New Hampshire in Imminent Peril? What we don’t know, can hurt us

Imminent peril is a legal concept  meaning “certain danger, threatening, menacingly close at hand.” It seems to suggest that one can have no space for joy; that the situation requires immediate, all-consuming action to avoid disaster. And yet it is summer in New Hampshire, and imminent peril approaches in slow motion. The monster’s footfalls seem distant: impartial ballot-counting crushed in Georgia and Arizona. Congresswomen seeking to outlaw Sunday early voting. Even New Hampshire’s no-excuse absentee voting will not impact many voters till next year.
       And then there is climate change. The wildfires, floods, heat and mad winds have arrived, just as predicted. In the distance, if we look, the tidal wave of rising oceans surges toward coastal lowlands where a billion people and trillions of dollars in infrastructure stand nakedly exposed.
      We have to take time to breathe the scents of summer, to love and jest with our families and friends, to nourish our weary spirits for the upcoming fray. But we cannot forget the shadows that will imminently blacken our state, our nation and our planet if we are not, meanwhile, preparing for action.
       If this were 1933 in Germany, now is the time Jewish families with resources would be fleeing to other nations. In 1933, Hitler was elected Chancellor, to lead the Reichstag. He had been promoting racist policies, with the help of his brown shirts, for a decade. Over the next year, Hitler consolidated power, killed off his enemies, gained the right to emergency rule without legislative oversight for four years and combined the offices of Führer and Chancellor so that he became dictator of the nation, in control of the military.
         Or let’s follow Viktor Orban’s transformation of Hungary from democracy to autoracy, shown in the table below. This list is from After the Fall by Obama speechwriter Ben Rhodes, who looks at Orban, Putin and Xi’s rise in authoritarianism since our “Shining City upon a Hill” turned off its lights.

HOW TO TURN A DEMOCRACY INTO AN AUTOCRACY

• Use uncertainty and hardship to focus popular rage, with yourself as savior.
• Enrich corrupt friends who, in turn, fund your campaign.
• Feed a vast partisan propaganda machine.
• Redraw districts to cement your party in power.
• Pack courts with partisan judges to erode rule of law.
• Keep business and wealthy on your side by reducing their taxes.
• Wrap the project in Christian nationalist language.
• Offer a sense of belonging to a team.
• Relentlessly attack the Other: immigrants, Muslims, opponents.

This could be a checklist for the actions of our previous President, whom Rhodes labels a fascist, but an incompetent one, because he did not gain the second term that would have let him declare emergency powers to subvert the legislature and extend his term to life. However, while he, personally, has not become a dictator, his party is working diligently, having packed the courts, to redraw the districts and rewrite the rules for counting ballots in order to retain control permanently.
        What most people do not realize is that the same thing is happening in a far more insidious manner within our state. Insidious because, compared with the celebrity host who used to reside in the White House, it is subtle: renaming the federal funds from Congress as “Governor’s Office For Emergency Relief & Recovery” funds; handing them out at televised events, or with giant checks; ensuring that his family’s and friends’ companies get a good share of the cache; vaccinating outdoor employees of his family’s industry before hair stylists or teachers; designating the towns where his family owns land as an Opportunity Zone while ignoring far needier places in Democratic regions; vetoing a ban on jet skis in a bird nesting area where wealthy donors live. The list could go on and on. The most egregious was his veto of crucial energy conservation bills that trade customers’ long-term savings and reduced carbon for utility company profits. Utilities donate generously to his campaign, and NH’s share of regional electrical distribution costs continues to rise.
        The governor’s smile and boyish charm seem to disguise his actions to the public. He signed what the GOP Speaker proudly describes as the most extreme budget in the state’s history. It included the most extreme voucher bill in the nation. Most people did not notice. The bill was carefully written to delay consequences of voucher payments on taxpayers until after the next election.
        Realize, though, that peril is imminent, regardless how slowly it moves and how veiled its face.