LePage’s politics abandon the human instinct to help

Caroline Tkach joins a May 21 rally in Portland's Monument Square to show support for the ability of asylum seekers to receive General Assistance. Francis Flisiuk | BDN

Caroline Tkach joins a May 21 rally in Portland’s Monument Square to show support for asylum seekers’ ability to receive General Assistance. Francis Flisiuk | BDN

It’s a good thing Mark Watney is white.

Watney is the protagonist of Andy Weir’s best selling novel, “The Martian,” which has been turned into what’s sure to be a major summer movie starring Matt Damon in the lead role.

Astronaut Watney becomes stranded on Mars and is presumed dead after a freak storm and an accident force the rest of his crew to leave him behind. The story is about his perseverance and the Herculean efforts to save him.

“Every human being has a basic instinct to help each other out,” Watney says in the trailer to the movie and in the book, a little differently. “If a hiker gets lost in the mountains, people will coordinate a search. If an earthquake levels a city, people all over the world send emergency supplies. This instinct is found in every culture without exception.”

The quote is meant to lift us up. To remind us of our better selves, and to set the stage for humanity’s efforts to save one lost soul.

Unfortunately, the one exception to Watney’s rule is the subculture of some politicians in Augusta and state capitals around the country.

They are more concerned with winning the next election – or afraid of losing it.

The basic instinct to help each other has been replaced by, at its worst, sinister political manipulation or, at best, indifference.

They are content to say, “It’s not my problem.”

And the targets are people of color.

In Maine, that means men, women and families who are in the country legally, but are here as refugees or asylum seekers. They have come here to escape political and religious violence. Once here, they are valuable members of our communities, who work, start businesses and pay taxes – as soon as the federal government allows it.

Gov. Paul LePage, his Department of Health and Human Services, and some members of the Republican Party have put a target on the backs of these people and have gone to extraordinary lengths to push them toward hunger and homelessness by eliminating assistance for them.

If the governor has his way, come July roughly 1,000 people in Portland could become homeless. The number grows higher when other Maine cities are included.

Portland Mayor Michael Brennan put it this way: “If an earthquake destroyed a thousand homes somewhere in Maine, we would do anything to help.”

He’s right. When disaster strikes, Maine responds. We hold fundraisers for fire victims and spaghetti dinners for neighbors in need. We donate a kidney. When cancer strikes, we help cover the medical costs. When a hiker falls, we send helicopters over the Knife Edge.

But when it comes to asylum seekers and refugees, there is nothing but disdain from the governor and Health and Human Services, who consistently mischaracterize their targets as “illegal immigrants” or just the pejorative “illegals.”

He blames them for the state’s economic woes, for waiting lists for other people who need services but who haven’t received them and even for disease.

They are not in this country illegally, and the media have reported it. But the governor is unaccountable.

And, frankly, he doesn’t care if they become homeless or go hungry. They aren’t his problem.

The issue is thick with the politics of race and division, which have shown themselves to be very effective.

Just recently, the governor’s political action committee, led by his daughter, even went so far as to attack Republican state senators for supposedly supporting “illegal alien welfare.”

It’s a hodgepodge of trigger words, ugliness and lies.

When it comes to race, Maine has a huge blind spot.

Whether it’s the decision in Skowhegan to keep a racist mascot for the high school or the attacks on legally present asylum seekers and refugees or an inability to work with Maine’s Native American tribes, we make lots of excuses and point a lot of fingers.

But we don’t get close enough to the mirror to see ourselves and the harm our actions are causing. And that’s a problem we can’t ignore.

Maybe a black Mark Watney would be fine. After all, “The Martian” is fiction.

In the real world, though, even our most basic instinct to help can be overcome through careful political manipulation and coded appeals to racism.

We might be willing to move Heaven and Earth to save an astronaut on Mars, but we are perfectly content to turn our backs on people a lot closer to home.

David Farmer

About David Farmer

David Farmer is a political and media consultant in Portland, where he lives with his wife and two children. He was senior adviser to Democrat Mike Michaud’s campaign for governor and a longtime journalist. You can reach him at dfarmer14@hotmail.com.