The Maine Event (and Republicants barely showed up)
He likes to believe he is the law. He says it out loud, in front of people, because he assumes no one will call him on it. The thing about authoritarians — or people who wish they were — is that they mistake silence for approval. They confuse fear for reverence. They believe that if enough people look down at their shoes when they speak, they must be winning.
Enter Governor Janet Mills of Maine.
She is not impressed. She does not look at her shoes. She does not flinch when he says, “We are the federal law.” She does not stammer or hedge. She says, “I’m complying with state and federal laws.” Because there are laws, and she understands them, and she understands that the man in front of her does not. He may have once held a Bible upside down for a photo op, but he’s been holding the Constitution upside down for years.
And because he is who he is — because he cannot be challenged without retribution — he does what he always does. He threatens. “Maybe we take away your funding.” Because power, to him, is a cudgel, not a responsibility. It is a thing to be swung wildly, a thing meant to break people, to break states, to break laws, to break whatever gets in the way of his whims.
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Mills does not break. She says, “I guess I’ll see you in court.”
And now we have a moment. A moment where we are asked to recognize the difference between bravery and whatever the opposite of bravery is. Because here is Mills, a Democrat in a small state that Trump lost by a few points, and she is standing there, facing him, saying, No. And here are the Republicants — his party, the ones who whisper in back rooms about how exhausting he is, how dangerous he is, how much they wish it were different — doing nothing.
There is something almost elegant about their cowardice. It is practiced. It is precise. It is polished to a fine sheen, their ability to stand just far enough away from him that, when he eventually falls, they can pretend they were never really with him at all.
But history does not forget the ones who chose silence. History does not forget the ones who found excuses. History does not forget the people who, in a moment of necessary defiance, looked at their shoes.
Mills did not look at her shoes.
And that is why she is the only one worth remembering.
