"Trestin Meacham . . . is now drawing attention to himself by saying he will not eat until Utah’s legislature willingly disobeys the federal government by reinstating its ban on same-sex marriages."
-- from ThinkProgress's Annie-Rose Strasser's "Utah
Politician Is Fasting to Stop Same-Sex Marriages"
Politician Is Fasting to Stop Same-Sex Marriages"
by Ken
Who'd-a thunk it? Me sort of getting behind this, er, principled stand by a Utah far-far-far-right-wing whackjob. Call it the true spirit of bipartisanship, but I hope this Trestin Meacham character continues his fast -- he hasn't eaten since December 21 -- all the way through to the bitter end.
Of course the party with which I'm biparticizing isn't so much your Grand Old One as Utah's Constitution Party, under whose banner our Trestin once ran for the state Senate. True, he got shellacked by a conventionally primitive Utah life form; the Constitution Partiers, I gather, are considered beyond-the-pale-crazy even by normal Utah-crazy standards.
I do have some technical qualms about Trestin's bold plan, even apart from the possibly different perspectives he and I have on it. My chief reservation is that he has made his resumption of eating contingent on the Utah legislature's enacting legislative nullification, declaring that its law trumps federal law. My problem isn't that the Supreme Court has declared state nullification a no-can-do. No, my problem is that, this being Utah, the legislature could just conceivably do it, being after all not all that much smarter or saner than Trestin.
Which would defeat the whole point, which as I see it is for our boy to make good his promise and keep right on wasting away -- at some point he announced that he's lost 25 pounds. He also announced, in a tweet from day 11 (January 1), that he misses Mexican food. He should keep right on wasting away, I say, until he's officially pronounced an ex-nutjob. (Just to be clear, the nutjob is consuming water and vitamins. Hey, who knows? Maybe it'll turn out that a vitamin deficiency has been the root of his problem(s) all along!)
I don't know whether Trestin has left plans for the arrangements following his demise, in the event. If not, he's just having us on when he insists that if the legislature doesn't act, "I am dead." Now I don't know what arrangements he's made, but if I could make a suggestion, I think nothing would be grander than to dispose of the carcass in a giant bonfire. Ideally he can persuade a coterie of fellow nutjobs to join him in his solemn mission, so we can have a really big bonfire. Big enough to celebrate with a giant wienie roast and marshamallow toast. Heck, I'll bring the marshmallows!
Other people will tell you in general seriousness about the wacky things Trestin has done in his utter waste of a life. There's the above-mentioned piece by ThinkProgress's Annie-Rose Strasser (which I saw via Nation of Change), which points out that Utah "is already planning to spend $2 million of taxpayer money trying to defeat the ruling" of federal District Court Judge Robert Shelby overturning the state's laws and constituttional amendment banning same-sex marriage, which the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals declined to stay (before the Supreme Court issued an unsigned two-sentence stay pending the Circuit Court appeal). There's a Daily Kos diary by David Gershon-Harris which includes "some choice nuggets" of the publicly declared "thought" of Trestin Meacham.
I realize I'm late to the party, dumping on this low-life scumbag, but this is one of those cases where you don't mind piling on. Let me just conclude by saying to our brother-in-silliness Trestin:
Solidarity, Brother! Now it's important that you stick to your gunsIt's-an-abomination-blah-blah-blah. . . .
Let me add that you should make a fine carcass! Or at any rate a better carcass than you ever were a living being. And, oh yes, do give some thought to the bonfire idea. Consider, if you really want attention -- and I think Annie-Rose is on to something there -- think how much you'll get at your very own Memorial Wienie Roast and Marshmallow Toast.
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