS IS BILL GATES SAYING WE SHOULD PUT CHIPS INSIDE PEOPLE NOW.” (5/22)

6.    MASKS CAUSE MORE PROBLEMS THAN THEY SOLVE

“I BELIEVE THEY COLLECT BACTERIA. WE’VE HAD A HUGE LITTERING PROBLEM WITH MASKS AND RUBBER GLOVES.”

7.    CONFEDERATE STATUES ARE A “SYMBOL OF HOPE”

 That's what Mad Dog would like to do, but the Democratic Party insists on not getting "confrontational."

Which is why Democrats lose.

Out Among the Lilliputians

 

The Lilliputians symbolize humankind's wildly excessive pride in its own puny existence.--from the internet 

Yesterday, a Friday, Mad Dog went a-canvassing with his indefatigable partner, who will be referred to here by her stage name,  Olivia Ostrich, a woman who is so Hampton she has chosen a plot in the Hampton cemetery for herself and her family. 

Obadiah Youngblood North Hampton House

She is prototypic Hamptonite, in that she wasn't actually born here, her family having Massachusetts origins and she grew up in Manchester but moved here, sending her kids to the Hampton schools, her daughter having started at Centre School , then moving on to Marston Elementary, then the Academy for middle school, and Winnecunnet High school.  Like everyone else in town, she was appalled when the town cut down the majestic pine trees along High Street across from the academy, and bordering the main cemetery, exposing an unsightly gray concrete 18 inch wall separating the cemetery from the street. But she wants to be buried there anyway.

Obadiah Youngblood Water Street Bridge

Mad Dog and Olivia took the clipboard from the DEMS office which bore the map of the homes they were assigned that day, in the streets just south of the honky tonk center of Hampton Beach, a place where they, like most Hampton residents, never venture between Memorial and Labor Day. They had signed out that territory before some years earlier and remembered it for the colorful people and the odd little homes planted along the salt marshes on one side, the ocean and the Hampton River on the other. 

The addresses assigned them were very modest homes within walking distance of the beach, which is separated by sand dunes through which paths to the ocean have been cut. 

Olivia Googled the cost of one home for sale, a  clapboard, which would have not even caught the eye had it been 4 miles inland, but listed for $1 million dollars. Location, location, location.

The first victim was an 80 something woman, sitting on her front porch and they stood on the lawn craning their necks to speak to her. Like many of the residents they met that day, she told them her family had purchased a beach house there around 1965 and she had watched the area change, as a clear sight line to the beach had become obscured by the build up of twenty foot sand dunes, which she seemed to resent for blocking her view. When Mad Dog pointed out the dunes protected her from inundation by the waves she groused that the water, when it did launch an incursion, simply flooded the next street over and then washed along the alley between that street and hers, so she had no kind feelings for the dunes, which she considered an eyesore and an intrusion. 

She was too old to go vote in person. She already had her absentee ballot which amazed Olivia and Mad Dog because the primary elections was just 4 days ago and already the final ballots for the November election are printed and in her hands.

Because they  were out on a Friday, most of the 40  people on the  list were at work. 

Obadiah View from Hampton Beach Great Boars Head

The computer generated list from the DEMS organization contained the names of people who had registered either as Democrats or "Undeclared" and who had voted in previous elections in the town. Specifically excluded were Republican voters. The idea of the "canvassing" is to not confront or try to change opinion, but to solidify and sample people who are thought to be potential supporters and to introduce them to candidates for state office, the House of Reps or the Senate especially. These offices which  are paid $100 a year, are eagerly, often hotly contested.

Before going on, Olivia and Mad Dog walked up the offending sand dune, using a cut path and they encountered a group of a dozen 60 something women, sitting in a clearing between dunes, in aluminum/strap beach chairs, drinking beer and eating snacks. 

"Come join us!" one called out. 

Obadiah Youngblood Beach Plum

"No, we're just passing through," Mad Dog told them. And waving at the white sand beach and green sea, looking up past the town beach, north to  toward Greater Boar's Head, he  added, "Who knew? This is gorgeous!"

"Oh, we know!"

Olivia remarked she'd never been this far south along the beach, beyond the commercialized part of Hampton Beach, but she thought she'd come back now. Townies tend to use North Beach and Plaice Cove, farther north, which are smaller and require town windshield stickers to park. 

Obadiah Youngblood North Hampton View

Mad Dog told her about a friend who rides her horses on Hampton Beach in the fall, and who claims horse poop is just about sterile and no problem for the beach. 

"It's disgusting though," said Olivia, "And I love horses and ride them. But horse poop on the beach? Yuck."

The  next stop was an address where nobody answered but there were two women down the street standing outside talking, and one of them noticed Mad Dog leaving campaign literature and she walked down to see who he was. She was on the DEMS list and this was her house.

"I'm not a single issue voter," she told them. "But I won't vote for anyone who doesn't believe in term limits. That's my big issue. So, no, I won't vote for Maggie Hassan."

"But she's only had one term," Mad Dog objected.

"Well but she's against term limits" she replied firmly. Mad Dog didn't know that. She knew something Mad Dog  hadn't. "Besides she was governor, so she's been in government too long and that corrupts everyone if you're there long enough. But both she and Chris Papas said they're against term limits. So they are out, far as I'm concerned." 

Mad Dog told her about a new candidate, the "fresh blood, fresh ideas" sort of candidate she said she wanted: Erica DeVries, who had been inspired to run to defeat a Republican who had sponsored a bill for New Hampshire to secede from the Union.

"Well," she smiled mischievously, "I sort of have some sympathy for that sometimes."

Renny Cushing Winnecunnet HS

Her husband showed up, a gaunt man in a baseball cap. He said he had worked in the federal government.  He said he was not voting for Tom Sherman for governor because Sherman had tried to mislead him, lied to him really.  Sherman had told him the new bridge across the Hampton River, down the road, would be completed this year and it hadn't been. 

The wife had taught in both private and public schools she said, and she loved Sununu's support for charter schools and didn't think the taxpayer should have to support public schools and not get help with private schools. She told a story about how in their former town, the town tried to stop paying for school buses to the private schools one year, and all the private school parents showed up the day before schools opened to enroll their 80 kids in public schools, "And the town backed down real quick," she said, with evident satisfaction.

"Besides its much cheaper for the town and the taxpayers to pay for private schools," said the husband. "It costs $75,000 a year to educate a kid in public schools and it's much cheaper to send the kid to a private school."

"That would only be true if there were no empty seats in the public schools," Mad Dog responded. "But if there are empty seats and if no new teachers had to be hired, given all the empty seats in Hampton schools, then education for those kids has already been paid for."

"Well, but public schools can only get better if they have competition," he replied, abandoning, momentarily the financial argument, "And I judge the schools by the outcomes. And they are better in private schools." 

"Really?" Mad Dog said. "Have there been studies comparing the two? I didn't know that."

"Well," he said, "Not in Hampton, but in our old town."

"How do you feel about town taxpayers giving the Sacred Heart school $65,000 a year?"

"Well, it's a good thing," the couple agreed. "More competition. Cheaper to send the kids there, too." He was back, Mad Dog noticed, to the financial argument, even after it had been refuted. It was something stuck in his brain.

So spending taxpayer money on a Catholic school did not trouble them. Spending money from public funds for private schools was a good thing, for them, because, well, it saves money, somehow, and it's all about competition. Or something.

That's where they left it.

The next lady to answer her door came out to chat with us on her deck. Her husband, a white haired guy with a white goatee stood behind the screen door and chimed in occasionally.

"I'm a former OR nurse," she told Mad Dog. "And I'm okay with abortion up to 15 weeks, but if you can't get your stuff together by then, well...I've seen late term abortions and that's just murder. That's why I can't vote for Hassan or Papas. They both voted for abortion up to birth. I'm not a single issue voter, but that's just disqualifying."

Olivia and Mad Dog exchanged looks. Neither one of them knew what this woman was talking about. When did Maggie and Chris vote for late term abortion?

"Well," Mad Dog told her, honestly, "I'm okay with abortion, but I'm not for infanticide."

"So, how do you feel about governor of Florida sending those people to Martha's Vineyard?" Mad Dog asked her. 

"Well," she smiled, "Now you're not going to like this, but I think maybe more of that ought to happen. We're protected from those illegals up here, but you go down to Texas and Florida and those illegals are just over running everything! I mean, we're supposed to be a nation of laws and these people jumped the line, broke the law and now we're supposed to pay to take care of them. And the crime!"

"Oh?" Mad Dog asked. "Have you been to Texas?"

"Yeah, San Antonio, but that was some years ago, but I just went to a convention in San Diego, though, and it's a huge problem."

"Funny thing," Mad Dog  said.  "I just got back from a convention in San Diego in May. Never saw a single illegal, not that I could tell anyway. And I've been to Texas in the past two years and never saw any immigrants running around."

"Well, I think America is like a big  family," the woman rejoined. "But that means taking care of your family first and we are just being over run now. They're just taking over!" 

"Seen any around here?"

"No, but it's coming."

The  next visit was across the bridge that Dr. Sherman had promised our man would have been rebuilt this year. The bridge actually looked to be in good shape, but a promise is a promise.

This was Seabrook, not Hampton,Mad Dog thought, but the woman at the door told us, no, Seabrook did not begin for another two blocks. 

The driveway was filled with Audi's with decals from Holy Cross College and Boston College. The woman invited us to her backyard so we could look out over the Hampton River and the jetty.  Sea birds walked on the sandbar fifty yards away.

"This is just breath taking," Olivia told the home owner. "Really just stunning."

"Well, it belonged to my parents  who bought it in 1960, and I rebuilt it. I made it intentionally small. Didn't want a McMansion. But I like it. It doesn't suck."

"No, indeed," said Olivia. 

"Oh, yes, I'm voting for Maggie and Chris and every Democrat on the list," the woman told us. 

"Finally, " Mad Dog  said. "An actual Democrat! We've been interviewing 'Undeclared voters' all day and I haven't run into anything but Fox News Republicans."

"Oh, yes," she said. "That's common in these parts."

Renny The Incumbent 

"I'm married to a Republican," Olivia told her, "But he can't stand Trump or any of them. He's not sure what he is now."

"I used to have Republican friends," the lady told us. "They're not my friends any more."

We had been out for nearly 5 discouraging hours.  We had met one actual Democrat on our list of potential Democratic voters.

"You know," Mad Dog told Olivia. "This country is really conservative. If democracy reflects the people's will, then maybe Trump does that."

Proud To Be An American

"This wasn't a scientific study," Olivia said. "Five hours on a Friday in a really weird part of town where nobody ever goes, except for people whose parents bought houses her 60 years ago."

"Maybe we should go horseback riding on the beach next weekend. Poop all over it," Mad Dog said. 

Olivia just shook her head.