According to PEW (“Political Polarization in the American Public,” June 12, 2014) there is less common ground between Democrats and Republicans than has been the case for decades and there is correspondingly more animosity between the parties (38 percent of Democrats and 43 percent of Republicans hold strongly negative views of the other party). That has been evident this year in the stream of demands that individuals and groups be prevented from speaking and that ideas and words be labeled ‘hate speech,’ ‘offensive,’ ‘racist,’ or ‘divisive’ as a pretext for banning or criminalizing speech as ‘unacceptable.’ The study also maintains that most folks are still “in the middle” and align with neither the left nor the right on all issues. They choose to remain on the sidelines, “distant and disengaged” from partisan politics. The question of whether the disengaged middle is even aware of the issues and arguments or the antics of those on the playing field is neither asked nor answered.

In the past couple weeks, we’ve seen the alienation between left and right explode into planned and orchestrated violence. President Trump was criticized, especially harshly in left leaning print and broadcast media, for not being specific enough or quick enough in denouncing what they called ‘white supremacists’ in Charlottesville where, curiously, leftists suddenly realized this year that statues of Confederate leaders were offensive and unacceptable and must be removed. It is curious that people didn’t walk away when the Swastika’s and pointed hats showed up and it’s equally curious that, if there were ‘good people’ on both sides, more people didn’t walk away when the fists, clubs, and bottles began flying. Hopefully facts will replace speculation and accusation in the coming weeks and confirm whether my suspicion is correct that what we witnessed was two gangs of thugs, spoiling for a brawl.

White supremacist groups have been around a very long time and their hateful ideas have long been rejected by all but the far fringes of society. They are indeed ‘clowns’, reminiscent of Stephen King’s horrific fantasies in “IT.” Their ideas and their actions are, by any reasonable measure, unacceptable. Other groups that claim to oppose them have not been around (under the same names) nearly as long. I would hope that their ideas, their behavior, and their goals are every bit as illegitimate and unacceptable to all but the violent far left subversives:

Boston Antifa posted a stern message to everyone in Boston on their Facebook page: “There is no room for capitalists, conservatives, libertarians, ‘classical liberals’ or supporters of the US Constitution in our city. You MUST leave. #Boston- Resist.”

According to Congressman Steve Cohen, D-TN: “Antifa was not comparable [to Unite the Right], they were opposing Nazis and Confederates.”

The fringe groups do not represent anything like a majority, they do not seek the good of the majority or the good of the country and neither their violent antics in the streets nor their inane rhetoric persuade anyone who isn’t already on the fringe. The mayhem these clowns, left and right, inflict on the innocent is not the only danger they represent, however.

Because the majority is distant and disengaged, such groups have been alarmingly successful at enlisting irresponsible, unethical, and opportunistic politicians to sponsor their bad ideas in legislation, imposing those ideas on everyone. As bad as that is, in Maine the referendum process provides yet another opening for fringe groups to implement bad policy as the ‘will of the people’. While liberal groups that have exploited the referendum process recently, right fringe groups can eventually play the same game as the disengaged center abandons legacy print and broadcast media and the overwhelming liberal bias found there.

Even last year, with record turnout, none of the five questions was decided by a majority of Maine’s 993,748 voters. Among those approved, two had to be ‘fixed’ by the legislature and one is unconstitutional, according to our Supreme Court. Each of us must decide whether it’s unacceptable to us that flawed laws can be imposed on us by 40 percent (or fewer) of voters, most of whom are distant and disengaged.

Hopefully voters will be more engaged and informed than is usual this November when we vote on extending Medicaid to working age adults who have neither a disability nor dependents. Leaving the merits of the question to the coming debate, the question I ask is whether it’s acceptable that such an important question may be determined by as few as 20 percent of Maine’s voters, given the likely turnout in an otherwise unimportant election.

Another View is written on a rotating basis by a member of a group of Midcoast citizens that meet to discuss issues they think are of public interest.