He which hath no stomach to this fight,
Let him depart; his passport shall be made,
And crowns for convoy put into his purse;
We would not die in that man's company
That fears his fellowship to die with us.
Shakespeare, Henry V.
The views of average Wyomingites, by a huge margin, are clear on public lands. We want them to remain public.
And yet our Congressman voted to transfer 500,000 of FEderal land in Arizona and Utah over to private hands. It's clear that at least one of our Senators is okay with doing something similar in Teton County.
Wyomingites aren't in favor of this at all. Indeed, one of the most rabid Trumpites I know actually expressed bewildered opposition to this.
So here's the problem, and the question.
Why are Wyomingites still supporting the people who support this?
Politics are varied and complicated. The reasons that Wyoming has gone so far to the right in its recent politics are as well. A lot of it has to do with social issues, abortion, transgenderism, immigration, and so on, and much of that, here, has to do with the death of the Democratic Party and there being, seemingly, no where else to go.
But at least on the local level there certainly is, and what Wyomingites are presently doing is not in their own best interest.
Much of what they're currently doing is, frankly, based on a host of lies. Donald Trump was not the victim of a stolen election with Joe Biden won. Joe Biden won. Global warming is not a fib. The long drift away from coal cannot be arrested. The state's petroleum industry was never under any governmental assault (leases went up under Biden). There is no war on the West. The region's agricultural sector isn't under governmental attack, but rather under real estate developer attack. The Democrats really weren't advancing gun control.
But we've been bought off on a bunch of dramatic assertions designed to cause the rise up of what plaintiff's lawyers call our "lizard brain".
Well, now we have a whole host of legislators, many from out of state, who don't share local values at all, and a Congressional delegation that is more interested in supporting the agenda of the far right and its ostensible leader, a nearly 79 year old real estate developer suffering from dementia, than paying attention to what we actually believe.
And that's because that's exactly what we let them do.
In reality, those close to the inside know that John Barrasso doesn't believe what he's supporting. It's pretty clear from her past that Cynthia Lummis doesn't either. Harriet Hageman, well she probably does, as she's a political family that has always had this set of views. Having said that, and importantly, she intends to run for Governor next election and Chuck Gray, who is a Californian with very little connection to Wyoming, will run for House.
In the next election Wyomingites have a chance to make their views known, although they really need to start doing so right now. That can have an impact. John Barrasso, in the last election, adopted a whole host of new views he probably doesn't hold at all to hold off an attack from his right. Lummis just quietly mostly didn't say what her views actually are the last time she ran, which she could do under the circumstances, and which leaves her room to maneuver.
Maneuvering will, it must be noted, need to occur. In 2026 the House is going to be Democratic and the MAGA reign will be over, save for in Wyoming, where there's every reason to belive it will keep on keeping on.
Much of this, we'd note, is perfectly consistent with Wyoming's history. Early on Wyoming sent a solidly Republican group of legislatures to our solon in Cheyenne in spite of its association with large outside agricultural interest which were oppressing local interest. That didn't end until the invasion of Johnson County in 1892 which briefly swept the Republicans out of power, and brought Democrats into the legislature and which sent Governor Barber packing, although not until after he tried to actually remain as Governor a la Trump insurrection in a way. That event, however, shows the electorate can react. It also shows us that politicians can too, as Francis E. Warren managed to survive the event, career entact, when really she shouldn't have, by changing views.
And this is happening in Montana, which was a little in advance of Wyoming in tilting to the far right, right now.
Just sitting and complaining "well that's not what we think" won't get much done.
Politicians from any party ought to represent the views of their state. They ought to also intelligently lead. There's not much intelligence being manifested in the populist far right, which is mostly acting with a primitive response on a set of social issues combined with false beliefs, andy in Wyoming, with views they brought up from their own states which don't have much to do with us here. We aren't Sweet Home Alabama.
But that won't happen unless Wyomingites educate themselves as to the truth, and what is truly going on, and how they're simply being fed raw meat for the dogs. Until that occurs, we're going to go further into the abyss.
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