by Aaron Warner
Martin Luther King Jr. famously said:
“Vanity asks the question ‘Is it popular?’
Expediency asks the question ‘Is it politic?’
Cowardice asks the question ‘Is it safe?’
But conscience asks the question ‘Is it right?’
There comes a time when one must make a decision that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular but one must make that decision because their conscience tells them that it’s right.”
Monday night in the embattled town of Hartford was held a Budget and Meet the Candidates night held once a year. The several hour meeting allows town members to hear the upcoming budget and ask questions regarding appropriations or express concerns over potential mismanagement. Following this are speeches given by candidates for school board and select board. Candidates typically offer a brief introduction followed by vision casting for their plans to serve the needs were they to be elected.
The town of Hartford has seen many shakeups and resignations over the past few years especially at the select board level. At one point the board had four black citizens in a town that is 90% white and still saw members step down over cries of racism or similar complaints. For a town that’s elected Kevin “Coach” Christie, the beloved former coach and automotive teacher at the local tech center (who is black) it can’t seem shake this popular accusation. One prominent citizen, Joe Major, also black, sits as the executive director of the largest non-profit in town, the Aquatic Center, a massive complex visited by hundreds each day. Despite these votes of approval in town the Robin DiAngelo “find racism everywhere” gambit seems to be a steady diet.
One citizen, namely myself, has studied the culture closely over the past ten or so years. In a town that is clearly welcoming of all, in a state that ended slavery in 1777, in a country that established civil rights and put a black man in the oval office the cry of systemic racism, led by the Black Lives Matter movement-turned-craze, resounded like a clanging gong. The sum total of BLM’s activist led riots saw the destruction of billions of dollars in American property and the killing of more than twenty-five innocent people reverberating nearly everywhere from overseas to my tiny hamlet of Hartford.
I visited my home town of Portland, Oregon late in 2021 only to find it in shambles. Tent cities littered the neighborhoods, burn marks covered the walls of buildings with boarded up businesses closed after 100+ days of rioting led by Antifa and Marxist revolutionaries (who had managed to get S.E. 39th street in my neighborhood renamed to Cesar Chavez Blvd), and the smell of marijuana was ubiquitous. Black Lives Matter signs were found in nearly every yard, not due to supporting the cause but from fear of property damage if one did not comply. A ghostly pall hung over the many colored faces of the people in my neighborhood. The tension was palpable as I walked the streets and entered both old and new haunts and shops. The once genial and friendly Rose City confines felt more like an open air prison being run by activist psychopaths who had taken over.
Talking with friends they said the same. Most everyone they knew hated what was happening but were afraid to speak up thanks to the thuggish attacks from Antifa radicals who were known for acts of violence sparing no one. Antifa even attacked a church rally on the Waterfront park pepper spraying children and assaulting women.
Antifa, the unregulated and radical enforcement arm of the new cultural Marxists, have also been seen around the country standing armed outside of Drag Queen Story Hours intending to intimidate parents and citizens who show up to object to these blatantly sexualized performances designed to groom children into queering their minds. By “queering” is meant to break from cultural norms, in this case American, replacing them with Marxist boundary-less tendencies known as “liberation” rising all the way to sexual liberation of, yes, children.
Hartford recently held a Drag Queen Story Hour that was the subject of controversy among the select board. Self-avowed activist Ally Tufenkjian decided to speak on the topic during a board meeting stating it was a “positive experience” despite including a hoax bomb threat that sent a shock wave through the town still reeling from the many shock waves our country has a steady diet of thanks to constant media messaging of the latest existential threat (COVID lockdowns, climate change, school shootings, rioting, wars, Jan 6th, etc.). Fellow board member Lannie Collins responded on behalf of the town members who did not view it as a positive experience, which includes me. I would expose the event for its patently sexual grooming of children at a board meeting two weeks after more activists showed up to denounce Mr. Collins for being “insensitive”.
My familiarity with all of these things led to my declaring a run for one of the open two-year spots on the select board. Candidates are expected to introduce themselves and cast a vision they have for the town. My conscience declaring it the right thing to do, I warned them of the road we are headed down with the proof being the state of my former city.
Of course, activists showed up to the meeting to denounce my warnings as “hate speech” rather than discuss the merits of my claims. If it’s hateful to warn a tiny Vermont town to take a closer look at the source of its sudden social problems and rising incompetence at the local government level then I plead guilty. In fact, I’ll happily declare I hate the deceptive tactics of Marxist activists, I hate their plans to abolish property rights, the nuclear family, our national boundaries and most of all their promoting the sexual grooming of our children.
For me, this is a hill worth dying on.
(To listen to my speech at the town meeting fast forward to the 1:53:00 of this video)
The author is a VDC columnist and Upper Valley regional reporter. He lives in Hartford, VT where he owns two award-winning small businesses. He is a graduate of Leadership Upper Valley class of 2010.
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Categories: Commentary, Local government, Race and Division
“The results of these experiments are sufficiently startling to warrant a detailed description. Alone, they tell us a great deal about how organisms behave under different conditions of crowding, and they throw new light on how the social behavior that accompanies crowding can have significant physiological consequences.
Probably there is nothing pathological in crowding per se that produces the symptoms that we have seen. Crowding, however, disrupts important social functions and so leads to disorganization and ultimately to population collapse or large-scale die-off.
… pansexuality and sadism were endemic. Rearing the young became almost totally disorganized.
In the briefest possible sense, the message of this book is that no matter how hard man tries it is impossible for him to divest himself of his own culture, for it has penetrated to the roots of his nervous system and determines how he perceives the world. Most culture lies hidden and is outside voluntary control, making up the warp and weft of human existence. Even when small fragments of culture are elevated to awareness, they are difficult to change, not only because they are so personally experienced but because people cannot act or interact at all in any meaningful way except through the medium of culture.
The ethnic crisis, the urban crisis, and the education crisis are interrelated. If viewed comprehensively, all three can be seen as different facets of a larger crisis, a natural outgrowth of man’s having developed a new dimension—the cultural dimension—most of which is hidden from view. The question is, how long can man afford to consciously ignore his own dimension?”
Edward T. Hall, The Hidden Dimension, 1966
“…one of the few extraordinary books about mankind’s future which should be read by every thoughtful person.”
where do they find these idiots//// do any of them have jobs/// who is paying these clowns///
Excerpted from Edward T. Hall’s, The Hidden Dimension, 1966
“…one of the few extraordinary books about mankind’s future which should be read by every thoughtful person.”
“The results of these experiments are sufficiently startling to warrant a detailed description. Alone, they tell us a great deal about how organisms behave under different conditions of crowding, and they throw new light on how the social behavior that accompanies crowding can have significant physiological consequences.
Probably there is nothing pathological in crowding per se that produces the symptoms that we have seen. Crowding, however, disrupts important social functions and so leads to disorganization and ultimately to population collapse or large-scale die-off.
… pansexuality and sadism were endemic. Rearing the young became almost totally disorganized.
In the briefest possible sense, the message of this book is that no matter how hard man tries it is impossible for him to divest himself of his own culture, for it has penetrated to the roots of his nervous system and determines how he perceives the world. Most culture lies hidden and is outside voluntary control, making up the warp and weft of human existence. Even when small fragments of culture are elevated to awareness, they are difficult to change, not only because they are so personally experienced but because people cannot act or interact at all in any meaningful way except through the medium of culture.
The ethnic crisis, the urban crisis, and the education crisis are interrelated. If viewed comprehensively, all three can be seen as different facets of a larger crisis, a natural outgrowth of man’s having developed a new dimension—the cultural dimension—most of which is hidden from view. The question is, how long can man afford to consciously ignore his own dimension?”
I first read this book when, as a college student in Ohio, we were experiencing the social upheaval resulting from the 1970 Kent State altercation between the National Guard and students protesting the Vietnam War. In my opinion, today’s overcrowding is not a physical or geographic phenomenon. It’s intellectual crowding, exacerbated by intensified social interaction, from the ubiquitous ‘main-stream media’ to the ‘digital hinterlands’ of ‘X’, Facebook, and even Vermont Daily Chronicle.
Praemonitus praemunitus.
Forewarned is forearmed.
Where to start? Am I tired of these continued “protests”? Yeah. Am I tired of obvious Marxists telling all of what to do and spewing slurs when we don’t do and say everything they want us to? Yes, very tired of this. In the past we real Vermonters have been very tolerant of everyone’s right to express their opinion. However, I do believe the time has come to hide the welcome mat. I for one am very tired of people who move to our state for the beauty of our lands, for the laid-back vibe, for the neighbor helping neighbor creed, and for the opinion that you should, with respect for your neighbors, be able to do as you wish on your property. These same new arrivals immediately begin to shout and clamor that things need to change. Then they make it a personal challenge to get elected to various governing boards so they can push laws, regulations and procedures down our throats to change everything into what they feel is the way things should be. We were doing just fine before they moved to Vermont. I take umbrage with the attitude of “I know better than you hicks what is good for you and for this state”. Ok, the time has come to throw the bums out the door, they are no longer welcome. If they cannot act like adults then they need to take a time out and learn some manners.
They came to Vermont to escape urban problems and policies and immediately started pursuing those policies and worse. Hopefully the time is coming when people had enough.
Not to mention rigging local and county elections.
thank you steve///
Having experienced Portland, OR some years ago, I know SE 39th borders Reed College. A powerhouse for producing academics, as well as Portland influencers. Reed.edu
It is crucial to find a way to guarantee proper elctions. “Vot suppression” is a code word for properly vetting voters.