I’m in Canada, and I live in a left wing area on the West Coast.
Nevertheless we were able to block a gigantic sewage processing plant and delay another (which was eventually forced by the Province). The plants were to be dumped in our area as the municipality seen as the least able to fight back.
What we haven’t been able to do is block or modify huge condo developments where the builder deliberately doesn’t build enough parking. The density is excessive for the roads to begin with, but these developers deploy platitudes about the “post-automobile” lifestyle, and the city council lets them get away with it because they are marketing it as “green”.
In the past, left wing councils would see developers not building parking as developer greed, and creating congestion in the neighbourhood, but now they redefine it as Woke, and permit it.
Long ago, a lady moved into our area; she had a Ph.D. from Columbia U., in education. She used that, to batter her way into disturbing what rural life was.
She effectively destroyed all the Angus cattle farming, by convincing the local government to increase taxes, in order to build the “middle school” of her dreams.
Bye to the farmers. But what is this? We wondered: Her new middle school that had no windows except for the admin office.
“Children are distracted by windows.”
Another invention of hers: The middle school had no solid interior walls between classrooms. A leftist commune thing.
This was the last location where my mother volunteered as a poll worker. (rlmorel - what you wrote)
Dear mother, brave mother, except for the leftward tilt of her friends and acquaintances who echo’d the lady with the Ph.D. from Columbia U., as they turned toward strident socialism - not the direction for mother.
She had enough of that socialist establishment that is full of “enlightenment” pretense and pride.
The son of the lady with the Ph.D. evolved into being the first drug pusher in the area. Fashionable. Also some time in the state pen.
The home of the lady with the Ph.D., she altered: So every window through which the world outside the house could be seen, was covered by a large piece of plywood (this is the ol’ pre-fiber-board days) - blocking the view.
There was no view of the outside world, from within the house, other than a three inch gap between the exterior wall and window frame . . . and the plywood sheets.
“So the light could be let in.”
Very, very “enlightened.” Lots of “equity” -ness in that, plus other Columbia U. communist additions.
Left-wing-bat-s’t-crazy: “The madness of those for innovations.” - around 70 A.D., by Flavius Josephus, a Hebrew fellow.
I was at a very low point last night, I try hard to be positive, but...they are making it most difficult.
I went to a town meeting in 2021, and one of the things they were going to pass was a rule that EVERY SINGLE ITEM that came before the Selectmen for action MUST have a component on “climate change” to be considered.
Well, I got up to say my piece, that when the people I elect are going to consider, as an example, the purchase of new police cars, I want the best performing, most reliable, lower cost, and most durable vehicles that can be purchased. I don’t want decisions about the acquisitions made on the basis of reducing CO2 emissions and buying electric police cars (which was what was behind the issue of the “rule change”). I went on to say I wanted a town government that attended to the conditions of the roads in town, the quality of the town water, the collection of the trash. I noted that in my state, we had the fourth highest tax rate of all cities and towns in the state, and I wanted that burden reduced. In my opinion, one single minute spent by town officials, whose salaries I pay, debating climate change, is a one minute of my money wasted.
But it was almost all (but not all) women who got up after me and said that my outlook was selfish, and we had to do this “for the children”.
Yes. They said that.
I was appalled and disgusted. The measure to include the element of “climate change” in all discussions was passed.
I do feel like Sisyphus pushing that rock. But in this blue town, in the bluest of blue states, we count membership in our republican town council in single digits, but it is slowly growing, so...I can’t give up. I have hope, however stubborn and impractical it is.