Mark Preston v Erica DeVries: America in Microcosum

 

There is a seat in the New Hampshire state House of Representatives which is shared by the towns of Seabrook and Hampton New Hampshire. 

It is currently held by a Republican named Max Abramson who has introduced/supported legislation for New Hampshire to secede from the Union, to outlaw the teaching in public schools any mention of information which might cause white students to be ashamed of America's past (e.g. slavery) among other gems. 

Two other Republicans are challenging him in a Republican primary, a crowded field for these parts.

Mark Preston, a former Seabrook policeman whose most notable recent accomplishment has been an arrest for a driving while intoxicated incident, during which he reportedly upbraided the arresting officer for not honoring the blue code of conduct which would require he allow Preston to drive away unmolested, because Preston is a former police officer.

SEABROOK — Retired. Resigned. Some may call it semantics but the union representative of Sgt. Mark Preston wants it to be clear that the veteran Seabrook police officer of 30 years did not resign from his post.

"Sgt. Preston did not resign," said Steve Arnold, of the N.H. Police Benevolent Association. "He's retiring after 31 tears of service to the Seabrook Police Department."

His comments came after Town Manager Barry Brenner and Police Chief Patrick Manthorn issued a joint press release last week stating that Preston resigned following his July 31 drunken driving arrest in Salisbury Beach, Mass.

Police said Preston allegedly slammed into a parked car and swore at Salisbury officers for going against the "brotherhood" by not letting him go free.

Arnold said he was "bewildered" when he first heard about the press release because it's not true.

Mr. Preston has not shown up to answer questions about his candidacy at the local Hampton Democrats meetings. And the local Hampton Dems have many questions because Mr. Preston has a famous uncle, who has the town hall named after him, but he is also famous for switching from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party because he opposed legalizing abortions. Does Mr. Mark Preston take the same stance? Would he vote to make abortions illegal in New Hampshire? Does Mr. Preston support laws which make it legal for New Hampshire state legislators to pack guns inside the State House? Does Mr. Preston believe every citizen is entitled to an attack rifle?

Looking for answers to these and other questions, Mad Dog has obtained access to Mr. Preston's Facebook page and there a picture of the man emerges in technicolor. 

In case you missed it the 1st time

Mr. Preston reportedly told the Hampton Democratic chairman he was running for the joint seat (called the "Floterial") because he was sure to win Hampton owing to his name. But it looks to Mad Dog, he simply didn't want to be one of 4 candidates in the Republican primary when he could be one of two in the Democratic primary.

The first thing to strike Mad Dog, one of the most recent postings was a little ditty which runs: "I hate when people ask me what I do for fun because there's no classy way to say, 'Binge Drinking.'" This is followed by a slew of responses from Mr. Preston's Facebook buddies who clearly think this is the height of humor, but, given that DWI incident, it made Mad Dog wonder.

Then there is a photo of a woman's rear end and her face can be seen looking back at you with a provocative smile, and there is an arrow to hit to see what more might be in store, and an image of Jesus pops up saying, "I'm so disappointed in you!" As if Jesus did not much like Mary Magdalene. Apparently, Mr. Preston sees women as temptresses. He may not be alone in that, but it hardly augers well for a man who will have to vote on abortion rights in the state House of Representatives. 

Apparently, Mr. Preston was not happily married. Mad Dog infers this from a posting which announces: "Marriage: Because your shitty day doesn't have to end at work. Fuck Sensitivity."

The Proud Boys would be proud of that last lamentation.

Another post:  A notice on a US Postal Service card: "Please trim your bush so I can better service your box."

Presumably, this is from a male letter carrier to a female citizen, and why Mr. Preston would get this Mad Dog is still trying to figure out.

A photo of the hood of a car with the imprint of a woman's body, apparently left after having had sex on it. 

Mad Dog knew a fair number of Mark Preston's in high school and he always wondered what had become of them. Apparently, some may have had careers, perhaps shortened by alcohol fueled misadventures and they may have wound up running for public office. 

Mr. Preston certainly would compete for votes with Max Abramson: they both share felony convictions, and presumably the disaffected crowd would have a hard choice facing them.

But my favorite thing about Mr. Preston is his unstinting support for the Esker Road animal abuse crowd.  Living nearby his primary opponent, Erica DeVries is a family called  Beals. According to testimony at a recent town council meeting from the local public access channel, Mad Dog has learned that the Beals family owns goats, sheep and pigs. These animals do not remain in the Beals's backyard but are allowed to roam freely. Their favorite range seems to be a shared space called "the meadow" which backs onto around a dozen backyards in the Esker Road area.  Some of the neighbors don't much mind the sheep or the goats, but for others they are pests who devour their carefully planted hedges and gardens and flower beds, not to mention defecating wherever they please. In some cases the goats have got trapped by makeshift wire fences and were braying piteously as their legs were cut by the wire. 

Preston's Idea of Farmyard Animal

The Beals claim they love their goats and the censorious Ms. DeVries hates animals. Of course, this part of Hampton may once have been rural, seventy years ago, but now it is quite upscale and pricey (it's within walking distance of the ocean) and the neighbors testified they have seen rats heading toward the pig sty's.

The Beals have become a germinal center for all those "Live Free or Die" New Hampshire types who think the heavy hand of government has no business telling citizens what they can do, even if it means a public health menace from vermin attracting pigs. 

And what are goats doing wandering free? The Hurd Farm, the last actual farm in Hampton, has goats and sheep and pigs but they also have good fences, because, as any farmer will tell you, "We don't allow our animals to wander away. They'd get hit by cars, attacked by predators. We do have a free range for them to feed on, but it's our property and well fenced in. People who own animals ought to take care of them."

Erica DeVries

The Beals and Mr. Preston believe they are the victims here, not the goats, not the neighbors, because, after all, the Beals bottle fed those goats, who love them.

The Rockingham county judge who heard the case could see clearly what the town council could not and he ordered the animals removed to good care at the ASPCA, where they have not managed to jump any fences and where they have been given, presumably, three squares a day, although the Hampton Union has not sent out its reporter to interview the goats or their caretakers yet. 

Erica's Soulmate

Ms. DeVries had organized such a devastating case, witness by witness, that there was no surprise the Beals did not bother to show up to attempt a defense.

What REALLY worries Mad Dog is that Erica DeVries is exactly the type of intelligent, relentless, indomitable sort who should be representing Hampton in the State House--although why she would want that thankless job which pays $100 a year and requires thrice weekly drives up to Concord, is anyone's guess. (If she really wants a thankless, ill compensated line of work, she should run for US Congress, where at least they pay a real, if inadequate salary.)  

But, after 14 years in New Hampshire, Mad Dog has observed the really high quality candidate almost never wins. Tom Sherman is the only exception Mad Dog can bring to mind. But usually the rule is mediocrity or feckless wins the day in New Hampshire elections.

President Underwood, of "House of Cards" remarks early on in that series, "My people are a proud people. If you humble yourself before them, they will forgive you anything." Nobody plays the lowest common denominator better than Mr. Preston.

That does not bode well for Ms. DeVries. 

Faith, Democracy & Disbelief

 

Morality is doing what is right when you are told it is wrong; Religion is doing what you are told, when it is wrong. 

--H.L. Mencken

When you think about it, democracy is a leap of faith. 

It is a major leap of faith. 

When kings ruled the world, governance depended only on the power of the sword. The kings' henchmen came around with their horses and swords and told you how much of your harvest they were going to take. Simple formula. We have the power, you have something of value, and we will take what we wish from you.

You did not have to believe in anything much, except that they were stronger.

When the English started electing representatives to parliament, something new got introduced: votes got counted and tallied and the public got told of the results.  Maybe the first elections were not secret ballots. Maybe people lined up and stood by the representatives of their choice. 

But once the concept of "secret" ballot got introduced, tallying votes, by its secretive nature, became something you could justifiably doubt.

There is a lot about American life which more or less demands faith. I order something online: I give my credit card number and my credit card company has faith I'll pay them and I have faith the item will be sent. I order furniture, pay for it, wholly or in part, and await its delivery. I have faith the merchant will send the rug. He has faith the credit card company will pay him. The credit card company has faith I will pay them.

Oh, of course, there are legal remedies for breach of faith, but the only people who win there are the lawyers.

So we do a lot on faith, every day, in this country.

When Donald Trump won in 2016, I was sure in some part of my soul, that the big fix was in, that he had stolen the election with computers.

When he lost in 2020, Trumpists were sure of the big steal.

Now, we have Trumplings routinely running for office saying, right out of the gates, if they do not win, they will not accept the results, because, surely nobody but them can win any election. And any vote against them is by definition, fraudulent. It's all part of the "Big Steal."

Even during the Civil War, in 1864, there was an election by secret ballot. In some cases soldiers could vote from the battlefield, but some states required they return home to vote, which must have caused all sorts of problems, but they did and they gave Lincoln the election. But the vote was not dismissed as a big lie. Americans, in the midst of a Civil War, when all sorts of basic notions were questioned, accepted the results as the true reflection of the voters.

But do we have a republic any more, even now, before the midterms, if half the electorate accepts the premise that no vote is trustworthy, that the Democrats will cheat and steal any election?

Mad Dog would have to answer, tentatively, "No."

Which is to say, we have already lost our republic; we just haven't realized it yet. 

That lover who just went out the door will never come back. You think, "Oh, we've broken up before. She'll be back." But no, not this time. What we had is truly, sincerely, seriously dead.

Lincoln said the Civil War was about slavery, of course, but even beyond  that crucial issue was a more fundamental problem: the war tested whether any government "of the people, by the people, for the people" could continue to exist or would perish from the earth. 

America was the first republic since Rome.  Monarchists said people could not govern themselves, that the people needed a powerful leader to keep order and guide governance. The Civil War ended and the American Experiment seemed to have been saved. 

But, always, lurking there, were the words enshrined in the musical, "Hamilton" from King George III: "You'll be back." Which is to say, people cannot govern themselves. They'll fall to fighting amongst themselves. They'll clamor for a king eventually.

We thought he had proved King George wrong, but nothing on earth is fixed and beyond the winds of change. The 231 years of the American experiment has been a remarkable, if brief,  run, an interregnum. For 1,000 years before America there was no democracy or republic of any significance and democracies have often failed--as the Weimar Republic in Germany did. America has been the exception.

And one might argue the only reason the American republic lasted as long as it did was because it was a fake democracy, denying power to any racial group but whites, ensuring that only an upper crust of society actually had control of the economy and the political structure. It was a democracy of inequality, where the powerful subjugated the less powerful. So it was a monarchy without an anointed king. It still had a ruling class.

But now the barbarians are inside the city. They are not at the gates. They are among us. They are the losers in this inequitable society, the Sarah Palins, the resentful throngs who mob Trump rallies, the folks for whom no evidence is ever needed, only faith, only the statement: The election was stolen, no proof required. They believe they are as smart and worthy as any of the Soros class who rule them, but they have been cheated and that's why they lost the game and live in trailer parks, or have no better options than the Army or the police and most other options are a lot worse than that. 

The Republic is dead. Long live President-for-life Trump, and then, his successor, his Brutus,  DeSantis.

The Meaning of Liberty in New Hampshire

 I am an aristocrat.  I love liberty. I hate equality.

--John Randolph, Virginia

Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose.

--Kris Kristopherson

Recently, Hampton's Esker Road made the front page of the Hampton Union paper with a photo of the owner of five goats who are on their back legs, straining for a pat on the head by their indulgent owner, Jessica Lapa Beals.  Ms. Beals is quoted as saying she and her daughter had raised the goats from kids, bottle feeding them and they love their goats. 

Neighbors are not so enamored, as the goats have mowed down shrubs and trees and flower beds, having learned to jump fences and given freedom to roam around a shared backyard space, which some call "the meadow," along with sheep, also owned by Ms. Beals. Ms. Beals also keeps pigs and their pig sty's, which putatively violate all sorts of zoning laws and ordinances, not to mention attracting rats.

Ms. Beals has at least one neighbor who shares her love for her barnyard pets, but there are at least four neighbors who testified at a town council meeting about the nuisance these critters pose, describing how one goat became ensnared in some fencing and the neighbor was flummoxed about how to free the piteous goat, who Ms. Beals may love to pieces, but failed to protect from getting hooked like a mackerel in the moonlight. 

Curiously, the town council hearing elicited none of the slam dunk comments one might expect.  One of the town councilors waxed nostalgic about how  he remembered how sheep used to graze on that meadow 30 years ago and his children liked to watch them. Of course, once upon a time Hampton was rural, with pasture land and farms and fishing boats and, if you go back far enough, likely Abenaqui Indians roaming about. But for the last 20 years at least ocean front properties go for well over a million dollars, and anything on the ocean side of Lafayette Road (Route 1) goes for big bucks because of the proximity of the ocean and the convenience to local businesses from restaurants to grocery stores to coffee shops. There are more Mercedes in these neighborhoods than sheep.

The really bizarre thing about the town council meeting was that none of the councilors seemed to have done even the most basic homework about the zoning in ordinances relating to this case, and none seemed inclined to bring up on their computers the basic rules applying, and all of them seemed to be afraid of saying anything dispositive about what seemed a pretty obvious case of a neighbor who was despoiling a neighborhood. 

None of the town councilors appeared at all embarrassed about a level of unpreparedness which would have had the average eighth grader blushing to his roots. This case had been on the agenda, and witnesses scheduled and the officials simply acted as if the issues surrounding whether pig sty's are in conformance with town ordinances are so arcane as to be beyond the ken of any mere town official without years of consultations with clerks from the US Supreme Court. 

Now we have Ms. Beals decrying all the fuss over her adorable goats, sheep and pigs, which anyone with a heart would surely love having roaming about their yards, pooping indiscriminately and destroying plantings and attracting vermin. Ms. Beals attributed all the fuss to Ms. DeVries alone, who clearly is not alone in her dismay, as there were other neighbors lining up to testify before the town council, in an exercise which put one in mind of the scene in "Alice's Restaurant" where the judge is presented with 18 glossy photos of the massacre at the town dump but the judge is blind and cannot be brought to understanding, despite the overwhelming evidence presented him. 

Ms. Beals was quoted as saying she had a petition with fifty signatures supporting her darling brood. But the newspaper reporter failed to say whether this petition has ever been verified, and, given the small number of houses bordering the meadow, 50 does sound suspiciously high.

Ms. DeVries, who led the fight against unrestrained  free range barnyard animals is a candidate for the state House of Representatives, and, of course, this being New Hampshire, the home of the libertarian First Staters, she is being cast as a tool of the heavy hand of government, intruding upon the liberty of animal loving folk everywhere, who simply want to raise their animals, who want to be free to poop on their neighbors' lawns, or have their pets do it, and who want their animals to be allowed to  eat their neighbors' gardens without government interference.

One man's freedom can be another man's undoing, of course. The slaver's freedom to own slaves is only the most vivid example. 

But consider this one: The farmer who owns a herd of 300 cattle infected with Mad Cow disease who finds a government official from the Department of Agriculture on his doorstep telling him he has to kill all those infected animals. The farmer wants to sell them for hamburger meat, and that means that 20 years later the 20,000 people who ate those hamburgers are found drooling in their beds, dying of Jacob-Creutzfield Disease, which is what human beings who eat Mad Cow hamburgers get. Of course, by that time farmer Brown has retired and the price of his freedom to engage in private enterprise and a free market and to do with his animals what he wants to do has cost 20,000 people their lives, 20,000 families their kin. 

The Free Staters say there is no need for government intervention--the free market would have stopped farmer Brown from selling that meat, or the law courts would kick in to make the families whole, eventually.

Fat chance. 

Sometimes, you just need government. 

And Ms. DeVries, being a Democrat, now faces the onslaught of libertarian wrath, having called for the normal working of government to protect neighbors against the anti social behavior of a single family.

Sometimes, people simply have to learn that to live in a community, you need rules, laws and government. 

This is because there will always be the Jessica Beals who think their own rights to have her animals poop on your lawn should supersede your right to enjoy your own property as you wish.

Some people just need to be housebroken by the government and Ms. DeVries is willing to bring down the heavy hand of government upon the backsides of those who need it.

For my part, I'm all for a little government when government is needed. I don't like people who park diagonally across three parking spaces, who defecate on my lawn, who throw litter heedlessly out  of their car windows as they cruise  along the roadways, who play loud music on their porches and toss beer bottles onto my driveway. 

Those folks just weren't raised right. 

Democracy in a Small Town

  

The towns of Seabrook and Hampton, New Hampshire share a seat in the New Hampshire House of Representatives and two candidates have declared for the Democratic primary in September.

One is a member of the Hampton zoning board, Erica DeVries, and the other is a retired Seabrook police Sargeant, Mark Preston, whose uncle was a big name in New Hampshire politics and, in fact the town office was just renamed "Preston" in his honor.

You would think, given that locally famous name, we'd know all about Mr. Preston and a lot less about Ms. DeVries, who toils away in obscurity dealing with the important but dreary details of town zoning, but the opposite is true.

Whereas Ms. DeVries attends the Hampton Democrats monthly meetings and has made her positions on important issues known, Mr. Preston has been a no show.

One may well imagine he thinks his family name will be enough to ensure votes.

ERICA 

But the Preston family is known for their anti abortion stance, or so rumor has it. This has not been easy to tease out of Google, but local folks tell Mad Dog Robert Preston left the Democratic party over the issue of abortion.  Mad Dog was eager to ask Mark Preston about his own stand on abortion at the Hampton Dems meeting where candidates spoke recently  and where Ms. DeVries said she was pro choice, unequivocally, but Mr. Preston's absence was noted. 

Where Mr. Preston stands on assault rifles, open carry laws, environmental issues is also unknown. 

So we are all left to draw our own conclusions.

Mad Dog think, until evidence is presented to the contrary, Mr. Preston may share his family's reputed objections to abortion, and he may be a Republican in Democratic clothing. 

Meanwhile, little signs are popping up around town with the inscrutable, but tantalizing message: Erica is the real thing. What Mark Preston is is anyone's guess.

Reading Dobbs In New Hampshire

 

“I am increasingly persuaded that the earth belongs exclusively to the living and that one generation has no more right to bind another to its laws and judgments than one independent nation has the right to command another.

--Thomas Jefferson

Justice Harry Blackmun

One of the wonderful things about living in the 21st century is you have at your fingertips information which when I was in college could only be dug out of stacks in the library and even then with much time and effort.

I have just plowed through the 130 page opinion from Justice Alito which informed me that there is no "right of privacy" mentioned in the Constitution, nor is the word "abortion" ever mentioned and so there is no way the Supreme Court should ever have found that a right to privacy insured that any American woman could choose to have an abortion. 

Abortion, Justice Alito tells us, is not a matter of law, but is a matter of policy and as such the Supreme Court of 1973 had no business meddling in this controversial area which should have been settled by the people's elected representatives, and in fact, at the time of Roe v Wade abortion was illegal in "most states." (It was legal in New York, Hawaii and some 4 others I haven't been able to identify so far on Google.) 

Justice Alito tells us that the whole construct of Roe, which set up a line at 24 weeks as the line where abortion crossed over to infanticide was a legislative sort of scheme and judges had no business getting involved in that sort of line drawing.

Looking Like A Baby Does Not Make It A Baby

Justice Thomas, in his concurring opinion, notes candidly that because Roe was based on this erroneous argument that abortion rights are based on a right to privacy, which is not in the Constitution and on a notion of liberty which is not in the Constitution, i.e., the liberty of a woman to decide for herself whether to carry a child to term, that all the other cases which were decided on these tenets of privacy and/or liberty should now be reconsidered, and he invites cases to undo all the cases so "egregiously" wrong, like the cases which struck down the laws forbidding contraceptives to married and most especially to unmarried couples, laws outlawing gay sex and gay marriage. To carry it further, judicial usurpation of what should have been decided by elected representatives of the people, like Brown vs. Board of Education which forbade local laws, states from segregating schools into black and white were wrongly decided because the judiciary, namely the Court, instead of the Congress decided.

The People's Representatives 

Justice Kavanaugh, in his concurring opinion gets a little nervous about all this because he knows that if you stick to the argument that only rights which are "enumerated" in the Constitution you will get into trouble down the line. He foresees, for example state laws which forbid a woman travelling across state lines to get an abortion in New Mexico. The right to cross state lines is not an enumerated right in the Constitution, only the right to do interstate commerce. So he specifically tells us the Court should not say what Thomas said in his opinion, that gay marriage is now on the chopping block, nor should contraceptives be, nor inter racial marriage, nor should any law which prevents travel across state lines to get an abortion. Kavanaugh says abortion is a moral issue not a policy issue, whatever that means.

Chief Justice Roberts wrings his hands, saying the Court could have allowed the Mississippi law to stand because all it did was reduce the line Justice Blackmun drew in Roe from 24 to 15 weeks gestation and most women know if they are pregnant by 15 weeks, so no biggie. The clear implication is if a woman is so stupid that she cannot make up her mind by 15 weeks, she ought not be allowed to abort her fetus/baby. Roberts says he knows this decision which says the Court as no business getting involved in establishing rights which are not specifically mentioned in the Constitution is too "broad" and if the Court had just stuck to the Mississippi case the outcome would have been less of a jolt. 

"The Court's decision to overrule Roe and Casey is a serious jolt to the legal system--regardless of how you view those cases. A narrower decision rejecting the misguided viability line would be markedly less unsettling and nothing more is needed to decide this case."

Images Are Not Reality

Of course, Justice Roberts says the line Roe drew came "out of thin air" and that the Court had no business drawing such lines but then he draws one of his own: "That line never made any sense. Our abortion precedents describe the right at issue as a woman's right to choose to terminate her pregnancy. That right should therefore extend far enough to ensure a reasonable opportunity to choose, but need not extend any further, certainly not all the way to viability."

So far, I'm only a little appalled. You know, I can see what these dinosaurs are saying: America, if you want abortion rights, go ahead and vote for them, but don't ask this Court, which is, after all, unelected, to settle this dispute for you. All we can do is call balls and strikes, but this one has nothing to do with the strike zone. You have to make up new laws, likely in each state, or possibly in the national Congress, and once you tell us where the strike zone is, we can call balls and strikes.

But then I read Justice Breyer's dissent. The dissent is signed by Justices Sotomayor and Kagan as well, but having read some opinions from these justices, I think I hear Breyer's voice. I could be wrong.

Breyer says that the Constitution was written by men in 1789 and the 14th amendment in 1868 and the men who wrote these rules knew that life would change in the future beyond their capacities to imagine and they kept their language general for that reason. 

Antiabortion v Abortion States

He goes through the reasons Roe was decided as it was, and we'll come back to that but the knockout punch occurs on page 6 of his opinion, "The Court reverses course today for one reason and one reason only: because the composition of this Court has changed."

Just in case you missed that right to jaw, he follows with a left cross: "Today, the proclivities of individuals rule. The Court departs from its obligation to faithfully and impartially apply the law."

In case that got past you, what the Justice is saying is this Court was selected to overturn Roe and to allow state and federal laws to ban abortion. They prejudged the case and extended it, as Roberts admits, beyond the case from Mississippi, to be sure abortion can be banned by state law and they knew as they wrote it 26 states had laws to ban abortion which would kick in to make it illegal, so their decision was virtually a decision to ban abortion in over half the states. 

Breyer makes a straightforward argument:  Cases like abortion have no clear cut law to examine. They are outside the Constitution because the framers could not imagine this problem and never addressed it directly. Oh, sure there were laws concerning abortion scattered about America and going back to England but none of them really addressed it so directly. In fact, these laws had to do with line drawing, just as Blackburn did in Roe, and "quickening" when the mother could first feel the fetus move was a common point at which to say, "Okay, it's alive."  So, when you have no specific words, like abortion, then the Court has to draw lines and the key line here is when does life begin. 

22 weeks

In that sense, the case is like the Dred Scott case: Does the fetus have standing, and if so when? In Dred Scott's case, the Court said since he is property he cannot be a man and only men can sue in court. In Roe, the Court said, once the fetus passes the mark where it is more realization than potential, its right to live supersedes its mother's right to abort it. Very much a King Solomon solution.

8 weeks

Addressing the "But it's not in the Constitution" Breyer says there are precious few rights which are enumerated in the Constitution; most are implied or derived from others. 

"The same could be said, though, of most of the rights the majority claims it is not tampering with. The majority could write just as long an opinion showing, for example, that until the mid-20th century, "there was no support in American law for a constitutional right to obtain [contraceptives.] So one of two things must be true. Either the majority does not really believe in its own reasoning. Or if it does, all rights that have no history stretching back to the mid 19th century are insecure. Either the mass of the majority's opinion is hypocrisy, or additional constitution rights are under threat. It is one or the other."

Breyer looks back on the Court's decisions which struck down segregated schools, public accommodation, water fountains and says, "We believe in a Constitution that puts some issues off limits to majority rule. Even in the face of public opposition, we uphold the right of individuals--yes, including women--to make their own choices and chart their own futures. Or at least, we once did."

The Court and the Constitution tell you what you cannot vote on.

This Court says, basically you can vote on anything, unless it is specifically called out by name, like slavery (involuntary servitude.) 

Leading up to this, Breyer noted that when the 14th amendment was passed in 1868, women did not have the right to vote and were legally, almost chattel belonging to their husbands. With contraception and abortion women have been able to control how many children they will raise and that has liberated them, given them "liberty" to control their own lives, and the lives of their families. 

He also notes that the originalists, who drive the Dobbs case say "abortion" is nowhere mentioned in the Constitution; well, neither is the word "marriage." And yet, "The Court was "no doubt correct" to protect the freedom to marry "against state interference." 

As Breyer notes, "That fact--the presence of countervailing interests--is what made the abortion question hard, and what necessitate balancing. The majority scoffs at that idea, castigating us for "repeatedly praising the 'balance' the two cases arrived at...To the majority, 'balance' is a dirty word, as moderation is a foreign concept. The majority would allow States to ban abortion from conception onward because it does not think forced childbirth at all implicates a woman's rights to equality and freedom...The Constitutional regime we have lived in for the last 50 years recognized competing interests, and sought a balance between them. The Constitutional regime we enter today erases the woman's interests and recognizes only the State's (or the Federal Government's.) 

He goes on to attack the idea that the Constitution is like the Bible, all answers are in it and that means it is not a living document.

"If the ratifiers did not understand something as central to freedom, then neither can we. Or said more particularly: If those people did not understand reproductive rights as part of the guarantee of liberty conferred in the Fourteenth Amendment, then those rights do not exist...The Framers (both in 1788 and 1868) understood that the world changes. So they did not define rights by reference to specific practices existing at the time. Instead the framers defined rights in general terms, to permit future evolution in their scope and meaning. And over the course of our history, this Court has taken up the Framer's invitation. It has kept true to the Framer's principles by applying them in new ways, responsive to new societal understandings and conditions...And nowhere has that approach produced prouder moments, for this country and the Court...The Constitution does not freeze for all time the original view of what those rights guarantee, or how they apply. "

Don't Tread on My Uterus: Cognitive Dissonance for a Cause

 

Republicans, like their ancestors, the Nazis of the Third Reich, have been very adroit and focused on symbols and marketing.

Adolf Hitler, a frustrated artist, designed the familiar red white and black Swastika flag, and it is an effective piece of design: Simple, bold, eye catching, unforgettable.

Democrats, ever fearful of offending, have little to counter the Don't Tread on Me, yellow Gadsden flag waved at the MAGA rallies.

This use of the Don't Tread on Me Gadsden flag particularly rankles Mad Dog, as he had such a flag in his basement years before it was appropriated by the Mad Right.

Now, a student at a Florida art school, Anne Lesniak,  has designed a wonderful logo, playing on the Gadsden art but transforming it into a uterus and fallopian tubes with a snake head and rattle snake rattles as the ovaries. It is bold, visually captivating and very effective in expressing the outrage, which will be only outrage, unless translated into electing pro choice candidates in November.

Every Democrat should have an armband with this logo, or a T shirt and the headquarters in Hampton, NH should have this flag flying.

But likely, the local DEMS will not do this. 

When a local Dem hung a banner showing diapered trump during the 2016 election in the Hampton office, Ray Buckley's officials quickly tore it down, as potentially "offensive" and "too far out there." Donald Trump won that election, at least in the electoral college, and you will never convince Mad Dog Democrats should not have taken more chances at offending people in 2016. Surely Trump and his tribe offended people with reckless abandon. They did not play it safe. They eschewed the ground game of door to door knocking and they threw deep bombs with "Lock Her Up" and "Don't Tread on Me!"

I'd like to see the Democratic candidates for State Representative and for Executive Committee, both ladies from Hampton, in campaign photos, wearing  these yellow T shirts, sitting on the tail end of a pick up truck, with a gun rack (no gun in the rack) in blue jeans, possibly chewing on a hay seed, hair in pigtails, possibly cuddling a baseball bat, smiling demurely into the camera. Or possibly grinning.

Let those MAGA types deal with these in your face, Gadsden mocking women.

Jester's Armor: Trump, Boris, Proud Boys, Gamer Boys

 

Watching clips of Boris Johnson's antics, it struck me how much he belongs on the same TV set as Donald Trump, the Proud Boys, the Caravan Truckers and Buffalo Man and so Many of those who invaded the Capitol, who, as they stormed into the place, look so star struck and squealed with delight, "Hey! We're really HERE!"

So many of these man/child types live part of their time playing boy's games: role playing with foam swords in the park, shooting real AR-15's at the shooting range, imagining they are heroes thwarting some alien invasion. Many live in their parents' basements, I imagine, their real reality, but they escape to their fantasy worlds. 

When I see men on the streets of Boston or Portsmouth, dressed like 8 year old boys, often walking with their sons who are dressed just like daddy, in pants which end mid calf, sports jerseys with the names of their heroes printed on the back, "Gronkowski" --"Hey, are you the real Gronk?"--baseball hats turned backwards, when I see these cases of arrested development around town, I think, "They are really pretty harmless." 

Not so much the tatted Rebels Without A Cause tooling around town on their Harleys, revving their engines-"Hey, Look At ME!"--those guys with their big, now often flabby, arms, pot bellies, and their graying thinning hair blowing in the breeze, or tied into manly ponytails. Those guys look a little more "serious," if impotently serious. 

But there is something about the overgrown kid version which is risible, not threatening.

The difference, of course, is violence. And the costumes, the get up.

Buffalo Man and his buddies simply looked so ridiculous, it was hard to take them seriously; Similarly, the Proud Boys, in their ridiculous yellow tartan skirts. They could not be serious. Even those guys who get themselves all dressed up in battle fatigues and camo--you know they're not REAL soldiers, no well regulated militia. Their guns might be real, even loaded, but they are not the real thing, surely.

Even the name, Proud Boys, you know, somewhere deep down, they are not proud because they know they are only boys.

The Proud Boys and groups like them have taken to Hawaiian shirts, which are actually fashion statements of informality, playfulness--The Dude in "The Big Lebowski" was harmless--and says, "I'm just standing here at the barbecue with my Margarita in one hand, very chill, playing Jimmy Buffet on the sound system.

The Buffalo Man's regalia, said, on one level, "I'm not really serious."

These are not the storm troopers of Berlin, 1923, who dressed for real and meant business, for real. They carried truncheons or guns and used them. 

The visuals connected to Boris Johnson have always been that of the jester, the playful, jocular, never taking himself too seriously, so why should you, persona. Even the bird's nest hair, all part of that Court Jester hat.

And Trump's version of the jester's hat was a sort of Cloak of Unreality, not quite the Harry Potter cloak of invisibility, but still effective in protecting him. 

This is just the opposite of Adolf Hilter's scowl, with which he attempted to fashion a soft, lumpish face into something more imposing.

Johnson is just the opposite game: Don't fear me; laugh with me.

Trump tried the Hitler scowl thing, but just could not carry it off. 

The thing about the game of "take me seriously" is it means, believe I am capable of violence. As was said very early about Trump, "we don't take him literally, but we do take him seriously."  And what part was the serious part: We are going to be cutting ourselves off from the rest of the world, particularly China and we are going to replace all those elitist snobs with ordinary hard working Americans! Trump, for many, if not most people seemed harmless.

The big thing which distinguishes today's American right wing from Hitler's boys is demonstrable violence. Hitler, after all, marched along in the crowd with the Beer Hall Putsch and many were shot and his storm trooper Brownshirts did in fact shoot and bludgeon and poke out eyes and crush skulls and blood ran on the streets. They were loud and violent. 

But even during the worst of the Trump escapades, January 6,  it all looked like play acting by "role players" and only one demonstrator was shot and the police who were dead afterward were either heart attacks or suicides. The January 6th Committee has been struggling mightily with the image of that attack, trying to make people believe, "Hey, they were serious. This was actually more than playing! They meant to hang Mike Pence, seize the ballots and take power!"

The big problem Adam Schiff and Adam Kinzinger and Liz Cheney have had is getting people to believe these children were really threats. 

Had the National Guard been there, one has to wonder, would we even be having January 6th hearings? Would the armed goons in the attacking crowd, seeing they  were outgunned, simply faded away? Would the Guard have turned into a Kent State firing squad? Would the violence have made Trump suddenly serious.

That story of Trump trying to grab the steering wheel away from his Secret Service agent was pivotal because among his supporters this was Robert E. Lee having to be restrained by his fellow generals as Lee tried to race onto the field to rally Pickett's crushed brigade; for the rest of us, this was just another phony attempt to look committed, but you know he was too much a coward to actually risk himself in a real melee. He knew full well his handlers would not have allowed him to march with the crowd the way Hitler did, because they knew as he knew, much as Trump has emulated Hitler and read Hitler's playbook, Trump has never and will never face a bullet fired in anger. 

Had the Guard been there and shot some attackers dead, what result would have flowed from that? 

Both sides, those armed revolutionaries and the Capitol Police seemed to understand that violence which caused deaths would possibly turn opinion against them. 

This is the one thin purple  line between America today and Berlin 1930.