Recently during my daily walk along the Augusta Rail Trail, I snapped this photo. The graffiti shown here are not particularly bad, and I include them merely to show that the problem has become much worse over the past two or three years.
There are many worse examples in the city. One graffito is written high up on the second level of the State Parking Garage, next to the State House. It says "Art is not a Crime." It has been in plain view of the public for at least two years, despite several efforts to clean the entire garage. Across State Street there is still another graffito written on the back wall of an abandoned gas station, two blocks from the
Augusta, Maine graffiti
Blaine House. This, I was told, might be a gang "tag" left behind by drug dealers.
Mainers need to know that graffiti is a far worse threat for us here in Maine than it is for people in other parts of the country. The reasons are three-fold.
First, graffiti symbolizes lawlessness and disorder. From the outset, the method in which graffiti is produced is illicit and unlawful. Its techniques are anarchic and without order, as is its finished result. Second, graffiti demoralizes the public. Those who have lived in major American cities know that in urban neighborhoods, graffiti goes hand-in-hand with crime. It also goes hand-in-hand with rundown neighborhoods and cyclone fences. Thirdly, and this is the worst threat, graffiti calls into question Maine's reputation as a "place set a part" a region which is safer and more wholesome than the rest of the nation.
When it comes to defacing historic homes and public monuments, no building is considered off limits. A first-time visitor to Grants Tomb in the 1980s was horrified to see the tomb covered over with gangland-style graffiti, its edges and cornices crumbling. It is easy to see how the same thing could happen here, to Monument Square in Portland, the Paul Bunyan Statue in Bangor, and more of our public buildings in Augusta.
Longfellow Square graffiti
Which leads me to the very uncomfortable question of why is graffiti considered art at all. In Portland, a towering street mural shows the purported evils of the Bush administration, drawn in the style of graffiti. Nearby are public statues, put up at great expense to the taxpayers, which are not that much different from graffiti.
Ours is an age which prefers disorder over order, at least in the realm of art and music; and we can easily see that the same disorder has spread through virtually every institution, including our schools, our financial markets, and our government.
The last institution to escape unscathed is marriage and the family, and that, too, is about to be revised with the introduction of same-sex marriage. The society which can be fooled into thinking that graffiti is art can just as easily be deceived into believing that same-sex marriage is marriage. It is all a question of the gradual decay of societal values, the loss of the unifying principles which give life and integrity to the whole. This, after all, is the definition of corruption.
There are some stains like the spray paint on granite or marble that can be scrubbed or sandblasted out. There are some forms of moral disorder which taint a society deep down to the bone, and these will not be erased so soon.
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