The City of Nashua has been spiralling downward in an epic political shitshow for a number of years, coincidental to the reign of its current Mayor for life, Jim Donchess. It is cloistered, inefficient, and untransparent. At the same time, it wastes millions more taxpayers’ dollars on legal fights to prevent citizens from ensuring government transparency, exposing fraud, and defending its objections to even the most basic expressions of protected constitutional speech.
It intimidates citizens, arrests them for “trespassing” in public spaces in City Hall, and erects barriers to prevent anyone from uncovering questionable fiscal practices. All at the behest and direction, presumably, how else could it be, of the chief executive of the city, Mayor Donchess.
Donchess calls the shots, sending city lawyers after whoever dares to question the genius of the city’s various schemes, and the courts appear more than willing to defend that, driving cases higher up the increasingly expensive judicial ladder or off the docket (as most cannot afford the former).
What sort of “leader” does that?
It got me thinking. Is Donchess a Machiavellian Narcissistic Psychopath? He’s a screaming left-wing lib, so from go he is more than halfway there, but did he start that way or has he since developed the characteristics and habits that his preferred progressive ideology is attracted to after years of uncontested authority, surrounded by like-minded, boot-licking, sycophants.
It hardly matters how he got there, if he is in fact there. Individuals with the Dark Triad, as it is called, are destructive to everyone and everything around them, especially when they have a nearly bottomless pot of someone else’s money to exercise or project their psychopathy.
The classic exercise of progressive psychopathy appears to me to be to claim a greater or superior moral purpose that justifies the theft of someone else’s property (or their rights) to pad your resume, enrich your reputation and your wallet, and then act offended in the name of some other group if anyone dares to challenge any of that behavior.
They claim a moral authority to which they are not entitled, paid for by others, which, ironically, tends to make matters worse. The classic response is that it is not their fault (the failure) and that the cure is to give them more power and money with a compensating decrease in transparency and accountability.
I’m sure I just butchered that summary. Still, following Dr. Peterson’s synopsis of the dark triad, the Machiavellian manipulates language to facilitate the theft (through the goodwill of government force) and to rebut objections to it.
I do not doubt that Donchess is a narcissist in the larger context of a self-important ass who surrounds themselves with useful figures who are willingly manipulated to keep Jim in the big chair because they themselves presume a reputational and (perhaps) financial benefit in conjunction with the exercise of power over others under the cover of an expression of “the cities” will.
In a classic case of elections have consequences, the actual residents reinforce this behavior by re-electing Donchess (often unopposed), which he takes as a mandate to continue his rampage at their increasing expense.
Democratic political climbers who might replace him are likely no better and simply eager to succeed the boss so they can continue a legacy whose outcome is laid out before us on the urban plantations across the country run into the ground by long-time left-wing rule.
One caveat. Nashua has yet to experience the sort of crime prevalent in those places, but that only means there may still be hope. Nashua could be turned around, or the decay slowed. Still, it would require Republicans to run endless campaigns to replace Democrats, including Mayor Jim, and to expose the suspected graft and abuse of power, as well as the inaction of elected officials to expedite those matters. You would need a lot of money, an impressive GOTV, and a mindset opposed to the notion that Nashua is lost and not worth the investment in political blood and treasure.
And there’s no guarantee you’ll find joy in the outcome, but the handful of locals doing all the heavy lifting need as much help as they can get. I can give your efforts a voice, as we have for years, but it is your city, and only you can take it back.
