Massachusetts is Weird

We have all heard of republicans in name only. This article from The New Republic suggests that Massachusetts is over run with politicians who are democrat in name only: https://newrepublic.com/article/161406/charlie-baker-massachusetts-democratic-party-failure

For those who don’t feel like reading the article-which is horribly written: the article states that Massachusetts isn’t the liberal utopia that many believe it to be, and young “progressives” find that very depressing. Some may laugh at that suggestion, but as someone who lives in Massachusetts, it makes sense to me. It isn’t surprising to me that far leftists consider most Massachusetts politicians to be democrat in name only.

Antifa and BLM were never able to make much headway in Massachusetts. That cannot be blamed on republicans. The reason they got nowhere here, is because democrat politicians wouldn’t tolerate them. In the city I live in, our democrat mayor called in the National Guard when BLM announced their “peaceful protest.” There was a gathering, which the mayor attended, with the National Guard looking on, and it really was totally peaceful. There is a BLM mural painted on a building downtown. The mayor has been very supportive of that mural, but that mural is pretty much the only BLM presence in this city. Our city is around 50% black.

It isn’t just that. As far as I know, there are no homeless encampments in Massachusetts-definitely none in the area I live in. They tried to start one in a very liberal town near here, but the residents of that town said No. They absolutely refused to allow a homeless encampment on their town green: they built another homeless shelter, and they did various things to help the homeless, but they pointed out that, 1) it isn’t compassionate to allow people to sleep outside, especially during a New England winter, and 2) they could not and would not allow their property values to take the kind of hit they would take if their little town became a Massachusetts version of LA. These might seem like common sense conservative arguments, but the people making these arguments were far to the left of even most people in Massachusetts.

People often ask me how I can live as a conservative in such a leftist state. A big part of the reason is, liberals in Massachusetts are not like liberals in other places. The more I contemplate this, the more it occurs to me that the liberals I know here are knee jerk conservatives. Sometimes, that is good and sometimes it isn’t. When I see California and Seattle on television, I am struck by how different those places are to New England. Having lived in Alaska, and having a little bit of familiarity with West Coast liberals, I feel confident in saying that the liberals I encountered in Alaska are radically different-and have radically different motivations-than the liberals I know in Massachusetts. The liberals I know in Massachusetts refuse to question anything their parents taught them. They also refuse to acknowledge that a lot of things can change in 50 years. They refuse to acknowledge that the democrat party they support is very different from the one that their parents supported. They were raised to hate republicans, so they vote democrat: that is the long and the short of it. In most cases, the liberals I knew in Alaska were rebelling against their parents. The liberals I know in Massachusetts think that Massachusetts is perfect just the way it is: they are, weirdly, conservative in that respect. They don’t want change. Sometimes that is good and sometimes it’s bad, but on the good side, it means that they don’t want people rioting and looting and living in the streets and they won’t put up with it. On the bad side, it means that when democrat policies encourage that kind of behavior in other places, Massachusetts liberals will stick their heads in the sand and pretend that it isn’t happening. The liberals I knew in Alaska are now in their 50’s. They don’t stick their heads in the sand: they totally support the rioting and the looting. They totally, 1000% support it, and that is why so much of it happens in Seattle. Rioters and looters go where they know that they are wanted.

So, yeah, it isn’t surprising to me that West Coast leftists are disappointed with Massachusetts. The leftists I know on the East Coast live in a perfect little world, and they don’t want anything to change. The leftists I know on the West Coast want to burn everything down. Both groups hate republicans. Beyond that, they actually have very little in common. Unfortunately, hatred can be an incredible uniting force.