It’s been a while since Chris Busby libelously claimed that I’m a paid subscriber to The Bollard newsletter in an amusing piece that shows he may still have some fight left in him after all. But I did not want his Oct. 15 missive and subsequent hit pieces to pass without remarking. Sadly — and I do mean, sadly — I’m not a paid subscriber to The Bollard. I might have been 10 years ago when it was counter-cultural, sometimes investigative, and interesting.
Now it’s become leftist drivel. Not even an interesting species of leftist drivel. The once-intriguing left-wing alternative now reminds me of the Family Guy bit mocking Stephen King, where he’s run out of ideas so he grabs a lamp and makes it his scary horror novel antagonist, except Busby and his joyless comrades, with each new edition, tell us in hectoring tones some new thing is misogynist, racist, transphobic, or whatever.
“10 Things You Didn’t Know Are Actually Racist About Maine” … “Revisiting Margaret Chase Smith’s Legacy of White Supremacy” … “Eating Fiddle Heads? You’re Basically Doing a Genocide on the Wabanaki Nation” … “The 20th Maine Was White-Knighting Toxic Masculinity at Its Worst” … “Maine’s ‘Way Life Should Be’ Motto Is Racist Until Old Whites Die Off” … “My Son Is Now My Daughter: How One Mom Became Interesting After Transing Her Kid”
Busby may have lost his nose for interesting news. And insightful writing. And bullshit artists. But at least he’s still reading the Maine Wire, and he was capable of picking up on my clever overuse of the word “machete” to make up for his publication’s whitewashing of history when it comes to the time Leo Hylton took a machete and swung that machete 4-5 times — we don’t really know the real number of machete thwacks — to hack up a 10-year-old white girl’s face so she couldn’t survive as a witness in the armed robbery and attempted murder of her father. For those who are unfamiliar with why Hylton is in prison, you can read my writing on the topic here and here.
I mention the poor girl’s race for the sole purpose of making the only point that really needs to be made here, which is that if Leo Hylton were white and the ten-year-old he mutilated with a machete were black, Busby would not be entertaining the same notions about parole, forgiveness, and restorative justice. An Irish, English, Scottish, or French-Canadian man guilty of the same crimes—regardless of the victims’ race—would never elicit the kind of fawning treatment from the left, even if he’d followed Hylton’s footsteps to become a model inmate. We used to call it racism when people treated other people differently based on their race. Now we call it equity, and if you don’t agree with equity-based racism then you are, well, a racist. But the wrong kind. Not the kind The Bollard hires as writers.
[RELATED: Parole Reform Poster Child Tried to Murder Maine Family with Machete…]
Busby’s devotion to Hylton’s cause isn’t based entirely on the man’s race, though. He has also judged the quasi-celeb jailbird worthy of clemency (and sycophantic adoration) because, despite his incarceration, he’s reached the peak of leftist virtue: he’s a PhD candidate. Leftist morality, such as it is, equates higher education credentials to virtue and moral goodness. That is, for some progressives, the more certificates you have from a college or a university (not including Liberty or Hillsdale), the better you are as a person. Trump-voting high school dropouts with no criminal records and good church attendance records are considered inferior compared to a guy like Hylton precisely because of the degrees he got in Whogivesafuck Studies from Progressive U.
Has Hylton become a changed man and a better human being? Has he helped other inmates and learned the error of his ways? Is he thoughtful, learned, and capable of contributing to society in meaningful ways but for his incarceration? It seems like the answer to all of those questions is yes. It’s a separate question, however, as to whether Hylton should be free before his sentence ends in 2050.
The restorative justice ilk, including The Bollard and Hylton’s Colby College beau, claim the only non-racist and morally correct answer is yes, he should be free, and now. Unlike them, I’m not so sure the answer to the question is obvious. Unlike them, I think that there’s a more important factor than how many books Hylton has read, how many inmates he has counseled, or how his personal moral compass has shifted. Namely, his victims. Throughout their crusade to bring back parole in Maine or to shame Gov. Janet Mills into granting Hylton clemency, The Bollard has displayed a callous indifference toward the suffering of the Guerrette family, and especially the father and daughter whose lives were changed forever the night Hylton decided to visit evil on their home.
The pain the whole Guerrette family must feel watching a Colby College professor and many in Maine’s media tickling Hylton’s jimmies at every turn must be immense. Can you imagine how a young woman might feel to see her childhood attacker celebrated in this way? Or to watch his inevitable multi-million dollar DEI speaking tour en route to Instagram influencer stardom and a spot on some government commission? That doesn’t appear to be something that Hylton’s advocates have contemplated because their sympathy is reserved only for the perpetrator of the crimes. If anything, The Bollard‘s writing drips with barely hidden contempt for former Maine State Rep. William Guerrette for failing to get on board with its peculiar version of justice.
Would Hylton, as Busby claims, use some money earned after becoming free to make things right? Let’s say he would. What is the going price for robbing someone of their childhood? How much money makes a lifetime of trauma and fear and night terrors go away? Will he be able to earn enough money and use his PhD in Social Justice to invent a time machine and travel back to 2008 and stop himself from permanently disfiguring a ten-year-old girl (with a machete, by the way)?
These are the kinds of questions Busby doesn’t allow to get in the way of his righteous pursuit of some myopic vision of justice. Perhaps he’s spending too much time reading the comments on Maine Wire articles. I wouldn’t advise anyone to read the comments on Maine Wire articles—or any articles, for that matter. Instead, why not read what former Rep. Guerrette had to say during the most recent hearing for legislation that would have allowed for Hylton’s early release:
My life and the life of my daughter have been irreparably damaged by a brutal home invasion and attempted murder by machete at the hands of Leo Hilton. My daughter and l both have irreparably brain damage and the childhood of my sweet ten year old daughter was stolen. My 33 year marriage was also a victim and my family broken up.
The miracle from God that my daughter survived after being called deceased at the scene would be irreparably harmed by the parole of our attempted murderers. She will likely be forced to move from our state by constant fear. The fact that my daughter’s mental ability, childhood, and lifelong security were stolen by men that chose to kill her rather than leave a witness to my murder.
Criminals have been sentenced based on a system without parole. To bring back parole will again victimize my family. Please do not be part of that. l love Maine and its people. We are a beautiful and safe state. Please do not re-victimize the Maine victims of violent crime.
Busby offers a more sterile narrative, writing that Guerrette’s injuries were “non-fatal” and offering, almost as an aside, that his daughter was “also seriously injured that night.”
It’s hard to take seriously someone’s talk about justice, or really anything, when they show that kind of callous indifference to human suffering.
Sick leftists.
Prison is not for the incarcerated. It doesn’t matter how many degrees he gets, whether he says his prayers five times a day, or whether he repents.
Prison is to protect everyone on the outside. Nothing anyone does in prison mitigates his original crime.
I picked up a copy of “The Bollard “ the other day at Hannaford’s .
Some cool ads . Too Weird comics . General garbage paper overall .
A good wood stove fire starter .
Not much else .
Keep the Machete Guy in prison . He deserves to be there .
The Bollard, huh? Now there’s a name I haven’t heard I long time now. Didn’t even know that liberal rag was still kicking around until I read your article today. Guess I’ll have to go out and see if I can find a physical free copy for myself today. Such a funny a little rag full of funny little people who ain’t even true mainers (Unlike myself who’s from a family of 12th generational Mainers). Must be a slow news day for y’all if ya feeling threatened by a rag that’s run by a bunch of trust fund hippies. Back in the good ol days a man would just give their slanderous neighbor a visit at their place of work and set the poor disguised fella straight. Now a days the youth just whinge about how their feelings were hurt inside little newspaper columns that hardly anyone reads. Very sad. The youth of our party just keeps on getting weaker and weaker with each new year. We use to be a such a great nation. Now we’re a bunch of old men who are forced to watch a bunch of overeducated babies cry about their feelings on their computers.
Unfortunate about Busby. He was an investigator at one time and dug up skeletons in the graveyard of politics. Why he morphed into a left-wing angry commenter is a mystery. Sensitivity has become a rare commodity in the world of politics on both sides of the River Styx.
“Has Hylton become a changed man and a better human being? Has he helped other inmates and learned the error of his ways? Is he thoughtful, learned, and capable of contributing to society in meaningful ways but for his incarceration? It seems like the answer to all of those questions is yes.”
SEAMS is the key word. Inmate Hylton is the same arrogant, self-entitled, narcissistic, person he always has been. If anything, even more so from the adulation of the moonbats, and being untouchable thanks to Randle Liberty, MDOC, and the MSP admin. All the “good works” he has done while incarcerated are just a means to an end. All you have to do to see this is observe him away from his protective fan club, ask any corrections officer that isn’t afraid of losing his job by telling the truth, or God forbid tell him “no”.
Randy don’t bother trying to ferret me out, I’m retired. Maybe you would like to chase me down and try to pull me out of my car like you have done to others in the past.