Our Best Stuff on the War in Gaza and the Maine Shooter

Plus, Election Day is coming.

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(Photo by Jon Cherry/Getty Images)

Hello and happy Sunday. As we head into an off-year Election Day this week, are there any big races in your city or state? Kentucky, Louisiana, and Mississippi are electing governors, state legislatures will be determined in Virginia and several other states, and a bunch of cities are voting in mayoral races. Here in the Ohio bureau, there’s one election I’m paying extremely close attention to: our district’s school board. 

You might be wondering why I’m bringing up a local suburban Cincinnati election in a newsletter to readers from all over the country. Believe me, if the candidates running were debating things like busing policy, our district’s state-testing scores, or the length of the school day, I wouldn’t bore you. But the issues facing our district are also playing out all over the country. 

Two years ago, we had a trio of candidates run together on a “parents rights” platform—one of the candidates was also a full-on “Stop the Steal” adherent and had shared QAnon-type conspiracy theories on social media. She didn’t win, but her two allies did. Since then, we’ve had very public fights about removing books from the curriculum and whether the district needs to put an operating levy on the ballot even though, without one, the district faces steep budget cuts. This time around, we have two candidates who have aligned themselves with those “parents rights” board members, and one of them was a member of the anti-government sovereign citizen movement and two years ago tried to have the then-members of our school board arrested. It’s hard to see them bringing anything to the board besides disruption. 

Similar scenes are playing out all over the country. A district near my aunt’s home  in Pennsylvania got a full writeup in Politico, which also detailed how the Moms for Liberty group is trying to get conservative (read: MAGA) candidates elected in many localities. 

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  1. Reese.Vaughn

    Please check out the accusation in Williamson County, Texas, that an election monitor caused the heart attack of a poll worker. This was retracted after the monitor’s attorney threatened to sue. I was a Texas poll worker myself until after the last local school board election when the irrational political partisanship we faced made it not worth my time.

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  2. Ivar Gilhuus

    "Our Best Stuff on the War in Gaza and the Maine Shooter"

    Really!?? "Our best stuff"? Disgusting!!

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  3. Stephen Clay Settle

    Political ideology, whether identified with the so-called "left" or the so-called "right," is no substitute for fundamental and normative values, e.g., respect for others, common decency, self-restraint in one's speech, etc. Yes, the First Amendment may permit one to make a complete fool of oneself, but such indulgence proves corrosive all the same to our social fabric and thus to our political fortunes and collective well-being.

    What we are witnessing is the collapse of democracy, predicated to the degree it is on commitment to "personal freedom" over truth and objectivity, combined with an abiding suspicion of any and all external authority, whether religious or secular, again celebrated as one's inheritance as a true American.

    In short, "conservative" and "progressive" alike, we are a race of libertarians - gun-toting, drug-addled, contemptuous of both the homeless and the preborn. The "right" craves the license to do whatever one pleases with one's money, while the "left" wants the State's help in seizing a sizable portion of the former's wealth to do likewise., e.g., "free" college.

    We say we're proud of being a relatively young country, despite our ageing population, and infatuated with "youth culture." We are instead infantile, a tribe of two-year old's throwing a tantrum at anybody or anything presuming to tell us "no." You wonder where ANTIFA and Q-ANON get their inspiration? Look no further back than the 1770's (ancient times to the American mind, but somewhat recent from any other perspective), where you'll find roving gangs of drunks calling themselves "Sons of Liberty," attacking the homes and businesses of those who remained loyal to the British throne, parading under the banner of a serpent - the very creature notorious for having tempted Eve in the Garden of Eden.

    Today, 250 years later, one may see that same flag flapping in the wind, usually beneath another featuring an endorsement of Donald Trump. It proclaims "Don't Tread On Me," another way of declaring "Don't tell me what to do!" or "You're not the boss of me!" Pundits may marvel how Trumpism has prevailed within the Republican Party and taken over school boards, and yet the reality is, it has defined the American ethos and temperament since our nation's inception. It remains the ideological equivalent of a congenital disease - once more, endemic to both "reactionary" and "lefty."

    In his poem "East Coker," T.S. Eliot writes, "In my beginning is my end." Americans' legendary devotion to individualism and "my rights," over and superior to any concept of the common good, has produced the moral and political anarchy we now suffer.

    George Will may note with approval that America is "the firstborn of the Enlightenment," but if our current chaos stands exemplary of "reason" or "light," then somebody please pass me the dimmer switch.

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  4. Wolffmason

    Somehow the word "Best" isn't the best word for this news.

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    Charlie

    What Vice President ever had any real accomplishments? Or even mattered in the general election? Kennedy wins even without Texas.

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  6. Fcbaird

    I can't access Jonahs solo Remnant. Takes me back to ztrump Davidians. Help please

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      Rachael Larimore vertical-nib Author

      Ah shoot, that’s my fault. Little copy-and-paste error. Here you go! https://thedispatch.com/podcast/remnant/the-kids-arent-alright/

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      1. Fcbaird

        Thanks for your swift reply!

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    John N.

    I don't have any local elections this week in ruby red MAGA Collier County, FL.

    I have an old friend of my wife's visiting so I'm not going to be engaging in this comment thread much (most likely, heh) but wanted to just pop in and say thanks, Rachael, I enjoy these weekly roundups a lot and I am a great fan of the local updates from The Dispatch Ohio Bureau.

    Enjoy your fall weather. I really like "fall" down here in SWFL. #OldPeople

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    1. Avatar photocircle-angle-nib
      Rachael Larimore vertical-nib Author

      Thank you so much! Hope you had a great day.

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    Bill Dyer (aka Beldar)

    While he was Harris County Clerk, Christopher Hollins — who self-identifies as a Democrat and had the support of the county Democratic Party organization — methodically and deliberately violated state election law, to the point that he had to be mandamused and commanded to desist by the Texas Supreme Court. Link: https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=15120551002360800826

    Now, having proved his willingness to play fast and loose with voting for partisan purposes, he asks Houston voters to reward him with the office of Comptroller. They likely will. Expect more litigation in the future, but this time over unauthorized disbursements from the City fisc.

    The Houston mayor's race is likely to result in a runoff between two prominent Democrat career politicians — U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee and Texas state senator John Whitmire. Whitmire is the more conservative of the two, and it's not improbable that he'll place a fairly distant second in the first round of voting but do better in the runoff. Can he beat Jackson-Lee even with the smaller turnout in a municipal runoff election, which traditionally tends to turn out older and more conservative voters? We'll see. My favorite candidate in the race, my former colleague and longtime friend Lee Kaplan, who I don't expect to make the runoff, but who — along with a dozen and a half other candidates — will likely draw enough votes to keep Jackson Lee from the outright majority she's hoping for.

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      Charlie

      Texas Supreme Court is a very partisan body.

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        Bill Dyer (aka Beldar)

        And?

        Did you read the linked case? Do you have any substantive criticism to offer as to the interpretations of the Texas Election Code in it? If so, spit it out. If you're just interested in drive-by insults, I'm uninterested.

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      JohnM.

      Go Lee! (Kaplan, not Sheila.)

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    2sequoia

    Very well done Rachel.

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  10. John

    Unrelated. My wife attended a meeting out of town and returned sick with Covid. She was out of it for awhile. Then I caught it. I was awake all last night. I felt terrible. I did not get the updated Covid vaccine. Just a suggestion that if you have put off like I did you could regret it

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      Charlie

      Seventh dose in September. I am currently on a crowded subway train wearing an N95 mask. So are two people next to me, but most people think this is over and are maskless. It isn't.

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