WARNING: Disgusting cropped photo can be seen when you click on “read more” bar.

Once upon a time, the State of Maine, and most of its people, were a nation of liberty, freedom, kindness, politeness, and civility.

In the second quarter of the 21st Century, this is clearly no longer true. Today, like the rest of New England, the Pine Tree State seems to have reverted to a land in which liberty is scorned, freedom is debased, and a lot of disgusting people are prominent.

Not that historic Maine has much to offer, we admit. Yes, it is a lovely place with vast forests, a fascinating coast line, and many picturesque towns. We here at TPOL have only been to Maine a time or two and we find the land interesting, if without the many eye-catching landscapes and iconic monuments of most states.

Maine gained its independence from Massachusetts in 1820 as a result of the Missouri Compromise of that year. Congress (and apparently, the Maine legislature) agreed that Maine, separated from the rest of the Bay State by the short coast of New Hampshire, could secede and be admitted to the Union to balance the admission of Missouri as a slave State. (Massachusetts (and therefore Maine) had enslaved people (AmerInd and African) from 1637 to 1790 (officially legalized slavery in 1641, abolished by its courts in 1783).

Following its admission to the Union, Maine fought a brief (and apparently bloodless) war with New Brunswick (a British colony at the time, in 1838-1839. The fight was over commercial rights: who got to harvest timber in which areas. The present boundary was established in 1843 by a treaty between the US and UK.

But there are very few Mainers who are famous. The most famous is Joshua Chamberlain, then commander of the 20th Maine Infantry Regiment and a hero of the Battle of Gettysburg. A Maine Senator, Hannibal Hamlin, is probably next in fame: he served as Honest Abe’s (Lincoln’s) first vice president before being dumped for Andrew Johnson in the 1864. Election. Since then? Some poets and Milton Bradley (the board game inventor and entrepreneur) are about it.

And there is nothing wrong with that. Chamberlain, despite his wrongheaded service in the War of Northern Aggression (War between the States), seems to have been an honest and forthright man. Hamlin spoke up strongly for abolition, but is tainted in our eyes by his affiliation with Honest Abe.

But beyond that? Today we see perhaps the most well-known (and infamous) US Senator since Hamlin. Susan Collins is apparently the only “non-Democrat” elected to the US Congress (the first time in 1996) in all of New England. Her infamy as a RINO theoretically makes her worse than the usual Republican politician in office.

Democrats, of course, lust after her seat in the 2026 elections. Not just so that they have a clean sweep of formerly-free New England, but because they hope to gain total control of the US Senate. To speed up the destruction of the tattered remnants of the Republic, of course. And of course, to speed the conviction of an impeached Donald Trump. (Not that Susan Collins would almost certainly not be a safe vote for such a thing.)

But that is not enough for the enemies of liberty (and rationality, for that matter) in these States. In the next step beyond the election of a mentally-ill Fetterman of Pennsylvania, it appears that the Democratic nominee to contest Collins will be a man who has in the past openly espoused a political philosophy which supposedly the entire Democratic Party considers to be evil and has constantly attacked various members of their opposition (and third parties).

The major item of concern, for all the talking heads, is the guy’s tattoos. Especially this one:

We are told this has something to do with the NDSAP (the Nazis) and the SS (whether Waffen or standard, no one has said). It looks like a fairly good version of any number of Nordic or Celtic designs featuring animals. (Readers, can anyone enlighten us?) From the initial news stories we expected to see a fylfot (swastika), and later the well-known SS-lightning bolts of the Schutzstaffel.

Of course, he is also accused of being a bigot, a racist, a womanizer, and a few other things. Such accusations were once ignored by both old parties. For example, the Democrats ignored FDR’s claimed affairs, and then JFK’s commonly-known times of straying from the marital bed. And the GOP ignored Ike’s mistress during WW2 in England and the Continent. Any number of women – former associates and employees included – have claimed such. But it appears that few Democrats are paying any attention to them.

And indeed, despite many theories of conspiracies among conservative radio hosts, it does not appear that the Dems are planning to replace him. The way they did Uncle Joe two years ago. But who knows?

Both old parties and many States have grown more and more corrupt: is it any surprise that their candidates are also more corrupt than ever? And that the bamboozled voters and “grass-roots” campaign workers no longer seem to care? All of the decades of “political reform” just seem to have paved the way for more, not less, corruption.

The solution seems to be to take as much power as we possibly can from government and therefore from government officials. What alternatives are there?