Guest Contributor – Tregonsee – 20AUG2026 – A Primer on New England Politics

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One thing to remember is a historical perspective. In the 40’s and 50’s New England was Republican, somewhere in the late 50’s to early 60’s a swing happened. Part of it I think was due to a shift in economy; much of manufacturing got up and left mostly for the South. Also, colleges shifted from very conservative to very liberal as the 60’s and 70’s went on. The Universities are a source of much of our growth through the 60’s as tech started to replace manufacturing.
The general character of the Old Line New Englander was fiscally conservative and relatively socially liberal (old meaning). In the cities, a far more liberal (modern meaning) variant (with a hint of that puritanism blended in) runs strong. And the populations of the cities and their near suburbs overwhelm the votes in the more old line/townie parts of the states.

Can we dig out of this? I’m not sanguine about that. MA, CT and RI and so overwhelmingly super liberal democrat in their legislatures that no reason reigns. On top of that RI and MA (and likely CT but I am less connected to that anymore) are rife with corrupt deals which feed back into the various Democrat politicians. VT and ME are overrun with hippy types that moved in and keep folks like Bernie and the other VT “Independent” senator in office. NH gets whipsawed back and forth as the balance swings, it is the most purple of the New England states, but it has voting laws (same day registration in particular) that let havoc happen at the towns containing UNH and Dartmouth. Maine is oddly split: the interior North is clearly Old Line New England and is actually one of its remaining bastions. But the coast (Portland and south) is VERY much indistinguishable from Boston suburbs in political bent. Just taking statewide offices from time to time is NOT sufficient. The state houses MUST be changed as that is where the power really lies. Without that, the feedback loop of Graft-> seats-> graft (repeat) can not easily be broken. If I had a guess, NH has the best chance to break the cycle. Its oddly large house means power doesn’t focus quite like it does in the other 5 states, so graft is less profitable. That combined with volatility in the seats weakens the loop. Unfortunately, when NH succeeds in starting to break away, it gets an influx of MA, VT, and ME folks who want the advantages but don’t buy into the politics, and we see that familiar seesaw effect as NH swings back to the Blue. I fear things will have to get MUCH worse for the head in their lower colon liberals to actually pop out and view the real world. Boston is Bad, but Not yet Detroit. Chicago or San Francisco bad, although Mayor Wu is trying REAL hard.

Muddling Through in Dunwich

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Being a Republican in New England is an awful fate.  Well, no, a Republican in New England is typically just a Democrat who doesn’t like high taxes.  He doesn’t have a problem with the social justice or the anti-white racism, just the loss of savings.  But for someone like me who is genuinely conservative, it’s horrific.  In every law and policy, you see misery and stupidity and what seems like the absolute worst governance imaginable.

Now, some of my fellow New England conservatives (of various stripes) are always hoping against hope that their neighbors will come to their senses and vote in a Mitt Romney or some other squishy “conservative” and fix the taxes, stop wasting money on welfare and get crime under control.  They say things like, “If we can just boost turnout of Republicans and Independents, we can fix these problems and show the Democrat voters that we’re the sensible choice for fair governance.

But these are just pipe dreams.  Sure, if the state after a decade or two of Democrat control has managed to empty the treasury and destroyed the credit rating of their specific New England state government, then surely, they will elect a Republican governor to restore fiscal sanity and prevent complete exsanguination.  But if the Republicans could read even the smallest lesson from history, they would see that this is just an emergency tactic.  Sort of like a rupture disk that prevents a catastrophic failure but is never meant to permanently regulate the system.  As soon as the emergency is over the powers that be will set to work pushing the system to the breaking point again.

Now, my opinion about these things doesn’t make me a very popular figure around Republican party circles.  What they want to hear is that things can be fixed and we’ll all live happily ever after.  Which reads like a fairy tale to me.  But the thing that gives me any hope at all is actually Michigan.  There is a blue state that seems to be slowly slipping back into purple and maybe red status before our eyes.  And maybe this is an evolution that worked its way through the death of one of the greatest American cities; Detroit.  Detroit and by extension Michigan was a union heavy population.  All the heavy industry, especially the auto industry played into the blue state model.  But over the course of decades these industries have been victimized by the rust belt decline in middle America and with Detroit’s shrinking population we seem to have reached the point where Republicans (at least MAGA Republicans) have a chance to get elected even to the US Senate.

And maybe that’s the only way blue states can be flipped.  They have to rot away to such an extent that the progressives leave out of desperation and all that remains are poor people who can’t escape.  Something equivalent may be happening in California.  But I think it will be decades before New England will reach anything like what California is experiencing.  More promising in the Northeast is New York City and State.  Here we see a case so extreme that even short-term changes may be enough to catastrophically destabilize the whole system.

But here in New England we’ll muddle along with just regular old progressive absurdity.  We’ll leave true insanity to the experts in Gotham and Los Angeles.

Spidey Gets It Done, Mission Accomplished

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I went with my three youngest grandsons to see the new Spiderman movie; “Spider-Man: Brand New Day.”  And shockingly, I actually enjoyed it.  We got there early enough to pick out good seats and let the kids buy mass quantities of popcorn and sugary drinks.  So reinforced by these provisions we took our seats and watched the half hour of advertisements and coming attractions for all kinds of useless products and awful movies.  Now it’s been a few years since we went to this theater and in the meantime, it went out of business and been refurbished by its new owners.  And they installed luxury pleather powered recliners instead of the usual crappy movie seats of yesteryear.  So far, so good!

So, I missed the previous Spiderman installment but I was told that in it another MCU character (Doctor Strange) performed some kind of magic-adjacent activity which eliminated knowledge of Peter Parker’s existence completely from the human race including all his friends and the girl (MJ) that he loves.  Now this seems particularly stupid but that is the situation.  So, one of the plots of this movie is Parker getting up the courage to tell MJ that she has forgotten that they were once in love.  Okay, that’s an even stupider plot element but let’s give the writers some slack to try and make that work.  Then there’s a plot element where Peter is having major problems with his spider powers.  His ability to shoot webs and other skills seems to come and go.  Okay, this is more of a standard superhero plot element so full speed ahead.

And finally, some telepath is able to take control of human minds and force them to attack a shadowy government agency called the Department of Damage Control (DODC) for some unknown reason.  I won’t give away any spoilers by saying that DODC isn’t a benign organization and the telepath controlling minds isn’t completely unjustified in these actions.

Well, before the end we have a whole sequence where Bruce Banner is telepathically controlled and forced to turn into the Hulk with predictable cataclysmic results and we find out that Spiderman has a quasi-working relationship with the comic book character “The Punisher” an Italian American New Yorker whose real name is Frank Castle.  Castle is a vigilante who doesn’t have as many scruples as Spiderman when it comes to using firearms to thwart criminals.  As an Italian American native New Yorker myself, I especially relished Castle’s extremely accurate Bensonhurst accent and vocabulary.  It felt like coming home.

Well, anyway, the plot moves along in a reasonably superhero-ish manner and naturally our hero comes out the other side with some progress in his personal problems but no permanent solutions so he can be just as conflicted in the next Spiderman movie sometime in 2028.  And that is all that can ever be said for a Spiderman movie.  Also, the special effects were especially deft and fun to watch.  So, the movie was quite entertaining and the boys enjoyed it thoroughly.  Or maybe it was the snacks.

Anyway, mission accomplished.  We returned home and Camera Girl loaded down a table with spaghetti and meatballs along with some biscuits that these grandsons especially love to dunk in a meat sauce.  What more could I ask for?

19AUG2026 – Quote of the Day

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But mankind—the race would perish did they cease to aid each other.—From the time that the mother binds the child’s head, till the moment that some kind assistant wipes the death-damp from the brow of the dying, we cannot exist without mutual help. All, therefore, that need aid, have the right to ask it of their fellow-mortals; no one who has the power of granting can refuse it without guilt.

Sir Walter Scott

18AUG2026 – This’N’That

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Tomorrow, I bring some of the grandsons to see the latest Spiderman movie.  What is this, the ten millionth Spiderman movie?  Well, the oldest grandson is boycotting the film because he’s reached Marvel saturation.  And I can’t blame him.  I feel that no matter how many multiverse iterations they manage to shoehorn into the plot, I’ve already seen before what will be flashing across the screen.  But, regardless, I can’t pass up the chance to hang out with my younger descendants in their own element.  I can buy popcorn and their carbonated sugar water of choice and be one of the kids at least one more time.  What’s better than that?

And afterward, Camera Girl has promised them their favorite meal; spaghetti and meatballs.  We will gather around the dining room table and I’ll see what they have to say about Summer 2026 which ends for them next week.  And I’ll tread carefully because mentioning school would be highly insensitive.  I remember only too well how critical it is to forego the s-word this close to Labor Day.  But I am interested in hearing what they enjoyed most this year.  But I also want to just hear what’s on their minds.  They’re growing by leaps and bounds and I almost don’t recognize the little kids they were in the teenagers that they’ve become.  So, it’s important I keep some continuity in the relations so I don’t feel too disoriented by their rapid metamorphoses.

So, I’ve sold over four hundred copies of my book.  Hmmm.  Not exactly a national best seller by any stretch of the imagination.  And in the last ninety days I sold a little more than ten thousand pages on Kindle Unlimited (KU) which equals about fifty full books.  And based on the royalty data that means a book equals about a dollar of royalties to me.  Well, all I need is nine hundred, ninety-nine thousand six hundred more sales and I’ll be a millionaire.  In your face Elon Musk!  Seriously, it apparently takes a lot more than what I did in order to market a book successfully.  It’s a little humbling but I still want to pursue finding a larger audience for the book so since the ninety-day window of Kindle Unlimited ends today, I’m going to suspend KU so that I can include “The Sniper” on the next Based Book Sale.  Getting the book in front of right-leaning sf fans seems like the right way to grow its audience.  We’ll see how that works out.  But regardless of my lack of millionaire author status. I think I’ll start the sequel after the summer.  I have had some complaints that I need to provide closure on a number of plot and character situations.  I think the biggest complaint is that Mel needs to be explored to find out how this AI came about and where she leads to in the story and in Cutter’s life.  Personally, I’m more intrigued (and befuddled) about how Connors is going to stabilize his organization after the events of the nuke attack on his underground facilities.  I think I’m going to devote considerable thought to how he decides to influence the future shape of social/commercial/political life in the radically altered American landscape.

Well, that’s enough.  Enjoy Tuesday.