ON THE AVENUES: Apathy or allergy?

ON THE AVENUES: Apathy or allergy?

A weekly web column by Roger A. Baylor.

It’s a question asked oft times before, but what if we had an election -- and no one came?

Floyd Countians collectively endeavored to bring us closer to an ultimate answer on Tuesday, when only 13% of registered voters went to the trouble to learn where their usual voting place had been relocated, there being an acute shortage of Internet memes available to act as signposts in the absence of Walter Cronkite and various other, more comfortable educational materials.

For the first time in recent memory, I took my place among the 87%, an abstention sure to be maligned as hypocritical in some quarters, and yet one originally conceived only as an indignant protest against the shattering of a decade-old tradition of walking two blocks, coffee in hand, to do my democratic duty.

However, the more I explored the inner depths of my threadbare conscience, it became increasingly evident that lofting a middle finger on Tuesday against politics as usual in this sullen, stunted, centipede of a city held a certain, almost indefinable charm.

Perhaps I’m a punk rocker at heart, after all.

I can’t point to any single occurrence that soured me about this election, as opposed to all the other equally repugnant ones coming before it. Both muscle memory and mental training made it difficult to refrain from the selection habit of a lifetime.

It was hard, but I managed.

There is no animus toward those suggesting that my failure to cast a ballot should render me mute or impotent in any larger, civic sense. After all, I’ve said much the same before, about others, when positions were reversed. What’s more, I might as well be honest about my reasoning, not wishing to hand the hypocrisy fetishists their public orgasms on a silver (or any other) platter.

Part of my mood undoubtedly accrues from a cycle of personal and professional stress. While manageable and in the process of resolution, my world has been sufficiently intense that becoming overly agitated over a generally uncontested, forgettable primary simply isn’t part of my coping arsenal at present.

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Consequently, given a considerable esteem and honest affection for victorious judicial candidate Matt Lorch, it pains me to confess that a simple photograph of Matt with former mayor Doug England taken at a fundraiser did as much as anything to induce nausea at the mere thought of my sauntering into a polling place, whether around the corner or across town.

England is perhaps the greatest living symbol of the local Democratic Party’s perennial, lock-step, dunderheaded grip on the levers of municipal power. Standing next to him is Matt, and while the latter’s personal viewpoint of the disturbing symbolism on display obviously remains unknown to me, what undoubtedly would be clear to the most disinterested visiting space alien is that in a single-party-dominated system like ours, youth still must be immersed in a numbing, basic training-style crucible of “that’s the way we always do it, son.”

Make no mistake: I'm happy for Matt Lorch; really, I am. He has my support in November, and if he wins then, he’ll make a fine judge. But the fact that so few local Democrats truly are Democratic in any coherent real-world sense made it impossible for me to overcome my revulsion and vote. This may or may not change come fall.

Then there are the Republicans; now my appetite’s gone completely. The good news Tuesday is that Steve Bush did not win the party’s nomination for sheriff. The bad news is that he remains a county commissioner.

YEE-hah. Ain't we the lucky ones.

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Speaking of Republicans in (bleep’s) clothing, Ted Heavrin’s latest audition for the lead role in “The Comeback Kid” was rejected by 57% of the county’s District 2 voters, who opted for Barbara Sillings over the longtime county council kingpin.

Of all the outcomes in Tuesday’s primary, this is the hardest to grasp. How could Heavrin lose? By his own admission, he was tanned, rested and ready, having continued attending council meetings amid victory, defeat, re-appointment and renewed defeat – evidently it helps to know where the bodies are buried, and if not, to produce dulcet tones from a waterboard as he glowers from the peanut gallery – as well as having secured the endorsement of not one, but both political parties, who begged him to run as a sort of unity candidate capable of uniting fascists, and fascists.

Someone find Sgt. Harris from the old Barney Miller television show, because it looks as though we have another customer for the enchanted kingdom.

On the other hand, as the one person in Floyd County who legitimately believes service and servitude are synonyms, Heavrin might be forgiven for thinking that all the politicos adore him. After all, he consistently displayed unmistakably Republican governing proclivities, all the while remaining in the good graces of the reigning Dixiecrats. If those pesky voters displayed a stubborn willingness to hold Heavrin accountable, the local good-old-boy party system did not, exalting him as a selfless leader.

Spare me.

Like his longtime professional political partner, the late Larry McAllister, Heavrin never actually “led” anything, or anybody. Rather, not unlike a soldier on trial for war crimes, he merely copped the plea of doing his self-defined duty and following orders, which in this instance obliged him to eschew any semblance of revenue enhancement, and out-Grover Norquist by starving local government. These orders came to Heavrin, a supposed Democrat, straight from the decoder room at the Indiana GOP. He shrugged, and obeyed.

Considering Dave Matthews’s congenital inability to find candidates with a discernible pulse, why would the Republican chairman bother seriously challenging a pretend-Democrat who was eternally pliable and willing to parrot the official GOP line? The only surprising thing about any of this is that actual county residents have now voted against Heavrin three times in a row. Someone deserves a medal of valor, and it isn’t him.

In the hands of a gifted dramatist, this story might read as tragedy, or at least boast a tragi-comic twist or two. Unfortunately, people hereabouts seldom read, and Shakespeare did not live long enough to contemplate the script for Groundhog Day, the cinematic milestone that best describes the legacy of Heavrin-Think in Floyd County.

I didn’t vote on Tuesday, and I’m still bitching. Odds are in favor of my returning to the fold in the general election; with Mark Seabrook and Ron Grooms on the ballot, how can I resist voting “no” to both?