Another day, another round of virtue-signaling in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
Tomorrow’s exhibition of woke breast-beating will unfold in the town of Plymouth – “America’s Hometown.”
The voters there are being asked to decide whether they want to ban “nip” bottles of alcohol.
Consider the dazzling panoply of catastrophes facing the state right now – most disastrously, an invasion of the state by thousands of criminal foreign freeloaders from the Third World demanding billions of dollars in handouts and other assorted free stuff.
Also, record numbers of fentanyl overdoses, rampant anti-Semitism in colleges, a collapsing state budget, a failed mass-transit system, out-of-control shoplifting in the cities, etc. etc. ad infinitum.
Yet tomorrow America’s Hometown must confront the greatest scourge facing mankind– discarded, empty 1.7-ounce containers of Fireball and Dr. McGillicuddy’s.
Let’s stipulate that nobody likes seeing those empty nip bottles on the sidewalk, or in the gutter. But it’s not like they’re the only things being thoughtlessly tossed out of car windows.
How about Fauci face masks, or cups from Starbucks and Dunkin, or losing scratch tickets or used syringes?
When is Plymouth going to ban those kinds of litter? What about cigarette butts? As Smoky the Bear used to say, “Only you can prevent forest fires.”
Oh, I forgot. Massachusetts is already the first state to ban cigarettes, at least of the menthol variety. You gotta drive out of state now to buy your Newports or your Kools. Has a single person given up cigarettes because he couldn’t get his fix of Newports… legally?
So now, in Massachusetts, you can no longer lawfully enjoy a smooth, refreshing Salem or Bel Air. But marijuana is fine. Don’t worry about the psychosis-inducing THC levels, go right ahead and light up. It’s perfectly safe. Ask any Democrat.
H.L. Mencken once defined Puritanism as “the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, might be happy.”
We are now again overrun with Puritans – Puritans who don’t believe in God, but who are damn well determined that no one, nowhere, is happy.
As far as the nips are concerned ,Plymouth isn’t the first town to try to change the world, one Allen’s Coffee Brandy nip at a time. Chelsea, for one, is all in on it because… all other problems have been solved in Chelsea, right?
Nips aren’t the only of life’s little amenities on the chopping block. Plastic water bottles, for example. Banning them has become a very big fad down on the Cape. Even the state government has supposedly stopped buying plastic bottles – “except in case of emergency.”
What it means, of course, is that in the summer, everyone throws a case or two of Poland Spring or Crystal Geyser into their car trunks before crossing the bridges. It’s an emergency.
Another way to protect the planet is to ban plastic bags in grocery stores. There’s been a lot of that going around. The local pests tried to shame everyone into buying those “reusable” bags for a buck or two. But then, you may recall, the Panic struck, and suddenly all the supermarkets had signs that said, “Reusable Bags Banned Until Further Notice.” (They were right next to the stern warnings ordering you to maintain six feet of social distance – a mandate which Dr. Fauci just admitted to Congress this week was concocted out of thin air, with zero science to back it up.)
At least in the suburbs, most of these ridiculous moves come out of that New England tradition known as the Town Meeting. Once upon a time, retired businessmen and crusty old Yankees would pore over the town books and try to wring out a few budgetary savings to keep property taxes down.
Now, however, the Town Meetings are infested with busybodies and nags – grandmas in sensible shoes who look like the fake Indian, or trust-funded blow-in drifters who came here to go to college and now refuse to return to the Upper West Side. They all dream of being on the “Sustainability Committee.”
These are the moonbats driving the bans. They’re terrified by some toff with a British accent on Panhandler Radio, and they respond by putting the latest planet dooming threat on the warrant for the next town meeting. If you’re not paying attention, pretty soon you’re carrying your groceries to the car in a flimsy brown paper bag – even in the middle of downpours like we’re seeing this week.
Full disclosure: I didn’t even know about this big vote until some citizens in Plymouth wanted to promote the election by advertising on my radio show. Hey, if the Prohibitionists had wanted to buy time, I’d have sold to them too.
I did a segment about tomorrow’s vote, and got a lot more response than I’d anticipated.
One caller told me he works in Fairhaven, but no longer patronizes the local packy because they’ve banned nips there. (He now buys in his hometown of New Bedford, which will be outlawing them this summer.) Another guy told me his mother’s in a nursing home that doesn’t allow full bottles of alcohol. So he brings her a sleeve of vodka nips, and her nurse gives her two a day. I asked him what his mom’s brand is.
“Tito’s,” he said. “Hey, she’s my mom.”
Another guy told me he once bought a nip of Johnnie Walker Blue — $21.
“I wanted to know if it was worth it,” he said. “It wasn’t.”
Others buy nips to test-drink a new brand, or for cooking purposes, or just because they can no longer afford a regular bottle in Biden’s runaway inflation.
A package-store owner in Cedarville told me that if the ban is passed tomorrow, her nip customers will just drive to one of the neighboring towns, like Bourne, or Kingston, or Carver. She may have to lay off some of her employees.
You know the old saying, the smaller the bottle, the bigger the problem. That’s true, but even if they ban nips, tosspots can still buy a half-pint, which has four times as much booze as your traditional nip. If they want to drink, they’re going to drink.
Tomorrow’s the day, Plymouth. Just remember one thing: When nips are outlawed, only outlaws will have nips.