The Welcome Wagon seems to have lost its way….

               

The other night, before climbing the stair well to our bed chamber, donning our nite-cap, and blowing out the candles, we decided to watch a replay of the Sanctuary Brunswick agenda item at Tuesday night’s town council meeting.  You can find the on demand recording here:

http://tightrope.brunswickme.org/Cablecast/public-site/index.html#/show/3924?channel=1

The discussion was something like an hour and a half in on the replay; you’ll have to find it yourself.  We don’t have the stomach to look at it again to find you the time stamp.

  

Here’s the link to the group that brought this breakthrough to our town: http://www.sanctuarybrunswick.com/posts/

Two things jumped out and grabbed us as we watched the replay, notwithstanding the fact that comments from the councilors frequently leave us aghast for a variety of reasons.

On this night, we were particularly struck by how many of our elected governing elite can completely ignore the reality that words have meaning, and choices have consequences.  In this specific case, the drive to be seen as virtuous before the cameras allowed several to brazenly ignore the plain English meaning of the written words in the resolution before them.  They choose to be Alice in Wonderland like and assert that words mean whatever they wish them to mean.

Secondly, there was repeated bandying about of the psycho-babble phrases “this is not who we are” and “this is who we are.”  We don’t know about you, but we don’t like one bit when elected officials suggest in public view that they know “who we are” or “who we are not.”  They have no right, or no divine knowledge to claim understanding of 20,000 plus residents’ view of matters such as these.  Perhaps they should think about the meaning of their words before they utter them; they really were saying something more like “this is what I want all residents of our town to think” or “not think.”

The more we reflected on this last point, the more we recognized that these sentiments from elected betters are certifiably false and unsustainable.  Here’s why.

Brunswick is home to a “prominent” journalist who’s opinion pieces are published in a free weekly newspaper distributed in southern Maine.  He hasn’t lived here all that long, and when he moved to our town, he let readers know that Brunswick is inferior to his beloved Yarmouth, but that he moved here to find a home that would cost him less.

                                      

More often than not, this columnist asserts his moral, social, and intellectual superiority to the unwashed masses upon which he looks down.  Including thousands in Brunswick.

                        

This columnist’s tolerance for those who see things differently than he has always been lip service at best.  A recent column of his provides a useful example.

     

In the comment thread, in which we and various others were participants, he labeled those who voted for Hillary Clinton’s opponent in the 2016 general election “white trash Americans” and racists and sexists and all sorts of other derogatory terms.  He’s an expert at descending into vicious name-calling at the drop of a hat, all while maintaining his lily-white moral superiority.

In the process, he labeled more than 3600 town residents with these defamatory terms.  Even worse, he inspires his groupies to indulge in the same approach, though most of them can’t match his vitriol.  In the same thread, one of his most fervent fan-girls called the same voters “lousy Americans.”

As for the state, these two thought leaders, and those who agree with them, called more than 330,000 Maine voters the same reprehensible names.

Our point here, which should be obvious to most, but not to town councilors and other opinion formation gurus, is that they should think twice before making assertions about “who we are” and “who we are not.”

Shouldn’t these illuminati have learned that allocating population segments into various categorical “baskets” is a very dangerous way to think? 

Not to mention a gross insult to the very idea of tolerance, diversity of thought, and individuality. 

Especially when combined with failure to comprehend plain English.

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