GIVE GAHAN A PINK SLIP: (Monday) No more fear, Jeff. This isn't East Germany, and you're not the Stasi.

Last week was so much fun, let's do it again.

As a run-up to Decision 2019, I'm headed back into the ON THE AVENUES archive for five straight days of devastatingly persuasive arguments against four more years of the Gahan Family Values™ Personality Cult.

I've already made the case for Mark Seabrook as mayor. Now let's return to the voluminous case against Gahanism in five informative and entertaining installments -- at least until next week, when I may decide to do it all again. Heaven knows we have enough material. Following are last week's hammer blows.

GIVE GAHAN THE BOOT: (Monday) The Reisz Mahal luxury city hall, perhaps the signature Gahan boondoggle.

GIVE GAHAN THE BOOT: (Tuesday) Gahan the faux historic preservationist demolishes the historic structure -- with abundant malice.

GIVE GAHAN THE BOOT: (Wednesday) The shopping cart mayor's cartoonish veneer of a personality cult. Where do we tithe, Leader Dearest?

GIVE GAHAN THE BOOT: (Thursday) That Jeff Gahan has elevated people like David Duggins to positions of authority is reason enough to vote against the Genius of the Floodplain.

GIVE GAHAN THE BOOT: (Friday) Slick Jeffie's hoarding of power and money is a very real threat to New Albany's future.


Jeff Gahan's carefully crafted image as avuncular civic cheerleader is flatly contradicted by a legendarily foul behind-the-scenes temperament. Evidence of this has been cited so often by victims and observers that we needn't waste time citing line by line examples apart from pointing to his abuse of the discussion format at the League of Women Voters' sham election forum in September. 

While it's true that believing you're Walt Disney one moment and Don Corleone the next is solid evidence of a personality disorder, ultimately this is of less significance than the example Gahan's behavior sets for his sycophants and underlings, as when David Duggins threatened to turn a taser on a public housing resident and explained it as a hilarious joke.

Gahan's obsession with campaign finance has greased the skids for a political culture of corruption, and his root instinct to abuse and bully those who can't quite grasp his singular brilliance ups the ante by adding a layer of intimidation that we simply shouldn't tolerate from our elected officials.

---

ON THE AVENUES: No more fear, Jeff.

A weekly column by Roger A. Baylor.

2018 introduction:

I'm on vacation, and this is a rerun from 10/01/2015. At the time, I was in the midst of an unsuccessful run for mayor as an independent candidate. 

The column is about intimidation; 28 months later, give or take a public housing putsch, Team Gahan was at it again when interim bulldozer mechanic David Duggins threatened a public housing resident with being tasered. 

The reason why the same old suspects persist with intimidation? It parallels your dog's decision to lick his nuts: because he can, there are no consequences, and it feels so good. 

Fortunately, there is a cure called the "ballot box": #Fire Gahan2019 

---

2015 original

“I talked to a downtown business owner. He’d put a Zurschmiede sign in his window, and (a city employee) came in and said it was frowned on. He didn’t know what that meant, so he took it down”

“I was sitting there minding my own business, and here comes (a mayor-appointed board member). He looked at me and said, ‘Jeff Gahan is the best mayor we’ve ever had.’ What was I supposed to say?”

“(The council member) ran inside and started yelling at my employees about my Baylor yard sign. He said he was a city employee, but we wouldn’t identify himself.”

“So I called down there (city offices) to see if they planned on doing anything about the trash piling up in the alley behind my neighbor’s slum, and they patched me to (high-ranking official). The first thing he said to me was where do I get off asking for favors with a Zurschmiede sign on my property?”

---

There was a novel feature of the Leadership Southern Indiana debate on Tuesday, which should have been a threesome, but was missing a sitting mayor.

Each of us was asked to provide a question to be asked of the others. With Jeff Gahan absent, this meant Kevin Zurschmiede and I questioned each other. He asked me about my depth of feeling about two-way streets, and I explained in detail.

I asked him whether he’d support local ordinances against human trafficking, and he fielded the question positively and flawlessly, indicating that he grasps important contemporary issues.

Leadership Southern Indiana might not have allowed the question I’d have asked to Gahan, had he bothered attending.

Jeff, why are so many ordinary people in our community afraid to differ openly with you?

I can almost hear the answer.

That’s a cheap shot, because every single person I’ve talked to in this city supports the water park – and if you’re not one of them, expect an angry phone call very late at night.

Yes, this is the state of New Albany’s ongoing degeneration.

---

Seeing as it’s my lot in life to say aloud what others are thinking, here it is.

During the time I’ve been paying attention to the local scene, there simply has not been any point of comparison with the atmosphere today in terms of retribution, intimidation and implied vengeance.

For those in support of the opposition, the consistent message is there’ll be hell to pay if the incumbent loses his bid for re-election.

My calls for UN election monitors and assistance from the Jimmy Carter Center are only partly in jest, because the situation is getting increasingly tense as voting draws near.

Consider the experience of Indie Fest. Last Sunday’s fourth edition was a success, with over 2,000 attendees, but it almost didn’t happen.

Earlier this year, city officials approached Indie Fest organizer Marcey Wisman-Bennett and asked her to consider shifting Indie Fest to Labor Day weekend, so as to provide a September bookend (with Boomtown Ball in May) to the summer concert series at Bicentennial Park. She also was asked to move the event to the Riverfront Amphitheater. She agreed.

Shortly thereafter, I announced my intent to gather signatures for mayoral ballot access as an independent, and Marcey agreed to be my committee chairwoman. On the day the papers were filed, she and I decided to have a coffee at Quills, and by the time we walked there from the county clerk’s office, she’d already been texted by a city higher-up expressing disdain for my candidacy, and her involvement with it.

You have three guesses as to what happened after that – and the first two don’t count.

A City Hall once nominally supportive of independent local businesses completely disappeared from view. The mayor’s handpicked Board of Works fiddled and dithered with non-information about the amphitheater’s availability, before finally denying the Labor Day weekend date previously requested by City Hall itself … because someone already had booked it.

Marcey was left to dangle for weeks, and finally gave up trying. She turned briefly to the county, which characteristically was of no help. Almost at the last possible moment, the Carter brothers, developers of Underground Station, stepped forward and took it upon themselves to approach the city and tie Indie Fest to their own plans for a grand opening weekend.

Presumably the city, having done almost nothing to assist the Carters with their project, was in a giving mood.

The many delays and obfuscations crippled Marcey’s fundraising efforts, and several former donors hinted that behind-the-scenes pressure was being exerted on them to not be seen supporting Indie Fest this year.

The story I’m telling is no secret, and it isn’t supposed to be.

Politically motivated strong-arming is a public function, not a private one, because the object is for others to see it taking place, and to learn the "proper" lesson that their own independence will be greeted in similar, heavy-handed fashion.

It’s abhorrent, and yet it’s happening. Worse yet, more than a few Democratic Party stalwarts are abetting the ugliness by refusing to face it head on.

Somehow this reminds me that the first annual meeting of Southern Indiana Equality is tonight. In the context of this meeting, human rights and Team Gahan’s incessant bullying, here’s a quote of significance from the Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo.

“Free expression is the base of human rights, the root of human nature and the mother of truth. To kill free speech is to insult human rights, to stifle human nature and to suppress truth.”

That silence you hear?

It’s becoming deafening.

---

Free speech seems a particular irritant to Gahan and the Democratic Party, especially as it pertains to social media. In the marketplace of ideas, they’ve almost never replied to questions by facilitating dialogue, as this would constitute two-way communications, and as such, veer uncomfortably close to an admission of intent to listen.

Rather, their chosen mode of communication most often involves systematically blocking it. On social media, I've been unfriended by several Democrats, and blocked by two Democratic agitprop groups, as well as by the mayor's campaign, his personal page and his wife's.

Consequently, I close today by concurring with this important point made on Facebook by my friend Mark Cassidy.

I just want to let the Floyd County Democratic Party, Jeff Gahan, and anyone else for that matter, know that you are more than welcome to post on my timeline, respond to any comment that I may make, engage in a discussion, etc., all without fear of being blocked by me. I have no fear of the free exchange of thoughts, ideas, plans, needs, wants, desires ...

I’ve been to places where fear was a daily consideration, but New Albany isn’t East Germany, and we can do better than this.

At least he's stunningly consistent: "Tom Friedman Has No Idea What He’s Talking About."

I first became aware of Thomas L. Friedman when my pal Barrie and I read From Beirut to Jerusalem (1989), which described Friedman's feelings about Israel in the context of his work as a young reporter in the Middle East during the 1980s.

The book seemed solid to me, particularly the chapter called "Hama Rules," which bluntly detailed the horrifying violence directed against internal dissent by the elder Assad in Syria circa 1982, thus providing a preview of son Bashar's predictable instincts during the country's recent civil war.

However this passage at Wikipedia suggests that I didn't necessarily have a wider frame of reference at the time.

It received the 1989 National Book Award for Nonfiction and also the Cornelius Ryan Award. In a book review for The Village Voice, Edward Said criticized what he saw as a naive, arrogant, and orientalist account of the Israel–Palestine conflict.

There's little sense in belaboring the point, which comes down to this: As my frame of reference widened, Friedman's credibility shrank in proportion. His article last week, as dissected here by Elie Mystal, was like an itemized list of centrist wrong-thinking in response to Trumpism.

I haven't read a column by Friedman for a very long time, and propose to double down on what is proving to be a correct decision on my part.

Tom Friedman Has No Idea What He’s Talking About, by Elie Mystal (The Nation)

Every pundit urging moderation was wrong in 2016, and they’re wrong now.

There is one, and I’ll argue only one, thing that Thomas Friedman gets right in his latest New York Times column “‘Trump’s Going to Get Re-Elected, Isn’t He?’”—and that one thing is the fact that people are asking that question a lot. The fear is palpable. The fear is real that somehow the Democratic Party will fail to the meet the unique danger posed by the incumbent president.

Fear can be a powerful motivator, but fear also causes people to make bad arguments and promote silly things. Thomas Friedman is afraid, and it shows. His prescription for the Democrats to confront the danger of Donald Trump is well-meaning inanity, the kind you find in a squirrel who hears a hawk and runs around in a circle because it can’t remember where the tree is.

The particular hawk that seems to have set Friedman off this time was the first round of Democratic debates. Friedman watched them and did not like what he saw. He was “shocked.” No, really, he used the word “shocked” five times to describe the ideas he heard from Democrats, which is an interesting word choice considering Donald Trump is the president of the United States. Maybe he expected Democrats to offer the same kind of fiscally conservative, socially moderate, wildly unpopular policies that served Jeb! so very well against Trump?

From Friedman:

Dear Democrats: This is not complicated! Just nominate a decent, sane person, one committed to reunifying the country and creating more good jobs, a person who can gain the support of the independents, moderate Republicans and suburban women who abandoned Donald Trump in the midterms and thus swung the House of Representatives to the Democrats and could do the same for the presidency. And that candidate can win!

But please, spare me the revolution! It can wait.

This poor man has it so twisted around that he’s decided it’s the Democrats who are threatening to nominate somebody indecent and insane.

Christmas 2018: From Munich to New (and Old) Albania, with Vietnam Kitchen to follow.

Chinesischer Turm in Englischer Garten, Munich.

Give or take a few beers, we completed the 10,000 mile loop back to Louisville at 9:45 p.m. on Christmas Eve. The sheer awesomeness of Bavaria still was throbbing in the rear-view mirror.

It was a bittersweet homecoming, as we already knew the amazing Miss Nadia had used up her ninth life during our absence. Nadia's passing was unexpected, if not surprising at the age of 16. There'll be more to say about this, but not quite yet, apart from expressing eternal thanks to the Bluegill family for care-giving in our absence.

The year 2018 was Diana's first visit to Munich. Our days were spent wandering Christmas markets and pausing frequently for principled refreshments. It's hard to imagine better "together" time.

I hadn't been to Munich in 14 years, and found myself reflecting about the way things were in 1985, and my initial experience with hoisting steins in the city's amazing traditional beer palaces (and equally enjoyable tiny nooks). There have been a zillion changes during 33 years, and yet the combo of cool lager and steaming pork remains wonderfully timeless.

Now it's Christmas Day, and it would be futile to attempt to deal with the jumble of emotions crowding my noggin. I may have to chip away at them over the coming days, knowing all the while that the year to come probably is going to be even more exhausting than the one about to pass.

But there are a few billion people out there who have it worse off than us, and I try never to forget it -- whether a holiday or any other day when we roll out of bed and seek yet again to finesse the rough edges of the existential dilemma.

The following thoughts are a variation of ones previously posted.

---

Often I’m asked: Roger, why not relent and embrace the Christmas spirit?

Would it be so hard to be human, just for once?

Contrary to popular perception, I do relent – after a fashion – and in spite of my best efforts, Vulcan-caliber logic continues to elude me. It is enjoyable to have a (relatively) work-free day, to spend time with loved ones, to plan parties, to eat and drink, and to do what anyone else does on a holiday.

But you see, as an unbeliever, I simply cannot indulge the Christian aspect of the day as it pertains to my sphere of individual conscience. For the same reason, I cannot support Christian displays in the sphere of public property. There is secular rule of law in America, and it reaffirms and protects an individual’s religious or non-religious conscience, whether it speaks to no gods or many.

Without this fine line, theocrats like Mike Pence really will try to tell me which church to attend – or else.

At Christmas time, I respect the wants and needs of the genuinely devout, for whom the day is an expression of deeply held belief. More grudgingly, I acknowledge with deep groans the annual recitation by Ayn Rand fetishists of a belief in hyper-consumerism and pervasive materialism as a capitalistic manifestation of self, one worth glorifying in priestly fashion.

Maybe, but only up to a point. In 2015, Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi contributed a thoughtful essay linking consumer Christmas to the stoking of irrational fears: This Christmas, Tune It All Out.

As for the rest of that shopaholic, mall-rushing craziness that can make this holiday so stressful, it turns out that it's optional. Switch off the wi-fi for a few days, turn off the TV, and it's amazing how much more reasonable the world instantly seems.

Supernaturally, just know that you can count me out. Perhaps religion remains the preferred opiate because too much of the profit from consumerism remains in the hands of the 1 per cent.

---

In fact, I do have a favorite Christmas story.

My sole “corporate” day job lasted from 1988 to 1989, with a solitary Christmas in between. So it was that in 1988, management at our office in downtown Louisville declared a contest for best work station decoration.

With entirely uncharacteristic zeal, my friend and co-worker Jeff Price, who was well-connected within local radical leftist circles and later would meet me in East Germany to take part in the “summer of ‘89” volunteer student brigade, went to work toward his stated goal of winning first prize.

He soon appeared with scissors, glue, armloads of construction paper and dusty old copies of the English-language edition of the “New Albania” propaganda magazine, as borrowed from a socialist workers group somewhere in town.

Who even knew Louisville had such an organization?

Come the day of judgment, Jeff had transformed his pod into a veritable showplace of dully-colored agitprop, with a few bright red placards bearing impenetrable phrases in the Albanian language, photocopies of stiffly posed Communist leaders like Enver Hoxha and Ramiz Alia, and a genuinely demented final touch, which I’ll never forget.

Snaking along the tops of the dull gray office partitions stretched strands of coiled barbed wire fashioned from silver holiday tinsel.

Jeff’s display was dubbed Christmas in Albania – at the time, the world’s only officially atheist state – and while the judges could not quite bring themselves to give him the top prize, second place was decreed his, from sheer perverse creativity alone.

In short, exactly my kind of Christmas, but please, feel perfectly free to enjoy yours.

Christmas Day means Vietnam Kitchen, which will be open from 11:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. We'll be there.

In the absence of farm-raised Slovak carp, it'll have to do. To refresh your memory about this hallowed yuletide practice, go here: Carp in a bathtub.

Photo credit: Peter Dedina, in Košice, Slovakia.

ON THE AVENUES REWOUND: No more fear, Jeff (2015).

ON THE AVENUES REWOUND: No more fear, Jeff (2015).

A weekly column by Roger A. Baylor.

I'm on vacation, and this is a rerun from 10/01/2015. At the time, I was in the midst of an unsuccessful run for mayor as an independent candidate. 

The column is about intimidation; 28 months later, give or take a public housing putsch, Team Gahan was at it again when interim bulldozer mechanic David Duggins threatened a public housing resident with being tasered. 

The reason why the same old suspects persist with intimidation? It parallels your dog's decision to lick his nuts: because he can, there are no consequences, and it feels so good. 

Fortunately, there is a cure called the "ballot box": #Fire Gahan2019 

---

“I talked to a downtown business owner. He’d put a Zurschmiede sign in his window, and (a city employee) came in and said it was frowned on. He didn’t know what that meant, so he took it down”

“I was sitting there minding my own business, and here comes (a mayor-appointed board member). He looked at me and said, ‘Jeff Gahan is the best mayor we’ve ever had.’ What was I supposed to say?”

“(The council member) ran inside and started yelling at my employees about my Baylor yard sign. He said he was a city employee, but we wouldn’t identify himself.”

“So I called down there (city offices) to see if they planned on doing anything about the trash piling up in the alley behind my neighbor’s slum, and they patched me to (high-ranking official). The first thing he said to me was where do I get off asking for favors with a Zurschmiede sign on my property?”

---

There was a novel feature of the Leadership Southern Indiana debate on Tuesday, which should have been a threesome, but was missing a sitting mayor.

Each of us was asked to provide a question to be asked of the others. With Jeff Gahan absent, this meant Kevin Zurschmiede and I questioned each other. He asked me about my depth of feeling about two-way streets, and I explained in detail.

I asked him whether he’d support local ordinances against human trafficking, and he fielded the question positively and flawlessly, indicating that he grasps important contemporary issues.

Leadership Southern Indiana might not have allowed the question I’d have asked to Gahan, had he bothered attending.

Jeff, why are so many ordinary people in our community afraid to differ openly with you?

I can almost hear the answer.

That’s a cheap shot, because every single person I’ve talked to in this city supports the water park – and if you’re not one of them, expect an angry phone call very late at night.

Yes, this is the state of New Albany’s ongoing degeneration.

---

Seeing as it’s my lot in life to say aloud what others are thinking, here it is.

During the time I’ve been paying attention to the local scene, there simply has not been any point of comparison with the atmosphere today in terms of retribution, intimidation and implied vengeance.

For those in support of the opposition, the consistent message is there’ll be hell to pay if the incumbent loses his bid for re-election.

My calls for UN election monitors and assistance from the Jimmy Carter Center are only partly in jest, because the situation is getting increasingly tense as voting draws near.

Consider the experience of Indie Fest. Last Sunday’s fourth edition was a success, with over 2,000 attendees, but it almost didn’t happen.

Earlier this year, city officials approached Indie Fest organizer Marcey Wisman-Bennett and asked her to consider shifting Indie Fest to Labor Day weekend, so as to provide a September bookend (with Boomtown Ball in May) to the summer concert series at Bicentennial Park. She also was asked to move the event to the Riverfront Amphitheater. She agreed.

Shortly thereafter, I announced my intent to gather signatures for mayoral ballot access as an independent, and Marcey agreed to be my committee chairwoman. On the day the papers were filed, she and I decided to have a coffee at Quills, and by the time we walked there from the county clerk’s office, she’d already been texted by a city higher-up expressing disdain for my candidacy, and her involvement with it.

You have three guesses as to what happened after that – and the first two don’t count.

A City Hall once nominally supportive of independent local businesses completely disappeared from view. The mayor’s handpicked Board of Works fiddled and dithered with non-information about the amphitheater’s availability, before finally denying the Labor Day weekend date previously requested by City Hall itself … because someone already had booked it.

Marcey was left to dangle for weeks, and finally gave up trying. She turned briefly to the county, which characteristically was of no help. Almost at the last possible moment, the Carter brothers, developers of Underground Station, stepped forward and took it upon themselves to approach the city and tie Indie Fest to their own plans for a grand opening weekend.

Presumably the city, having done almost nothing to assist the Carters with their project, was in a giving mood.

The many delays and obfuscations crippled Marcey’s fundraising efforts, and several former donors hinted that behind-the-scenes pressure was being exerted on them to not be seen supporting Indie Fest this year.

The story I’m telling is no secret, and it isn’t supposed to be.

Politically motivated strong-arming is a public function, not a private one, because the object is for others to see it taking place, and to learn the "proper" lesson that their own independence will be greeted in similar, heavy-handed fashion.

It’s abhorrent, and yet it’s happening. Worse yet, more than a few Democratic Party stalwarts are abetting the ugliness by refusing to face it head on.

Somehow this reminds me that the first annual meeting of Southern Indiana Equality is tonight. In the context of this meeting, human rights and Team Gahan’s incessant bullying, here’s a quote of significance from the Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo.

“Free expression is the base of human rights, the root of human nature and the mother of truth. To kill free speech is to insult human rights, to stifle human nature and to suppress truth.”

That silence you hear?

It’s becoming deafening.

---

Free speech seems a particular irritant to Gahan and the Democratic Party, especially as it pertains to social media. In the marketplace of ideas, they’ve almost never replied to questions by facilitating dialogue, as this would constitute two-way communications, and as such, veer uncomfortably close to an admission of intent to listen.

Rather, their chosen mode of communication most often involves systematically blocking it. On social media, I've been unfriended by several Democrats, and blocked by two Democratic agitprop groups, as well as by the mayor's campaign, his personal page and his wife's.

Consequently, I close today by concurring with this important point made on Facebook by my friend Mark Cassidy.

I just want to let the Floyd County Democratic Party, Jeff Gahan, and anyone else for that matter, know that you are more than welcome to post on my timeline, respond to any comment that I may make, engage in a discussion, etc., all without fear of being blocked by me. I have no fear of the free exchange of thoughts, ideas, plans, needs, wants, desires ...

I’ve been to places where fear was a daily consideration, but New Albany isn’t East Germany, and we can do better than this.

---

Recent columns:

February 8: ON THE AVENUES: Golden oldie classic comfort beers at an old school pub? Sounds like Pints & Union to me.

February 1: ON THE AVENUES: Did you hear the one about Duggins' deep TASER regrets? I laughed until I cried -- and so did the folks in Keokuk.

January 25: ON THE AVENUES: David Duggins’ violent “jokes” will continue until the New Albany Housing Authority’s morale improves – or Duggins is fired. We advocate the latter.

January 18: ON THE AVENUES: During our State of the Gahanaissance Address for 2018, feel free to resort to hard liquor. I did, and will.

From 2015, "Fairytale of New Albania" ... including my favorite Christmas story.

I fixed it.

From December 24, 2015. Lightly edited and updated.

---

ON THE AVENUES: Fairytale of New Albania (2015 mashup).

I had intended to take the day off from the rigors of column composition, but with such a beautiful spring day outside in the aftermath of flash floods and tornadoes on December 23 -- Festivus, no less -- why not huddle indoors a bit longer on Christmas Eve, and plagiarize a previous effort?

After all, there is a legitimately important news item to report.

First, there is you. As a regular reader, you already know that I publish my ON THE AVENUES column on Thursday, a slot inherited from the pre-merger Tribune.

However, you may not be aware of your curious non-existence as a regular reader. Upon closer examination, it seems the page views and hit counts recorded here are entirely figments of my imagination, and the curiously timed denunciations and rebuttals emanating from purportedly non-reading public officials and functionaries merely an Orwellian coincidence.

There is no dissent in the Hermetic Dixiecratic Disney Republic(an) of New Albany, where the referendum of support for Mayor Jeff Gahan Presents the Doggie Doo Doo Fun Park and Canine Water Slide passed muster with 98.6% tally in favor, but disclaimers aside, I am informed that tomorrow is a religious holiday of some vague sort – a forever confusing proposition for an atheist like me – so I’ll try and keep it short.

Let’s begin with Great and Wonderful Tidings.

In 2014, I wrote these words:

"In spite of Indiana’s flagrantly fascistic proclivities, substantial progress has been made in freeing innocent tipplers from the oppressive yoke of the preacher man’s hellfire and damnation, and yet we retain at least one world-class example of prohibitionist backwash.

"It remains illegal to sell any alcoholic beverages on Christmas Day, a ban that violates church-state separation so openly and brazenly that I’m surprised the ACLU hasn’t parachuted into Indianapolis to help save us from ourselves."

See what I did there? That's right: The law finally changed in 2015.

Just a bit related to the topic at hand.

It's about time, isn't it? Maybe the Freedom from Religion Foundation intervened. After all, the prohibition of alcohol sales on Christmas Day was a blatant imposition of selective religious blue law on what should be secular tippling.

Indiana may be a basket case, but at least this one's finally right.

Hoosiers can buy alcohol on Christmas for the first time since Prohibition (Fox59)

The Indiana Alcohol and Tobacco Commission (ATC) announced today you can buy alcohol on Christmas.

Although many businesses are closed on Christmas, restaurants, bars, liquor stores and grocery stores that are open will be allowed to sell alcohol to you.

I'm told that Kansai Japanese Steakhouse in Clarksville will be open on Christmas Day, is cognizant of the change (many probably aren't), and will be serving adult beverages. Surely Horseshoe Casino will be, as well. Anyone else? Let me know, and I'll spread the word on social media.

(Let's assume that by now, two years down the road, everyone knows the drill.)

---

Often I’m asked: Roger, why not relent and embrace the Christmas spirit?

Would it be so hard to be human, just for once?

Contrary to popular perception, I do relent – after a fashion – and in spite of my best efforts, Vulcan-caliber logic continues to elude me. It is enjoyable to have a (relatively) work-free day, to spend time with loved ones, to plan parties, to eat and drink, and to do what anyone else does on a holiday.

But you see, as an unbeliever, I simply cannot indulge the Christian aspect of the day as it pertains to my sphere of individual conscience. For the same reason, I cannot support Christian displays in the sphere of public property. There is secular rule of law in America, and it reaffirms and protects an individual’s religious or non-religious conscience, whether it speaks to no gods or many.

Without this fine line, Mike Pence really will try to tell me which church to attend – or else.

At Christmas time, I respect the wants and needs of the genuinely devout, for whom the day is an expression of deeply held belief. More grudgingly, I acknowledge with deep groans the annual recitation by Ayn Rand fetishists of a belief in hyper-consumerism and pervasive materialism as a capitalistic manifestation of self, one worth glorifying in priestly fashion.

Maybe, but only up to a point. Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi has contributed a thoughtful essay linking consumer Christmas to the stoking of irrational fears: This Christmas, Tune It All Out.

As for the rest of that shopaholic, mall-rushing craziness that can make this holiday so stressful, it turns out that it's optional. Switch off the wi-fi for a few days, turn off the TV, and it's amazing how much more reasonable the world instantly seems.

In the main, just know that you can count me out. Perhaps religion remains the preferred opiate because too much of the profit from consumerism remains in the hands of the 1 per cent.

---

In fact, I do have a favorite Christmas story.

My sole “corporate” day job lasted from 1988 to 1989, with a solitary Christmas in between. So it was that in 1988, management at our office in downtown Louisville declared a contest for best work station decoration.

With entirely uncharacteristic zeal, my friend and co-worker Jeff Price, who was well-connected within local radical leftist circles and later would meet me in East Germany to take part in the “summer of ‘89” volunteer student brigade, went to work toward his stated goal of winning first prize.

He soon appeared with scissors, glue, armloads of construction paper and dusty old copies of the English-language edition of the “New Albania” propaganda magazine, as borrowed from a socialist workers group somewhere in town.

Who even knew Louisville had such an organization?

Come the day of judgment, Jeff had transformed his pod into a veritable showplace of dully-colored agitprop, with a few bright red placards bearing impenetrable phrases in the Albanian language, photocopies of stiffly posed Communist leaders like Enver Hoxha and Ramiz Alia, and a genuinely demented final touch, which I’ll never forget.

Snaking along the tops of the dull gray office partitions stretched strands of coiled barbed wire fashioned from silver holiday tinsel.

Jeff’s display was dubbed Christmas in Albania – at the time, the world’s only officially atheist state – and while the judges could not quite bring themselves to give him the top prize, second place was decreed his, from sheer perverse creativity alone.

In short, exactly my kind of Christmas, but please, feel perfectly free to enjoy yours. Usually we spend Christmas Day eating egg rolls, Singapore rice noodles and Happy Family, but in 2015 comes another banner headline: Vietnam Kitchen is open on Christmas Day. Again in 2017, VK is open on Christmas Day from 11:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., and we'll be there.

The very best Christmases are the ones that come and go with nary a trace, but this tiding truly is special. Clay pot catfish and beer?

In the absence of Slovak carp, it'll have to do.

(Addendum: My friend Peter Dedina evidently is visiting his hometown of Košice, Slovakia, and posted this photo of yuletide carp.)

Churchgoers adore the heathen Trump because of a Christian subset that "reveres authority and acts from fear."

It doesn't explain the hermetic Gahan's appeal. Money?

The essay is a year old, but even more relevant today. Without the authoritarian streak, would Christians be so prone to advocating a theocracy?

Paul Prather: The mystery of Christians’ support for Donald Trump is solved (Kentucky.com)

You might be puzzled that so many churchgoers back Trump for president

A Massachusetts scholar has solved the puzzle

These are the subset of Christians who revere authority and act from fear

I’ve expressed before my puzzlement that Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump could win so many disciples among the Christians who make up a hefty portion of the Republican base.

Trump is an insulting, profane, thrice-married, megalomaniacal billionaire from New York City who can’t even pronounce 2 Corinthians correctly. Indeed, he seems to proudly stand for everything the Christian faith supposedly opposes.

And yet a great throng of Christians love the guy.

If you, too, have been scratching your head in wonder at this conundrum, allow me to say this mystery has been solved.

The answer made great sense, too. It even led me to contemplate an ancient divide within Christianity itself.

It came from a poll by Matthew MacWilliams, a Ph.D. candidate in political science at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

He wrote a brief essay for Politico.com about his research.

MacWilliams sampled 1,800 registered U.S. voters from across the political spectrum in an attempt to understand Trump’s popularity.

“I found that education, income, gender, age, ideology and religiosity had no significant bearing on a Republican voter’s preferred candidate,” he said. “Only two of the variables I looked at were statistically significant: authoritarianism, followed by fear of terrorism, though the former was far more significant than the latter.”

Authoritarians, a group studied by social scientists for decades, inclined sharply toward Trump.

MacWilliams summarized what it means to be authoritarian:

“Authoritarians obey. They rally to and follow strong leaders. And they respond aggressively to outsiders, especially when they feel threatened.”

ON THE AVENUES: Fairytale of New Albania (2015 mashup).

ON THE AVENUES: Fairytale of New Albania (2015 mashup).

A weekly column by Roger A. Baylor.

I had intended to take the day off from the rigors of column composition, but with such a beautiful spring day outside in the aftermath of flash floods and tornadoes on December 23 -- Festivus, no less -- why not huddle indoors a bit longer on Christmas Eve, and plagiarize a previous effort?

After all, there is a legitimately important news item to report.

First, there is you. As a regular reader, you already know that I publish my ON THE AVENUES column on Thursday, a slot inherited from the pre-merger Tribune.

However, you may not be aware of your curious non-existence as a regular reader. Upon closer examination, it seems the page views and hit counts recorded here are entirely figments of my imagination, and the curiously timed denunciations and rebuttals emanating from purportedly non-reading public officials and functionaries merely an Orwellian coincidence.

There is no dissent in the Hermetic Dixiecratic Disney Republic(an) of New Albany, where the referendum of support for Mayor Jeff Gahan Presents the Doggie Doo Doo Fun Park and Canine Water Slide passed muster with 98.6% tally in favor, but disclaimers aside, I am informed that tomorrow is a religious holiday of some vague sort – a forever confusing proposition for an atheist like me – so I’ll try and keep it short.

Let’s begin with Great and Wonderful Tidings.

In 2014, I wrote these words:

"In spite of Indiana’s flagrantly fascistic proclivities, substantial progress has been made in freeing innocent tipplers from the oppressive yoke of the preacher man’s hellfire and damnation, and yet we retain at least one world-class example of prohibitionist backwash.

"It remains illegal to sell any alcoholic beverages on Christmas Day, a ban that violates church-state separation so openly and brazenly that I’m surprised the ACLU hasn’t parachuted into Indianapolis to help save us from ourselves."

See what I did there? That's right: The law finally changed in 2015.

Just a bit related to the topic at hand.

It's about time, isn't it? Maybe the Freedom from Religion Foundation intervened. After all, the prohibition of alcohol sales on Christmas Day was a blatant imposition of selective religious blue law on what should be secular tippling.

Indiana may be a basket case, but at least this one's finally right.

Hoosiers can buy alcohol on Christmas for the first time since Prohibition (Fox59)

The Indiana Alcohol and Tobacco Commission (ATC) announced today you can buy alcohol on Christmas.

Although many businesses are closed on Christmas, restaurants, bars, liquor stores and grocery stores that are open will be allowed to sell alcohol to you.

I'm told that Kansai Japanese Steakhouse in Clarksville will be open tomorrow, is cognizant of the change (many probably aren't), and will be serving adult beverages. Surely Horseshoe Casino will be, as well. Anyone else? Let me know, and I'll spread the word on social media.

---

Often I’m asked: Roger, why not relent and embrace the Christmas spirit?

Would it be so hard to be human, just for once?

Contrary to popular perception, I do relent – after a fashion – and in spite of my best efforts, Vulcan-caliber logic continues to elude me. It is enjoyable to have a (relatively) work-free day, to spend time with loved ones, to plan parties, to eat and drink, and to do what anyone else does on a holiday.

But you see, as an unbeliever, I simply cannot indulge the Christian aspect of the day as it pertains to my sphere of individual conscience. For the same reason, I cannot support Christian displays in the sphere of public property. There is secular rule of law in America, and it reaffirms and protects an individual’s religious or non-religious conscience, whether it speaks to no gods or many.

Without this fine line, Mike Pence really will try to tell me which church to attend – or else.

At Christmas time, I respect the wants and needs of the genuinely devout, for whom the day is an expression of deeply held belief. More grudgingly, I acknowledge with deep groans the annual recitation by Ayn Rand fetishists of a belief in hyper-consumerism and pervasive materialism as a capitalistic manifestation of self, one worth glorifying in priestly fashion.

Maybe, but only up to a point. Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi has contributed a thoughtful essay linking consumer Christmas to the stoking of irrational fears: This Christmas, Tune It All Out.

In the main, just know that you can count me out. Perhaps religion remains the preferred opiate because too much of the profit from consumerism remains in the hands of the 1 per cent.

---

In fact, I do have a favorite Christmas story.

My sole “corporate” day job lasted from 1988 to 1989, with a solitary Christmas in between. So it was that in 1988, management at our office in downtown Louisville declared a contest for best work station decoration.

With entirely uncharacteristic zeal, my friend and co-worker Jeff Price, who was well-connected within local radical leftist circles and later would meet me in East Germany to take part in the “summer of ‘89” volunteer student brigade, went to work toward his stated goal of winning first prize.

He soon appeared with scissors, glue, armloads of construction paper and dusty old copies of the English-language edition of the “New Albania” propaganda magazine, as borrowed from a socialist workers group somewhere in town.

Who even knew Louisville had such an organization?

Come the day of judgment, Jeff had transformed his pod into a veritable showplace of dully-colored agitprop, with a few bright red placards bearing impenetrable phrases in the Albanian language, photocopies of stiffly posed Communist leaders like Enver Hoxha and Ramiz Alia, and a genuinely demented final touch, which I’ll never forget.

Snaking along the tops of the dull gray office partitions stretched strands of coiled barbed wire fashioned from silver holiday tinsel.

Jeff’s display was dubbed Christmas in Albania – at the time, the world’s only officially atheist state – and while the judges could not quite bring themselves to give him the top prize, second place was decreed his, from sheer perverse creativity alone.

In short, exactly my kind of Christmas, but please, feel perfectly free to enjoy yours. Usually we spend Christmas Day eating egg rolls, Singapore rice noodles and Happy Family, but in 2015 comes another banner headline: Vietnam Kitchen is open on Christmas Day.

The very best Christmases are the ones that come and go with nary a trace, but this ... this is special. Clay pot catfish and beer? In the absence of Slovak carp, it'll have to do.

---

Recent columns:

December 17: ON THE AVENUES: Gin and tacos, and a maybe a doughnut, but only where feasible.

December 10: ON THE AVENUES: Truth, lies, music, and a trick of the Christmas tale (2015).

December 3: ON THE AVENUES: Who (or what) is New Albany's "Person of the Year" for 2015?

November 26: ON THE AVENUES: Faux thanks and reveries (The 2015 Remix).

November 19: ON THE AVENUES: Beer, farthings and that little-known third category.

November 12: ON THE AVENUES: The mayor’s race was about suburban-think versus urban-think. The wrong-think won.

ON THE AVENUES: No more fear, Jeff.

ON THE AVENUES: No more fear, Jeff. 

A weekly web column by Roger A. Baylor.

“I talked to a downtown business owner. He’d put a Zurschmiede sign in his window, and (a city employee) came in and said it was frowned on. He didn’t know what that meant, so he took it down”

“I was sitting there minding my own business, and here comes (a mayor-appointed board member). He looked at me and said, ‘Jeff Gahan is the best mayor we’ve ever had.’ What was I supposed to say?”

“(The council member) ran inside and started yelling at my employees about my Baylor yard sign. He said he was a city employee, but we wouldn’t identify himself.”

“So I called down there (city offices) to see if they planned on doing anything about the trash piling up in the alley behind my neighbor’s slum, and they patched me to (high-ranking official). The first thing he said to me was where do I get off asking for favors with a Zurschmiede sign on my property?”

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There was a novel feature of the Leadership Southern Indiana debate on Tuesday, which should have been a threesome, but was missing a sitting mayor.

Each of us was asked to provide a question to be asked of the others. With Jeff Gahan absent, this meant Kevin Zurschmiede and I questioned each other. He asked me about my depth of feeling about two-way streets, and I explained in detail.

I asked him whether he’d support local ordinances against human trafficking, and he fielded the question positively and flawlessly, indicating that he grasps important contemporary issues.

Leadership Southern Indiana might not have allowed the question I’d have asked to Gahan, had he bothered attending.

Jeff, why are so many ordinary people in our community afraid to differ openly with you?

I can almost hear the answer.

That’s a cheap shot, because every single person I’ve talked to in this city supports the water park – and if you’re not one of them, expect an angry phone call very late at night.

Yes, this is the state of New Albany’s ongoing degeneration.

---

Seeing as it’s my lot in life to say aloud what others are thinking, here it is.

During the time I’ve been paying attention to the local scene, there simply has not been any point of comparison with the atmosphere today in terms of retribution, intimidation and implied vengeance.

For those in support of the opposition, the consistent message is there’ll be hell to pay if the incumbent loses his bid for re-election.

My calls for UN election monitors and assistance from the Jimmy Carter Center are only partly in jest, because the situation is getting increasingly tense as voting draws near.

Consider the experience of Indie Fest. Last Sunday’s fourth edition was a success, with over 2,000 attendees, but it almost didn’t happen.

Earlier this year, city officials approached Indie Fest organizer Marcey Wisman-Bennett and asked her to consider shifting Indie Fest to Labor Day weekend, so as to provide a September bookend (with Boomtown Ball in May) to the summer concert series at Bicentennial Park. She also was asked to move the event to the Riverfront Amphitheater. She agreed.

Shortly thereafter, I announced my intent to gather signatures for mayoral ballot access as an independent, and Marcey agreed to be my committee chairwoman. On the day the papers were filed, she and I decided to have a coffee at Quills, and by the time we walked there from the county clerk’s office, she’d already been texted by a city higher-up expressing disdain for my candidacy, and her involvement with it.

You have three guesses as to what happened after that – and the first two don’t count.

A City Hall once nominally supportive of independent local businesses completely disappeared from view. The mayor’s handpicked Board of Works fiddled and dithered with non-information about the amphitheater’s availability, before finally denying the Labor Day weekend date previously requested by City Hall itself … because someone already had booked it.

Marcey was left to dangle for weeks, and finally gave up trying. She turned briefly to the county, which characteristically was of no help. Almost at the last possible moment, the Carter brothers, developers of Underground Station, stepped forward and took it upon themselves to approach the city and tie Indie Fest to their own plans for a grand opening weekend.

Presumably the city, having done almost nothing to assist the Carters with their project, was in a giving mood.

The many delays and obfuscations crippled Marcey’s fundraising efforts, and several former donors hinted that behind-the-scenes pressure was being exerted on them to not be seen supporting Indie Fest this year.

The story I’m telling is no secret, and it isn’t supposed to be.

Politically motivated strong-arming is a public function, not a private one, because the object is for others to see it taking place, and to learn the "proper" lesson that their own independence will be greeted in similar, heavy-handed fashion.

It’s abhorrent, and yet it’s happening. Worse yet, more than a few Democratic Party stalwarts are abetting the ugliness by refusing to face it head on.

Somehow this reminds me that the first annual meeting of Southern Indiana Equality is tonight. In the context of this meeting, human rights and Team Gahan’s incessant bullying, here’s a quote of significance from the Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo.

“Free expression is the base of human rights, the root of human nature and the mother of truth. To kill free speech is to insult human rights, to stifle human nature and to suppress truth.”

That silence you hear?

It’s becoming deafening.

---

Free speech seems a particular irritant to Gahan and the Democratic Party, especially as it pertains to social media. In the marketplace of ideas, they’ve almost never replied to questions by facilitating dialogue, as this would constitute two-way communications, and as such, veer uncomfortably close to an admission of intent to listen.

Rather, their chosen mode of communication most often involves systematically blocking it. On social media, I've been unfriended by several Democrats, and blocked by two Democratic agitprop groups, as well as by the mayor's campaign, his personal page and his wife's.

Consequently, I close today by concurring with this important point made on Facebook by my friend Mark Cassidy.

I just want to let the Floyd County Democratic Party, Jeff Gahan, and anyone else for that matter, know that you are more than welcome to post on my timeline, respond to any comment that I may make, engage in a discussion, etc., all without fear of being blocked by me. I have no fear of the free exchange of thoughts, ideas, plans, needs, wants, desires ...

I’ve been to places where fear was a daily consideration, but New Albany isn’t East Germany, and we can do better than this.

---

Recent columns:

September 24: ON THE AVENUES: Almost two years later, Mr. Gahan has yet to plug in this clock, and so it's time for him to clock out.

September 17: ON THE AVENUES: Dear Neighbor: If you’re tired of the same old story, turn some pages.

September 10: ON THE AVENUES: Lanesville Heritage Weekend comes around again.

September 3: ON THE AVENUES: When even Mitt Romney can run to the left of New Albany’s Democrats, it's a very big problem.

August 27: ON THE AVENUES: Whips, chains and economic development (2010).

August 20: ON THE AVENUES: In the groove.

August 13: ON THE AVENUES: It’s time to purge two-party politics and tie the community together.