I’ve already expressed my views on politics in previous cycles, but lately it drives me nuts.
It’s also hard to talk about deep issues to family as well.
I am extremely fed up with the polarized society, that is not of the U.S., but New Hampshire specifically. It’s also not a Democrat or Republican issue. It’s actually more of the culture of #NHpolitics (since #NHpoli is too sexy of a hashtag like neighboring states…)
The rise of population of New Hampshirites are people solely relocating because of one thing, our motto Live Free or Die. That’s pretty shallow other than the quality of life, the many things one can do in this fine state. It’s all about politics. This group I like to call the Libbies, are worse than libs who are trying to destroy everything that state and/or local governments have made this state a better place to live, but at the same time they also have this authoritative style too. This group of hard right/soft right, to nothing politically is driving people in this state nuts and are driving out of the state in droves. Just look at the Millennial generation, 15 years ago there were children and where are they living? In more tolerable locales, often in urban locales.
Excluding Millennials, the largest generation is the Boomers, Gen X (the ones that predate Millennial) and Gen Z, their offsprings. Older Gen Xers are confused by technology and the only generation to help them is the GenZers but don’t ask them about enterprise tech, because similarly to Millennials, they feel entitled to use their store bought stuff that wouldn’t even meet compliance standards in the office. Older Gen Xers and Boomers are typically very grumpy people who do not like ANY change. And if you are a politician, you are stuck to your own political views that have remained frozen from the 1950s or 1970s – with an influence of the Gen Xer’s offspring coming from the Silent Generation.
We really do live to our nickname politically and sadly this aging rock will have some really severe consequences for future generations.
THE BIKE LANE. PEOPLE TEND TO MOAN AND BITCH ABOUT the lanes introduced in Manchester over the last year. Because the bikers often abuse their responsibilities, it gets often bitched about by the locals who tend to live in this mindset of “little ol New Hampshire”, which for whatever perverted reason thinks the state should remain the same going back to the 1950s. In Merrimack for instance, following their policy, locals as well as the local politicians really believe that Merrimack is still this little-ol-town-still-with 5,000 people. Now the town is booming and the town’s infrastructure is just as bad as the 18 year old Macintosh Operating System, as late as 2002 using code that was designed for a simple appliance in 1984. Governance, like technology should be lead to scale. And most often our “leaders” have no clue how to govern to scale, and most often, they react because the only “strength” is “in numbers”. Back to the bike lanes, they waited till enough interest for the city to drop lanes.
LACK OF TOLERANCE. I AM NOT SAYING NEW HAMPSHIRE IS A STATE of bigoted people, but there is this culture of sticking to their own. And as a result, if you share the same religious views, politics or hell even your skin color, you then go into what is often a “group-think” mentality. For the people who fail to understand this, you are living in your own bubble with your far right or far left friends who share the same religion beliefs as you and politics. If you ever get challenged, you go into the fetal position and start “defending” because you feel “attacked”. Why does everything need to be defended as a form of an arguement? For the Presidant Trump voters, you challenge on the issues (or even the style) and what do you get in return? The defense of the ideals.
THE NEED TO DEFEND. WE MUST DEFEND OUR INDEPENDENCE. Well why just vote to secede from the U.S.? “Buy local to keep our money local?” Why it’s the US Dollar, who has the right of authority to tell people (or dare I say instruct) someone to not buy something from say Connecticut if it’s got better quality than say some merchant in New Hampshire? New Hampshire must be completely different to set themselves apart from the other states. I know this also towards the libs in this state. I know very far left liberals I can attest in previous experiences that completely will only allow locals to speak at say local disability focused conferences because only they understand the challenges in New Hampshire. This isn’t said explicitly, but it is highly implicit because of the “Not Invented Here” or “Not Innovated Here” so if an political ideal wasn’t “invented” in this state, it’s not relevant.
Humm… this reminds me of some high tech companies that followed this logic and almost cheated death…
NO OFFENSE SOUTH SCHOOL, BUT I CALL OUR POLI “SOUTH SCHOOL EFFECT IN CONCORD” as I grew up in Londonderry, and spent the only time in public school at the local southern elementary school. I use this as the meter to describe the maturity of the politicians in Concord. For the “General Court”, most of these people are clueless, they are aloof to the major issues that are impacting our state except for the Federal 2nd Amendment, and abortion. I call this the 99 cent deals at the local McDonalds, ridden with low quality food that makes you sick in life. Discussing Federal issues locally, which is kinda ironic because there is that mentality New Hampshire should be it’s own republic on both sides as explained above; is cheap, it gets the state’s panties up in a bunch and it creates a drama where one will pick a side and not a seat, and therefore it results in a food fight (pun intended to be light on this subject) and it becomes who will “win” because of the vindictive nature of people needing to attack, then react, then fight back, which often leaves to an intellectual feedback loop of anger that you cannot stop easily.
IN MERRIMACK, THERE IS A F—-D UP LOGIC THAT THE New Hampshire Department of Transportation’s Bureau of Turnpikes had a personal vendetta against the citizens because of hte way the Everett Turnpike’s tolls are set up so people coming in and out of Merrimack have to pay a toll to get on or get off on Exits 12, 11 and 10 respectively. No exits in Bedford, or Nashua have any tolls. The residents have had vendettas going as far back as a decade, and some even began boycotts of the tolls and have insisting beliefs that their 50 cents was to go to fund the 101 repavement or whatever else is going on in this state. (I am not making this shit up.)
IN LATE 2010 THE SUBJECT GOT SO HEATED, THAT I THOUGHT these old geezers were acting like children the way they were acting in front of a camera the whole world could see (vis a vis YouTube.) I am going to be upfront, THIS IS NOT AGE APPROPRIATE approach to politics. Faulting a broken and minimal state agency against named people is almost something out of The X Files. Worse, is the demanding the state to give a break with a discount to the residents, since the town’s people insist they have been blackmailed by the State government, and therefore because they appear to be “lil people”, then they should get a discount. Most recently, there was some anger against Comcast and their franchise agreement with the town. The anger never made it’s way really to the Town Council on September 27th, but I thank gawd that a) I wasn’t alive in 1982 and b) didn’t have to witness a potential anger against Ma Bell if Merrimack residents really feel against institutions and perhaps felt personally victimized by a faceless institution.
THE OTHER “SOUTH SCHOOL” EFFECT (no offense to my ala mater) is the childish and petty attacks against party lines. If you are a “Tax and Spend Liberal”, you must be a Democrat, or should I use the phonetic democ-RAT? The weak defense of these unpaid hacks for the most part, is they will veto any expenditures without asking why. Recently Jennie Notter, was on a local public access program that flaunted that she voted against adding an ice machine at one of the state prison and her defense was “My son is out in Afghanistan, in the heat, and he has no ice machine!” Her implied ‘tude is, tough! Her politics is based on association, so if someone is in the prison system, “he” must be bad, and therefore he should have no additional support of the state because he did a “bad” thing. Guess you don’t believe in forgiveness huh? And isn’t the NHGOP’s second big book is The Bible? Isn’t forgiveness something to be preached? The state’s GOP is no different than the libs and picking and choosing whatever line fits their narrative.
The state’s bureaucracy hasn’t changed that much ether, which their simple mum and pop business operations that is so deficient, it’s not acceptable for governance in the 21st Century with budgets in the billions with revenues and expenditures well into the dozens of billions. A 20 person operation can operate the state’s finances like a FORTUNE 500 enterprise. However, in their simple mindsets, they (the bureaucrats that often lean right as well) do not want to change. The “bookkeeping” workflow from the 1950s should be fine for the Standard and Poor’s, Moody’s and the other ratings agencies that monitor our debt. To them, it’s New Yorkers who don’t know NH well, remember “Not Invented Here”?
In New Hampshire, people are like granite. They are tough, rude and crude to the touch. They have no idea what precedence they are leading to the neighboring states because they take pride in their own bullshit.
Because New Hampshire doesn’t observe early elections, I have to say in advance by a week, Happy Election Day!