by Travis Mateer
On Wednesday, at the 6pm meeting of the Historical Preservation Society, I announced my EMPHATIC opposition to the political ambitions of our current Mayoral placeholder, Jordan Hess. I explained to the dumbfounded history preservers that Hess is a multi-modal radical who will use everything at his disposal to dramatically reshape this valley to align with his climate catastrophe fever dreams.
This post, though, isn’t about Jordan Hess’ deep desire to lay transit track and attack petrol-guzzlers. It’s about the former Sheriff, T.J. McDermott, who must think his former badge is a magical ticket to Mayor, if the rumors of his imminent announcement this week are true.
One of the magical properties of this artifact from McDermott’s tenure as Sheriff must be to ward off the spirits of the dead who have been dishonored by this gutless man’s reign of lackluster leadership. This will be important, since the ghosts of Sean Stevenson, Johnny Lee Perry, and Rebekah Barsotti will be lurking in the ethereal background of his campaign. I know this because I’m going to make sure it happens…IF McDermott is arrogant enough to take the plunge.
It’s not just the lingering presence of the dead laying in wait, there’s also a synchronicity stalking the empty cowboy hats on the mighty rack where they hang their fake identities, identities like MAN OF GOD, or MAN OF THE LAW, or PROTECTOR OF THE WEAK AND VULNERABLE.
Oh yeah, T.J. McDermott? Sean Stevenson, euthanized by your coroner on January 5th, 2020. Johnny Lee Perry, shot in the back by one of your deputies on August 29th, 2021. And Rebekah Barsotti, who conveniently “drowned” in a “river accident” after finally bringing in those badges to deal with her POS husband who lives in the County next door, where law enforcement rejects who can’t successfully hide corruption in other counties get dumped.
This list is just the most glaring anecdotal cases I’m aware of and able to currently write about. There are more, as the post on January 1st clearly indicates. And that’s not all. For a County that had a fucking book by Jon Krakauer written about it, you’d think the kind of systemic numbers that show a systemic problem wouldn’t exist. But they do.
Despite all this, T.J. McDermott is going to ask Missoula citizens to vote for him in the Mayoral race later this year. Does the area where the ability to experience shame simply not exist within this soft man’s exterior frame? Or, is the ability to blame others, as exemplified by McDermott’s appearance on a local Facebook group’s weekly Zoom call, such a well-developed, pathological coping mechanism, that he can’t even see the reality of what his candidacy will do?
I can see it VERY clearly. McDermott will peel away votes almost solely from Mike Nugent because they will both be jockeying for the MODERATE vote. Hess’ tribe is a die-hard, tightly-knit grouping of dweebacrats, a term I just made up to describe Missoula’s bureaucrat/non-profit nexus, aided and abed-ed by the cultural cool kids who like their ice cream served by less uppity laborers.
My campaign will be to warn the conservatives capable of seeing shitty strategy of what’s coming if they choose to attach any part of their anti-Hess hopes to the fantasy of T.J. McDermott’s magical badge. Have you people NOT learned the lesson of Jacob Elder?
Maybe the problem is the person who hasn’t learned the lesson of Jacob Elder is ME. Maybe my disdain for the New Party cabal of “liberal” political schemers has caused me to willfully disregard the stupid political gamesmanship of the Missoula conservatives who lined up behind an absolutely terrible candidate, thus ensuring Mayor Engen’s fifth and final term.
Is this just the result of short-term thinkers who put ego before community, or is there a larger function to the dysfunction of Missoula conservatives? Do they WANT the multi-modal radical, Jordan Hess, to draw their constituents low-information political ire while the almighty greaser of bipartisan politics—MONEY—positions itself to bring home the bacon for things like trains, planes and ELECTRIC automobiles?
Another possibility is Montana’s top Republican, Greg Gianforte, is such a paranoid, insulated billionaire lacking substantive Montana roots that the character of his entire administration is infected, and it’s spreading. I’ll hopefully have a post this week about a logistical dysfunction that seems intentional.
Whatever it is that’s potentially luring local conservatives into supporting former Sheriff McDermott, I hope to discover the cause, and remedy it because the badge ain’t magic, and the worst (for T.J. McDermott) is yet to come.
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Thanks for reading!
Why don’t you run for Mayor Skink? When Greg Strandberg ran, I don’t think he actually thought he had a chance, it was just a creative way of forcing the mainstream media to not be able to ignore him. Done tactfully, it could be a vehicle for promoting alternative narratives that the corporate media won’t give airtime too.
I’ve been residentially outside city limits since 2015, otherwise I would have given it more serious consideration. But there are other ways to help save this BIG County I’m considering 😉
McDermott has been led to believe he has a certain mayoral pre-ordination. Remember, he cut his teeth under Engen. They mutually supported each others campaigns (as well as Pabst). They had fundraisers among same Rattlesnake
glitterati, among the same downtown attorneys and among the same Helena democrats. Through the lack of consequence for campaign violations, McDermott learned that those above/around him would not abandon him as long as his loyalty remained. Rape crisis swept away, Mayoral substance abuse excused, questionable shifting of public funds reinforced this “untouchability”. Hence the lack of accountability for the aforementioned deaths. Shame can be ignored and Ego flourish.
Fully expect Missoula’s finest (including United Way leaders, Poverello leaders, past and present and probably even Ellie and Nick) to align behind McDermott. Money and Power.
Happy New Year!
Spot on, TC.
“…the New Party cabal of “liberal” political schemers…”???? Not clear to me, to which faction you refer… nobody on the Council or declared for the Mayoral race bears resemblance to the New Party.
I also take huge issue with your apparent suggestion that climate change (like the COVID-19 pandemic, I presume?) is a mere rhetorical invention.
I otherwise concur with your observations. Without question, Nugent will seek to appeal to so-called ‘moderates.’
Your characterization of Hess is pretty good; he’s difficult to describe ideologically/policitally. One thing very clear by now is that he is a bureaucracy-builder. He’s also a New Urbanist — which is not per se evil — but its tenets and conceptions of iuban planning require individual scrutiny. He is a neoliberal, and utters platitudes, clichës, euphemisms and buzz words like an automaton.
McDermott running for Mayor will primarily harm Hess, I agree. Shawn Knopp said a few months ago that he intended to run.
There is activity afoot to recruit an anti-Establishment candidate appealing to.libertarians and democratic socialists. And a candidate running solely as a disruptor is not unlikely.
Seems unlikely that whomever is elected will get a majority.
The real battle here, is pro-growth predatory capitalism and limitless construction, vs. DEGROWTH. Degrowth is inevitable. Either we plan, and begin degrowth now, in an effort to achieve a relatively soft landing, or we’ll suffer cataclysmic, chaotic degrowth that produces famine, anarchy, pestilence, etc. etc., — and much sokner than most believe. Big global recession, domestic stagflation, collapse of stocks and real estate markets will cause unprecedented upward transfer of wealth, and unlike the last one, there won’t be a big bailout and the financial market will become highly concentrated.
It’s time to pivot to planning and acting for life in a post-capitalist society if we want to escape a global dust bowl reprise and Mad Max dystopia.
NOTHING escapes the laws of thermodynamics!
INFINITE growth is impossible on a FINITE planet.
The idiocy is well exemplified by that Checota project that the pandemic fortunately nixed, the TIF-sbnsidized mega-vertically-integrated-Leviathan, The Drift. During Checota’s City Council Committee of the Whole dog & pony show, it was stressed that design, etc. was done in a manner consistent with, inter alia, the City’s goal of becoming ‘carbon-neutral’ by 2025. And during citizen comments lamenting that at least twice per month, it was noted that the number of cars on Missoula streets would triple; accordingly, the absurdity of “cutting carbon release’ by utilizing “green architecture” while causing several thousand cars to each drive hundreds of miles, at least twice per week, is evident. This is like trying to lose weight by eating ‘diet ice cream’ all day.
CORRECTION (I wish I could edit!!!): I meant to write that McDermott’s camlaign will mainly harm NUGENT, not Hess.