Thoughts during the apocalypse, Part 25.

It's official. Being cooped up in this house has made me a little too feisty for my own good.

Been working for this one for years.

That became obvious today when I got myself banned for three days from the "Everything Mansfield" discussion group on Facebook because I questioned whether the administrators of the site were showing partisan leanings. Needless to say, I can be a real smart ass when I want to be, and my smart-assery was in full force as I argued with one of the admins over policy. In fact, I probably fulfilled the requirements to earn my asshole merit badge, at least in some people's eyes.

It didn't get nasty, or at least I don't think it did. But I can be very sarcastic -- and unlike our president, I am openly and proudly sarcastic and don't need to explain to anyone after the fact that I was being sarcastic. What's more, my brand of sarcasm is not intended to mask the truth; indeed, it is my way of enhancing the truth. Or at least that's the way I see it. Your opinion may differ. That's why it's a joy to live in a democracy.

Anyway, there was a post on the site asking people to sign the nomination papers for a woman from Attleboro that wants to run for the 4th District seat in the U.S. House of Representatives that's being vacated as our local rep, Joe Kennedy III, runs for the U.S. Senate. Keep in mind that this particular site tends to lean reactionary Republican, as do many other sites of the same sort, even though that's hardly representative of the Massachusetts electorate in general, so it probably should come as no surprise that there would be electioneering going on for a Republican candidate that can't win.

And why do I say that? In 2016, all but one of the towns in the Hockomock League (our local high school athletic league) voted for Hillary Clinton in the presidential election, and that one outlier, part of a three-town regional school district, was by just a 19-vote margin. In fact, here's the breakdown:

Attleboro: Clinton 51 percent, Trump 42.
Canton: Clinton 57, Trump 37.
Foxboro: Clinton 51, Trump 42.
Franklin: Clinton 54, Trump 40.
Easton: Clinton 50, Trump 44.
-------King Philip district --------
Wrentham: Clinton 47, Trump 46.
Norfolk: Clinton 50, Trump 42.
Plainville: Trump 46 (+19), Clinton 46.
----------------------------------------
Mansfield: Clinton 54, Trump 40.
Milford: Clinton 55, Trump 39.
North Attleboro: Clinton 48, Trump 45.
Sharon: Clinton 71, Trump 24.
Stoughton: Clinton 60, Trump 35.
Taunton: Clinton 52, Trump 42.

OK, the point of all that is to illustrate that my home area is basically in the blue category, even with a candidate that was apparently too polarizing for some tastes at the top of the Democrat ticket. So, the aforementioned, would-be House candidate, as an openly-avowed Trump supporter, will have a hard time turning the district over to red. And it's fair to ask questions about whether this individual supports the off-the-charts stupidity of the Trump administration.

Of course, I handled it with the usual smart-assery. My initial response, asking if the candidate had an official stand on the president's suggestion that we should inject Lysol into ourselves to kill the coronavirus, was deleted on the grounds that I was talking about "national politics," and that we are under orders on the site to keep things local. And I was criticized for being childish. So what else is new?

This all appeared, mind you, under another post that touted the coronavirus precautions taken by a German supermarket. The last time I looked, Germany was more than 3,800 miles from Mansfield. But despite my protestations that the would-be candidate's views on national issues were directly related to how she would govern on behalf of the residents of Mansfield, I was shot down and banned for three days. And I didn't even get the chance to call anyone a fascist -- not that I would have, in any event. You can read the last part of the exchange below; I've removed the administrator's name because that person was just doing the assigned job and does not need to be shamed publicly for it.

I did make one mistake in my argument, however. The correct phrase is "All politics is local." It's the title of a book written by the former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, Tip O'Neill, and it refers to the premise that no matter what they debate in Washington, it all comes back to affect every American at a grass-roots level eventually.

Understand, I don't hate Republicans just because they are Republicans. Some of my best friends are Republicans (sarcasm alert!). We've elected a few of them locally, in fact. Thanks to gerrymandering, we have three state reps that represent Mansfield, and two of them, Betty Poirier of North Attleboro and Jay Barrows of Mansfield, are Republicans that have done their jobs honorably. And we have a Republican governor, Charlie Baker, who has led the state quite well though this crisis.

But I suspect that a lot of the dyed-in-the-wool Trump toadies would refer to them as RINOs, Republicans In Name Only, and they might be right. At the very least, I don't get the sense that they subscribe to the racist, xenophobic and misogynistic tenets of the GOP under Trump, and thus Massachusetts voters of good will and a certain level of intelligence are willing to vote for them as candidates that have demonstrated respect for their fellow men and women.

So, I'm banned from stirring the shit for three days. It's my second recent banning, the last one coming because I continued to joke about a department store in town that closed a few years ago called "Benny's." A popular chain in Rhode Island and southeastern Massachusetts, bankruptcy did Benny's in -- and as we all continue to discover every day, we really miss how when we needed everyday items, we could just take a ride over to Benny's and find them. My jokes went the wrong way up the digestive tract of one of the admins, however. Not the first time that has happened.

Just as I may have convinced all of you that I am an asshole, however, one counterpoint.

We've been having a stretch of bad weather here in the Northeast, with driving rain and high winds. So it didn't surprise me earlier today when I looked out the window and saw that the "for sale" sign that had gone up last weekend in the yard of the house across the street had blown down.

So I bundled up and walked across the street, found the fastening hooks on the ground, and reattached the sign to the post while braving chilling rain and biting winds. My good deed for the day.

See you tomorrow.