by Reg Boucher
I recently read an opinion on Vermont Daily Chronicle written by someone who stated he had joined the Army in 1972 and found Vermont had changed (politically) dramatically, going from conservative to extremely liberal.
As a native who was born and brought up in Vermont, I have also moved from Vermont for a variety of reasons, one of them being the frustrations my wife and I had in trying to establish reasonable conversation with my fellow citizens about the current state of federal and state governments.
My last remembrance of anything like this occurred at the Fire and Ice restaurant in Middlebury when Donald Trump was President. One person in our large group mentioned President Trump’s name and I found out later that a person sitting at the table next to us stated that “it was time to find another table.”
If I had been aware of the that comment, I would have asked that person why he wasn’t wearing his uniform to dinner. His comment reminded me of the “language police” that existed during the Rene Levesque in the province of Quebec (1976-1985).
As a former Democrat and now a right-leaning Independent, married to a Republican, I can only comment that my wife felt overwhelmed by the far-left out-of-staters who had moved to Vermont, and were not at all tolerant of any political views that weren’t like theirs.
I’ll close by saying that on a road trip about five years ago, my wife and I drove from Arizona back to Vermont, and we didn’t see a single BLM sign anywhere until……we re-entered Vermont. And we saw three before we reached South Burlington.
How interesting that all the folks coming to Vermont from liberal states are here “hiding” in the politically converted and in some years the “whitest” state in the USA (Vermont), and these liberals can safely espouse to all about protecting the oppressed while they live safely in one of the lowest crime rate states in the USA.