What happens when Real People and Politics Collide?

If you go to BillMoyers.com, you’ll see an interesting conflict evolving in North Carolina (http://billmoyers.com/segment/north-carolina-battleground-state/).  It becomes even more interesting when applied to Massachusetts .  The Moyers text reads “On one side:  a right-wing government enacting laws that are changing the face of the state. On the other:  citizen protesters who are fighting back against what they fear is a radical takeover.”  Swap out right-wing government with left-wing... and it becomes a mirror image of what’s being played out between Governor Patrick’s wind energy agenda and citizen neighbors fighting back, desperate to preserve health and property right protections for themselves, their families and their communities.

At the heart of the conflict, as analogized by the Moyers piece, is a David and Goliath saga centered around money.  Tens of millions of dollars have been poured into a quasi-state agency (Mass Clean Energy Center) advocating for the accelerated development of wind energy projects within the state.  All the while, the Patrick Administration Departments of Environmental Protection and Public Health have seemingly abdicated their duty to protect, or at least, have been directed not to be on guard to earnestly investigate health problems.  

The result has been communities fractured across the Commonwealth -- neighbor by neighbor.  The fabric of a community’s basic values are being torn apart.  And during this tumultuous upheaval of moral reckoning, town decision makers, trying to do right by their constituencies, are finding that the vitality and health of their communities have become threatened by the incidental dangers of purported progress -- leaving sick citizens and economically distressed communities to challenge the financial might of the state.

During an interview about the movie Promised Land (http://www.focusfeatures.com/article/the_powerful_vision_of_promised_land?film=promised_land) actor Matt Damon asked a question that speaks to the complexity of what faces the Commonwealth, it’s municipalities and it’s citizens   – “How would our parents or grandparents have handled what we face in our day and age? How are our grandchildren going to fare?”  The movie tests the viewers idea of our American identity.  Whether parents, grandparents or grandchildren, it's certain that none have -- or will enjoy any future bountiful blessings our great country offers -- if it had not been for the preservation and protection of a citizen's basic rights and freedoms.

The question we should be asking ourselves -– Why is it that the citizen must defend his or her own individual rights and freedoms?   Isn’t the defense to threats such as these the very purpose of a democratic government?  

Has America, the Commonwealth and Falmouth lost it’s identity, as Bill Moyers exposed in North Carolina, to money and greed?

Incidentally, the initial draft’s mode of energy speculation in the movie Promised Land wasn’t natural gas and fracking --  It was wind energy and industrial turbines.