In This Issue: The New Dominion Podcast – Michael Bush | Commentary: Why laws don’t matter without civic virtue | Theater Review: Misery
New Dominion Podcast
Michael Bush is a candidate for supervisor in Spotsylvania County’s Courtland District. Bush talks to us about his time at Chancellor High School, his experiences at Christopher Newport University, and his motivations to run for public office. Just skip to the 35:45 and 40:00 mark for a real moment. Thank you, Ms. Foreman!
Votes, Civics, and A ‘Difficult Space’
NOW came to Spotsylvania on Sunday afternoon, but abortion access wasn’t the driving issue. Rather, it was bringing awareness to voter manipulation by Nick Ignacio (candidate for Clerk of Court in Spotsylvania) and Steve Maxwell (candidate for sheriff) at the Early Voting site in Spotsylvania.
The blatant misinformation these two have been pushing is a concern not only for citizens locally, but for the health of democracy in this region moving forward.
The question that circulates among those in the county who have learned of the issue, but don’t necessarily track politics closely, is a good one. “Can’t we do something about this?”
According to Sen. Jeremy McPike, D-SD 29, this is playing out in a “difficult space.”
There appears to be no specific law in the Virginia State Code that prevents people from passing out misinformation at the polls, though a case could be made.
Unfortunately, that’s a case that would have to play out between the state Board of Elections and the court system. So while it’s possible to revise the code to address this particular concern, the election will be long past by the time that conclusion is reached.
Hence, the “difficult space” that this situation is playing out in.
Can anyone stop what’s going on?
At the center of this difficult space is Kelli Acors, the General Registrar of Spotsylvania.
The line of thinking is that she, and she alone, has the authority to put a stop to the nonsense occurring outside the Early Voting site. According to Troy Skebo of the Spotsylvania Sheriff’s Department, who was also present Sunday, Acors says the answer to that belief is “No.”
Nicole Cole, who sits on the school board in Spotsylvania County, would argue that Acors most likely does. Cole points to the registrar in Henrico County, who has strictly enforced rules about signage (only at tables), and campaign staff (no more than three at a site per candidate).
Acors setting those two rules alone would greatly improve the situation in Spotsylvania right now.
This isn’t the first time this campaign season, however, that Acors has found herself embroiled in controversy. This summer, the Advance broke the story that Acors counted as valid the signatures collected on January 1, 2023, by Ignacio and Maxwell in violation of the Board of Election’s own guidelines.
Had she not counted them, as would have been correct, Ignacio and Maxwell wouldn’t have had enough signatures to be placed on the ballot.
It’s an error that she admitted to making in her interview with the Advance.
[We asked] Acors via email what her understanding of the correct date to receive signatures actually is.
Her answer to us on Tuesday?
“Post these inquires, calls and emails, yes – 1/2/year in question not the beginning of that election ‘cycle’ which is the beginning of the year.”
McPike requested a ruling from Attorney General Jason Miyares around the time we broke this story. To date, Miyares has not weighed in.
The law, in short, can’t, or won’t, fix what has been broken in Spotsylvania.
Laws and Civic Virtue
What can fix the moral rot on display in Spotsylvania is to regain our commitment to the unwritten civic virtues that have long guided our behavior, and which Ignacio and Maxwell have clearly abandoned.
These civic virtues are broad and necessary in a free society. It isn’t possible to pass enough laws to touch every single immoral action people may take. And in any case, once something is written down, then the quest begins to find the next “difficult space” where Machiavellian ideology – i.e., “So long as I win, the tactics I use are right” – can take hold.
We have been, for the better part of 200 years, a pragmatic people who have balanced law and civic virtues.
Pardon my reference to a Dead White Thinker, but Ralph Waldo Emerson explicitly outlined this distinction in 1838, when he delivered the “Divinity School Address” at Harvard.
Aimed at criticizing Christianity’s rigid laws and requirements to be involved in a religious community, Emerson instead charted a path toward a more-open type of spirituality. One that has each person getting in touch with the divine inside of themselves.
If that seems a far stretch from the political reality we’re living in, consider what Emerson writes:
The sentiment of virtue is a reverence and delight in the presence of certain divine laws. It perceives that this homely game of life we play, covers, under what seem foolish details, principles that astonish. … These laws refuse to be adequately stated. They will not be written out on paper, or spoken by the tongue. They elude our persevering thought; yet we read them hourly in each other’s faces, in each other’s actions, in our own remorse.
(Emphasis added.)
We might summarize what Emerson captured this way. We don’t need laws to know that what is happening in Spotsylvania is wrong. We see it in the faces of the perpetrators, who cling to the ambiguities in the written law to justify immoral behavior.
Candidates should “win a vote honestly” by educating voters and helping them know who to support, McPike told the Advance, “not trick voters.”
We concur. And it shouldn’t take a law to put a stop to what is happening in Spotsylvania. The underlying moral laws of moral action and character, upon which our laws exist, should be more than enough.
If Spotsylvania is to regain the integrity it has ceded to the Maxwells and Ignacios of the county, leaders and people of good faith need to enforce the civic virtues by insisting the inaccurate documents not be allowed at the site.
The question is, do we still have enough of an attachment to the virtues of democracy to so act.
Emerson has shown the way. Let us follow.
Theater Review: Misery adapted by William Goldman from Stephen King’s novel
Produced by Fredericksburg Theatre Ensemble; purchase tickets
Upcoming performances: 8 PM on October 20, 21, 27 and 28; 6 PM on October 22 and 29
Reviewed by Dennis Wemm
THEATER CRITIC
For his story The Final Problem, Arthur Conan Doyle killed off his most popular character, Sherlock Holmes. Ten years later he brought him back to life. Why? His fans and publisher pressured him to by writing letters, circulating petitions, and generally making pests of themselves.
For his new romance novel, Misery’s Child, the fictional Paul Sheldon (Michael Slattery) has killed off his most popular character, Misery. He has no intention of bringing her back to life.
Within weeks after publication of the story, his number 1 fan (Margot Moser as Annie Wilkes) will save his life and pressure him to bring Misery back. But unlike Sherlock’s fans, she’s only one nurse with low self-esteem, sociopathy, a lonely house in the Rockies, and…well…she doesn’t write letters and sign petitions. Her methods are a lot more direct. Will she win in her fight to resurrect Misery?
The final production of Fredericksburg Theatre Ensemble’s season hews close to the spirit of the novel. Goldman’s script is spare. It is made up of a number of different short scenes that patch together events in the same way that Paul experiences them.
He’s an ordinary guy who is making a break with his old life and writing The Great Modern Novel. He’s trying to find himself, you see. Finishing his Modern Novel, he drives off from a mountain hotel where he always finishes them, and crashes his car near where Annie lives.
She rescues him, sedates him, and sets his broken lower legs and fractured arm. She hovers over him because the same snowstorm that crashed Paul’s Mustang closed off her house from the outside world.
And she really, really likes Misery. Paul’s secret, that he has killed Misery off, becomes the inciting incident in her descent into madness. In the words of the director, Melissa Hennessey, “reality clashing with her fantasies propels her into a spiral of depression that proves that maybe you really shouldn’t meet your heroes.”
So, essentially for over two hours they play a cat and mouse game to bring Misery to life. The dynamics of this unlikely couple are full of melodramatic twists. Will Paul’s tiny rebellions and attempts at breaking free succeed? Will Annie finally succumb to the need to refine Paul’s new manuscript into her ideal Misery book?
Over two hours and two actors having 95% of the scenes! Do they do it? Yes. How? By Annie truthfully, honestly, and moment by moment kicking Paul’s figurative butt to carry out the next step in her plan. By Paul truthfully, honestly, and moment by moment doing his best to break free, resist, protest, whine, bellow, and plot to get out of her plan when Annie holds every card in her hand. It’s a chess match with their ultimate opponent with survival on the line.
There are some issues: Goldman builds his scenes telegraphically, short scenes, short message, and quick cuts to the next. His play resists realistic staging because of this mercurial jumping. But the play’s language doesn’t stop to explain why a character is doing something and requires a costume or set change do that. On Broadway, the hydraulics and electric motors would move the set, breakaway costumes would change in split seconds.
Here, we have a dedicated stage crew running through well-rehearsed changes in tiny dark places in full view of the audience. We need to “hold that thought” from the end of the previous scene. It’s a race to keep our focus and momentum and memory engaged until the story gets fully, visually told.
I feel that we need to mention other elements that add to this successful performance, most of which add up to an honesty that is refreshing. Pedro Echeverria’s performance as Sheriff Buster solves the mystery of Paul’s disappearance just in time and too late at the same time.
The sound effects are timed perfectly and support the show with appropriately ironic tunes and stings. The lighting is the most effective I’ve seen used in the shared 810 Caroline theatre space. Lovely detailing in the scene painting, properties that are spot on, a very cute crossover solution that plays perfectly to the cat and mouse timing of a scene. Stage violence, done well, shouldn’t hurt anyone. This violence is choreographed to a T and all works very well indeed.
As the play starts you are warned of a whole lot of triggers. I would take the warnings about staged violence, false blood, recorded gunshots, and the presence of safe firearms seriously. Very strong language is used frequently. The very similar movie version was rated R. Think twice about bringing young children to the play.
However, if you are not a young child and like a good, serious, psychological thriller, performances are at 8 PM on October 20, 21, 27 and 28; and at 6 PM on October 22 and 29. You should go.
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