On Brookline

Looking back on Tuesday’s installment of the Arthur Conquest follies, I think I know why the Brookline Selectmen are firmly in the grip of insanity.

Conquest presents them with an opportunity to be progressive in matters of civil rights. But town government’s ideology is that of the movement conservative - robbing the treasury, pitting us against them, and a crippling fear of lost control (which is more than being stuck at the second tier of Maslowe’s hierarchy).

But there’s more to it than that.

You can hear it in the way speakers in support of the police detail how long they’ve lived in Brookline (some as long as 40 years). You can see it as they chortle over remembrances of chasing criminals on foot and flak jackets being issued for fun. And you can feel it in the disdain that “Brookline’s own” have for all who take a view opposite theirs.

The PDs supporters said nothing of substance, or anything remotely relevant to the Conquest matter on Tuesday, but Selectman’s Chair Nancy Daly let them prattle on. Not so for the speakers who were urging a little justice for the man, they were interrupted repeatedly by Daly. That’s because Daly couldn’t give a damn about Arthur Conquest, or whether the PD needs to be hemmed in.

No, Daly wants - indeed she needs - to be one of the boys.

And being one of the boys means that you look out for Danny, Bobby or Larry. It means that you can ask all you want, but he selectmen are not going to do what’s right, even if it means someone has to live with the wrong the rest of their lives (more on that next week). And it means having to endure Daly smirking like an idiot all the way through.

It’s true that pride is the first thing to go before a fall. And it seems to me that the shamelessness with which our aging yahoos have comported themselves in the Conquest matter is a signal that reason has been lost to them, and that fear is beginning to overwhelm them.

We’re at a seminal moment for Brookline, one reminiscent of the coffee shop scene in “No Country for Old Men” where two sheriffs lament that the day has arrived when they can imagine kids in their Texas towns dying their hair green.

Brookline is dying its hair green and the old crusts can’t understand why.

Nor can they stop it. Especially when all they have going for them are Selectmen Nancy Daly, Bobby Allen and Jesse Mermell. I think it’s pretty clear to everyone that those three have not helped their cause. And I’d be willing to bet we won’t see Nancy Daly’s smirk after the May election.

Oh boy.