EDITOR’S COLUMN: A tough week for Wasilla’s freshman legislators

David Eastman often says things that are — to put it mildly — meant to be incendiary and provocative.

Usually when he does this, wearing a tie, glasses and hair cut that complete his impression as a Boy Scout all grown up, he starts by making a bold statement meant to get everyone’s attention.

He sure had the attention of Alaska State Troopers Captain Hans Brinke when he opened his remarks at the end of a town hall on SB91 by claiming the first thing he would do is do away with the Alaska State Troopers.

Of course, it turned out he only meant that mostly just sarcastically, which became clear to Brinke, and the rest of the room, as Eastman droned for better than five minutes of snarky academic exercise.

The point to Eastman’s game is to make everything return to a politically philosophical point — one that could best be described as inspired by Ayn Rand and infused by Ronald Reagan.

In his attempt to get to his long-and-winding point, Eastman will often use syllogisms that inevitably maroon him on the rocks of false choice and slippery slope fallacies.

Other times, he’ll just lose sight of his clichés altogether.

That happened when he criticized fellow Wasilla freshman legislator David Wilson for Wilson’s achievement of actually getting a bill through the Republican-led Senate, and then the Democrat-led House, all the way to the governor’s desk.

Eastman did not like this piece of legislation, which merely sought to honor the work of African Americans in constructing the Alaska Highway. He did not like it because, he said, government shouldn’t be in the process of ‘picking winners and losers’, because, after all, didn’t plenty of white people help build the road, too?

But ‘picking winners and losers’ is a phrase conservatives use to describe government intervention into a competitive business environment, which is awfully ironic for anyone to say in Alaska, where the state not only intervenes, it often competes directly against businesses and controls the means of production. How it applies to honoring works of the past makes no sense at all, and besides, if government at any level has been picking winners and losers between races, it’s pretty clear to see it’s hands-down chosen white folks as the winners.

But last week, Eastman took a bizarre diversion from his usual pattern to offer an amendment to a house bill designed to fight sexual abuse.

“The ultimate form of child abuse,” he said, going on to say. “We have folks who try to get pregnant in this state so that they can get a free trip to the city, and we have folks who want to carry their baby past the point of being able to have an abortion in this state so that they can have a free trip to Seattle.”

What???

No syllogism here. The only ‘isms’ at play here are sexism and implied racism on completely unsourced accusations.

It’s reported the House is considering censuring him for his comments.

Here’s hoping they do.