It's a movie that I haven't reviewed yet (I guess this will have to suffice for the review), in spite of an effort here to catch movies of interest that are "period pieces", if you will, which all non fantasy movies set in the past are.
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid is a romanticized and fictionalized version of the story of the two Wyoming centered Western criminals who ranged over the entire state and into the neighboring ones. In the film, which is set in the very early 1900s before they fled to Boliva, and which follows them into Bolivia, the two, portrayed by film giants Paul Newman (Butch) and Robert Redford (Cassidy), come across as lovable rogues, and barely rogues at that. The film had a major impact at the box office and came in an era in which the frequently predicted "end of the Western movies" had already come.
The Hole In The Wall Gang, lead by (Robert LeRoy Parker) Butch Cassidy, far right, and Harry Lonabaugh (the Sundance Kid). This photograph was a stupid move and lead to their downfall.
So how accurate is it?
Well, pretty mixed.
Even the Pinkerton Detective Agency allows that they are the two romanticized Western criminals, and there are quite a few romanticized Western criminals, are closest to their public image. They were intelligent men and got away with their depredations in part as there were locals who liked them well enough not to cooperate with authorities, although that was also true of much less likable Western criminals. And the vast majority of characters in the film represent real figures who filled the roles that they are portrayed as having in the film. So in that sense, its surprisingly accurate.
Where it really fails, of course, is in glossing over the fact that they were in fact violent criminals. And as outlaws their history is both violent and odd for the era. The Wild Bunch, the criminal gang with which they are most associated, was extremely loosely created, and people came and went, rather than there being just one single group of outlaws. The Wild Bunch itself generally took refuge, when it needed to, in Johnson County's Hole in the Wall region (their cabin exists to this day) and perhaps because of this or because of several of them being associated with the Bassett sisters, the daughters of a local small rancher, their activities oddly crossed back and forth between pure criminality and association with the small rancher side of the conflict that lead to the Johnson County War. This latter fact, once again, may have contributed to their image as lovable criminals, even though they themselves were not in the category of individuals like Nate Champion who were actual small cattlemen who were branded as criminals by larger cattle interest. The gang was, rather, made up of actual criminals.
So the depiction of them simply attacking the evil (in the film) Union Pacific is off the mark. They were thieves. Just less despicable thieves than most.
They did go to Bolivia and their lives did end there, according to the best evidence. The film accurately portrays their demise coming in the South American country even if it grossly exaggerates that end, persistent rumors of at least Butch's survival aside.
Material detail wise the film is so so. This late 1960s movie came at a time at which a high degree in material details, a bar set by Lonesome Dove, hadn't yet arrived, so the appearance of things reflects the movie styles of the late 1960s more than the actual appearance of things in the early 1900s. Arms, however, are correct as in this movie making era the tendency to try to stand out by showing unique items in use hadn't arrived.
All things being considered, it is a great Western and well worth seeing. It belied the belief that the era of Westerns was over, and in some ways it recalls earlier sweet treatment of Western criminals who were supposed to be just wild boys at heart. Nobody gets killed in the film until Butch and Sundance do at the bitter end, which contributes to that. In reality, The Wild Bunch is likely a more realistic portray of Western criminals, but this is a great film.
Okay, what about that whole line. You know, the one Justice Stevens brought up. Assuming that the US military isn't going to attempt a coup, as after all it hasn't for over 200 years, and assuming that the government isn't going to misuse the military in a dictatorial way, which it hasn't ever done, can't we assume at this point that the government. . .well it'd have to be governments given the incorporation of the Second Amendment by the Fourteenth, can protect everyone well enough that we don't really need a right to keep and bear arms anymore?
Police in a SWAT team, in this case actually Air Force APs in a SWAT team. Ironically, these USAF APs are donning less in the way of combat gear and apparel than a lot of modern police forces do. This police force is militarized by default, but do we really want a country with a huge amount of police, and militarized police at that?
In other words, was John Paul Stevens correct, historically? Basically what he was saying, was, well sure, when there was a legitimate fear that Congress would do away with state militias and co-opt 100% of the armed forces in the United States there was a real risk that there'd be a dictatorship that would come in, but that's not a risk now. The military isn't going to be used by the government to depose state sovereignty and the military itself isn't going to engage in a coup. There isn't going to be a Seven Days In May, Dr. Strangelove, Manchurian Candidate or Fail Safe event, in other words*
Well, starting with those assumptions and Stevens statement, let's assume something else. If there was no Second Amendment, state and Federal governments would in fact restrict the right to keep and bear arms.
No, they likely wouldn't take all the firearms away. Even nations with heavy restrictions don't do that. Contrary to the purveyor of Facebook memes, for example, people can and do own guns in Japan. You can own military style semi automatics in quite a few countries (most notably those with strong democratic habits). You can own handguns in quite a few more. So it wouldn't be the case that everything would be taken away.**
But there would certainly be a lot more restrictions than there currently are, no doubt. And a lot of those restrictive provisions would be drafted by people who are completely clueless about firearms at that.
And with history being our guide, we can presume that once the restrictions starts they just keep rolling. The UK didn't have any meaningful firearms restrictions until after World War One and they were very mild until after World War Two. Now their restrictions are severe and have gone far beyond any rational relationship to any threat of violence the nation's citizens actually faced. That's the typical pattern. As regulations are drafted by those who seek to restrict, rather than those who seek to use, that's the natural trend line. That's why no racing fan, for example, would want me to draft up regulations for stock car racing and why no football fan would turn over football regulation to me.
But setting aside the points I raised in my other posts of John Paul Steven's comments, what about the underlying point he raised. The whole worry is now past us and so we no longer need a Second Amendment.
Well, to do that, we need to grasp why we had one in the first place, and Stevens got part of that right. The states were worried about a coup and by preventing the Federal disbandment of their militias, their concern was partially alleviated.
That fear isn't quite correctly expressed, as that dimension of it was only partial. The framers didn't want a standing army as standing armies were a threat to democracy. A militia isn't a standing army, so the defense establishment of the United States was originally based on militias. Indeed, to a significant degree it remains so, in the form of the National Guard, which is a type of militia.*-* No standing army, was the thought, no threat of a coup.
But the thought was actually much more than that. No standing army meant that a future Congress or President couldn't wipe out the sovereignty of the states. No standing army, no ability to occupy Connecticut. You get the point.***
But even broader than that, a militia based defense based on armed citizens let people take care of their own immediate security problems.
That had been the nation's history up until then, and it would be for quite some time after, and in recent years with the draw down of the Cold War military, it's become very much the case again. We'll address if it still is below. But colonial militias had been 99% of the people's protection against any threat, internal, external, native, etc., from Plymouth Colony on. Not just in the case of big wars, mind you, but also in the case of small local matters of importance. Local wars, local violence, all manners of things that required an armed defense.
And a lot of times that armed defense was exceedingly local. One Indian band that rose up. . . or one band of highwaymen that terrorized a route. Things of that type.*-*-*
But that's all gone now, right? Because you can depend on the government to handle all of this. Right?
Well. . . not so much.
Imperial Chinese walled city. In modern times, quite a few wealthier communities in the US have begun to take on this visage.
A really comfortable aspect of this argument, for people who make it, is
that's what the police are for and the police can protect you. It's
highly ironic that this argument comes in an era in which every
substantial city I've been to in recent years has walled in communities
and some have private security. People in Steven's class make this
argument but then (and I don't know about him personally) they drive
through security gates and go into what are little walled compounds,
much like Medieval cities. Most of the rest of everyone lives outside
the walls, where presumably the barbarians are.
This alone would suggest that if the police can really handle everything then the same class of people who so frequently argue that must be paranoid. No threat, no need for walls.
Or maybe there is.
Assuming that you are like most people, and you have no need of "new walls", or of your own private samurai, you might at least have something to consider.
Let's stop and talk about Samurai for a second?
Really?
Yes, really. The analogy might be more useful than it might at first appear.
In Medieval Japan, samurai were basically self employed. That is, they attached themselves to an employer, and were fiercely loyal to that employer.
They were also the only class that was allowed to own military arms.
Now, that should be disturbing.
In Steven's future United States I'm quite confident that the folks who guard gated communities would fit into some exception where they'd get to carry arms. Private security, I'm sure, would get a pass, employed by the rich as they would be. The rich and industry for that matter.
Are you disturbed yet? Well if not, you are a trusting soul indeed.
Shades of 1688 there.
Indeed, not only did that not work well in Japan, it didn't work well in the United States, and we have plenty of evidence of that.
Some of that evidence is from my very own backyard. The Wyoming Stock Growers Association, in the late 19th Century, employed range detectives who were indeed armed. Of course everyone was armed, but they, even as privately employed men, were given the power of arrest, which was perfectly legal (railroad detectives, also privately employed, retain that right today). And it is pretty clear that right was abused in Wyoming.
Indeed the Stock Growers Association came so comfortable with the use of force it used it on a massive scale, the Johnson County War, which was halted by private citizens somewhat under the leadership of the Johnson County Sheriff's Office. Armed on their own, they intervened to stop a private army.
And this isn't the only example of this in the United States. If you don't like 19th Century examples, take 20th Century ones. The armed police of coal companies back in Pennsylvania. . . the armed police of mining entities in Ludlow Colorado (augmented by the Colorado National Guard, as luck would have it). . . the armed employees of mining companies in New Mexico that expelled IWW strikers. . . examples aren't hard to find. And you can find them at least up until the mid 20th Century.
Not so much since then, to be sure, but since then we haven't exactly had an industry and private monopoly on force and we've had a really open and quick press. Do you trust the rich, well connected and powerful so much that you figure that era is truly past us if there's a monopoly on force.
Tom Horn. . . an armed industry assassin of the 20th Century.
But let's go the next step, having explored that, how much of a danger in everyday life, leaving aside a nightmarish private police force future, in the current real life world of today?
This is where I'll be frankly I've tended to dismiss many on the most extreme pro gun part of this argument. Indeed, I've done it just recently where I argued that Americans shouldn't really go around pretending that the Battle of Stalingrad is going to break out in their neighborhoods. And they shouldn't. But that doesn't mean that all Americans lead a threat free life by any means. And it also doesn't mean that the police can really protect everyone either.
German lieutenants in Stalingrad. . . these guys probably aren't coming to your neighborhood.
So let's be frank about the police. The long time motto, often unofficial, of police forces in the US used to be "To protect and serve". And while I've criticized the police here a lot, that's what they try to do. But to really believe that the police can protect 100% of all people all the time is frankly just flat out absurd. Plain resort to the news will show that as often police's role starts after a crime is committed.
Now, crime is going down in the US, dramatically, particularly violent crime, and I've already addressed that more than once. But is that because we have a lot more policemen in the country than we used to?
I don't think so.
It's probably simply going down for demographic reasons. Gun advocates will say that the reduction of gun control has played a role in that, and there's at least some evidence that is in fact true. What clearly isn't the case is that more gun control reduces crime nor does anyone ever seem to think that if they pass gun control laws they need to dramatically increase the number of police.
And dramatically increasing the number of policemen in the country would be what would really be necessary to make any kind of impact in this area. The increase would have to be enormous. It'd have to reach the point where every public building had an armed police force and every building generally open to the public. Can we imagine a country in which there's be two or three policemen at every popular bar and restaurant? I doubt it.
And we wouldn't want that because at some point that very sort of police protection becomes part of the very thing that the framers were in fact worried about. You'd have a police state by default, and with that, there'd be a definite decrease in liberty and even simply a decrease in the quality of life. So that's really a non starter.
None of which means that some increase in police presence in some areas isn't warranted. It clearly is.
But by the same token some increase in private security may be warranted too, and that's actually what the denizens of those walled compounds have done, which leaves them with little room to argue. If you live in a walled development and it has private security that's armed, you in fact are living with a type of private militia, like it or not. And if you argue for significantly removing privately held firearms, you are really arguing those guys ought to go and ought to be replaced by city police. But the city isn't going to do that for you.
For the rest of us, we have to judge our exposure to risk, ourselves. Most people are never going to carry a gun and most feel they have no need to.
But is that a universal?
Now I often see what I'd regard as amusing and over dramatic, indeed paranoid, references to people who talk as if they're under constant threat. But that doesn't necessarily mean that there are no threats in the world at all. There are.
The advertisement of handguns for personal protection isn't a new phenomenon, but it did take a big break in the mid 20th Century before returning in the late 20 Century
Indeed, in my own life I've experienced things in which I needed some element of protection directly at least five times, and I don't lead a really dangerous life. Two of those times I was in fact coincidentally armed and that may have made a real difference. And this doesn't count the odd occasions in which I took up some protection for myself due to threats that related to one of my occupations, even though nothing developed.
And I'm just a regular guy.
Thinking on it, I can think of at least three other instances in which various folks I know were confronted with situations, out of the blue, in which they had to protect themselves and were armed. At least two of them were extremely severe occasions that arrived without expectation. There's no telling what would have occurred if they hadn't been armed. In two out of the three, they might have been killed on the spot.
In not one of these instances could the police have possibly been any help. The only thing they would have been able to do would have been to investigate a shooting after the fact. Not much protection, just investigation.
Stuff like this happens more than we might imagine, and in more places than we might imagine. Most of it simply goes unreported, everywhere. In none of the instances I'm personally aware of were the police ever called.
So, frankly, even in the 21st Century there are plenty of instances in which an individual resorts to arms and a crisis passes. Most of those go completely unnoticed. They wouldn't if the individual who made resort ended up badly injured or dead, but those statistics don't exist because they don't exist.
And like it or not, these things happen in Canada, Australia, the UK and France. The difference is that there, when they happen, the person who protected themselves just shuts up and moves on so as to not risk any attention at all.
Okay, that's one sort of area where Justice Stevens is probably flat out wrong in his probable assumptions, or he assumes that in a post Second Amendment United States licensure will still let this occur (although I doubt he thinks that). What about the second area? What we've talked about so far is the threat from individual actors. It's pretty clear that the police would have to be enormous to take this on. But what about that more militia like area referenced by the Second Amendment?
Well, that presupposes that what we have talked about wasn't part of the what the militia in earlier times did, which I'd argue is in error. Walled compound denizens, as I already noted, are fielding a type of mercenary militia. But let's go away from that and talk about military type threats. That is, armed bodies or single actors who are acting for an organized cause.
If you are a rancher on the southern border of the US you don't really need to get much further than this, I suspect. It's easy to dismiss this threat but if you are running cattle outside of Eagle Pass, Texas, drug and human cargo smuggling gangs are just as much of an organized armed body threatening you as ISIL ever will be. Indeed, while there's nobody who pretends these groups live an area where its legal to acquire them, they are armed with military weapons. If you are going out to check your cattle in that area, you'd be nuts not to take along a firearm.
Most Americans, of course, will never be confronted by such a threat. But we have have had a host of violence of that type spill over the border (since about 1910 actually) and we have been subject to terrorist attacks on our own soil since the 1993 Twin Towers bombing attempt. We're so disinclined to recognize these things for what they are that we forget some and discount others. They are, however, what they are. We've endured several of them within the last couple years and there's no way to believe that individuals motivated by, for example, Islam, or by sheer greed in another example, are capable of being deterred by the mere existence of a set of laws.
It'd be nice to believe that domestic intelligence sources will catch all them all before they act, but they simply will not. They probably catch more than we know. But they won't catch them all.
Now, no doubt, you are thinking that you really don't need to arm yourself against ISIL. And you likely do not. But on occasion, there are those will probably will need to, and perhaps should have done so, or just accidentally happened to be. Pretending that we can build a police state sufficient to catch every Tamerlane Tsarnaev is really engaging in a fantasy. But imagining that the response by the city of Boston was "brave" is equally fanciful. It wasn't. It was a disarmed response however.
But it was also probably a response you are comfortable with if you live in West Roxbury. If you live in the Southside. . . well not so much.
*Of interest, while such an event seems so extraordinarily far fetched, even in modern times, let's say post World War Two, democracies have been occasionally pronto to such risks or even actual events. Both the Greek and Turkish states have fallen repeatedly to coups, although Greece seems to have gotten past it. Turkey hasn't, in that its' undergoing a massive reversal of its democratic fortunes through its chief executive right now.
Russia has certainly seen its democratic fortunes reversed and is now ruled by a strong man, by way of another example. But even the United Kingdom was subject to some serious thought of a coup attempt in the 1970s, oddly enough, by some members of its establishment. The moment came and went without action, but it did in fact occur.
**And contrary to what some seem to think, there are some countries in the world with strong "gun cultures" other than the United States. Switzerland being a prime example.
*-*State Guards units are also organized militia forces in some states, but not all. Like the National Guard, they receive Federal funding, but only some.
State Guard units have an interesting history as they were in some ways a protest over the Dick Act, which some states opposed on the basis that they didn't want the state militias so closely aligned with the U.S. Army following that 1903 act. It was also part of a slow boiling New England movement that dated back to the Mexican War in which those states were really unhappy with their militia units being called up for unpopular foreign wars. The Philippine Insurrection may have been the boiling point on that and so by World War One some states were maintaining two militia establishments. Most states only did this during wartime as the National Guard needed to be replaced while mobilized. Its come back into popularity, particularly along the Mexican border, in recent years.
Quite a few states by law regarded every male over sixteen years of age and under some older age, typically sixty, as members of their states militia. The power to mobilize this group of men is exceedingly rarely exercised.
***And they had real experience with just such a thing. The right to keep and bear arms wasn't something that had been simply thought up by Congress. As is sometimes noted, the same right appeared in some state constitutions. More than that, however, it had been a feature of the English Bill of Rights, which the English seem to have now forgotten, as had a provision limiting standing armies. Those provisions provided that the King had violated the rights of Protestant Englishmen (Catholic Englishmen didn't get the same rights) in the following ways:
Standing Army.
By raising and keeping a Standing Army within this Kingdome in time of Peace without Consent of Parlyament and Quartering Soldiers contrary to Law.
Disarming Protestants, &c.
By causing severall good Subjects being Protestants to be disarmed at the same time when Papists were both Armed and Imployed contrary to Law.
So the following was provided:
Standing Army.
That the raising or keeping a standing Army within the Kingdome in time of Peace unlesse it be with Consent of Parlyament is against Law.
Subjects’ Arms.
That the Subjects which are Protestants may have Arms for their Defence suitable to their Conditions and as allowed by Law.
This was passed in 1688, just a little under a century prior to the American Revolution.
*-*-*In recent years its been really popular for critics of the Second Amendment to point out that in Southern states militias also were used, it's claimed, to chase runaway slaves.
I don't know how often that really happened, not often I suspect, but Southern states did worry about slave rebellions. But that wasn't the only reason they had militias by any means and this point is grossly exaggerated in that context.
Bureau of Reclamation sign on public land used for fishing, hunting, and cattle grazing. In the context of the times today, protecting the "your land" means basically opposing your legislature.
The Star Tribune informed its readers on Sunday last that Eli Bebout and Steve Harshman shall have the leadership positions in the upcoming Wyoming Legislative Session. Bebout takes the place of Phil Nicholas in the Senate and Harshman the place of Tom Lubnau in the House.
Both of them will have pretty big shoes to fill. Lubnau, a Gillette lawyer, in particular was a voice of reason in troubled times, but he's left the Legislature. Hid did so with a bit of a lament on the state of Wyoming politics when he did so, which I share. Here's what he said to WyoFile on this way out.
Nicholas, a Laramie lawyer was a very active Senate leaders and also a moderating force, although he was a backer of the Quixotic effort to raise the retirement age for Wyoming judges, which I thought a bad move, and which failed.
I don't know much about Harshman's positions, although I should as he's from my district. He's a teacher and coach at NCHS, one of the local high schools.. Bebout I know much more about.
Bebout is a really decent guy, in my opinion. At one time he was thought a shoe in for Governor but he lost to Governor Freudenthal to everyone's surprise. That should be a bit of a red flag to everyone in the Legislature as the Democrats have been in real trouble here since Bill Clinton, but the voters favored the more moderate Freudenthal over the very conservative Bebout that election.
Oddly, Bebout himself was once a Democrat. But perhaps that's not surprising. At one time you had to be a Democrat in Fremont County in order to get elected, a legacy of its mining days. Those days have now passed and with it a serious Democratic Party in Fremont County. The County still has some good Democratic politicians in it, but they're mostly on the Reservation where the fortunes of the Democrats have always been higher. More recently it's been solidly Republican otherwise and has had one of the most conservative members of the legislature otherwise in office.
Anyhow, Bebout is very conservative, which would presumably be a good fit for Wyoming. He's reliably conservative on social issues, perhaps a reflection of his Greek Orthodox faith, he's a successful businessman who has weathered the storms, and he's generally both likable and responsive.
He's also one of the Wyoming legislators whose hugely in favor of Wyoming taking over the Federal Public Domain. And that's going to be a problem.
Now, he doesn't view it as a problem, and he's indicated to the Press that he thinks the dangers have been overblown. To try to address those misconceptions, in his view, he's one of the members of a committee that's trying to back an amendment to the Wyoming Constitution that would promise that there'd be no net loss of lands newly acquired from the Federal government in this fashion (nobody ever seems to suggest that maybe we ought to do that with the existing state lands, which are slowly being lost in overall acreage).
Wyomingites, overall, hate the idea of the Federal Government transferring the land to the state, as they don't trust the state. At a recent meeting of the committee teh overwhelming majority of the speakers spoke against the concept. The committee, rather than tank it, decided to work on their proposed amendment anyway, a really insulting "we know better than you" type of view that will either result in a real reaction against the Legislature, which has happened before on similar topics, or a "in your face" type of effort to push this through.
All of which causes me to consider how on earth this can come about? That is, how can one body of Wyomingites be so brashly in favor of doing something the majority of us detest?
Well, in thinking on it, I think that my conclusion is a lot different than what people generally suppose.
If you read (and I haven't for years) articles in the High Country News of rind your ancient copy of Sam Western's Pushed Off the Mountain Sold Down the River: Wyoming’s Search for Its Soul (which my late mother liked, but which I've never read, as I'm reluctant to accept that relocated authors from The Economist have much to tell me about my neighborhood) you might be tempted to come to the conclusion that this is all emblematic of a conflict between the "New West" and something else ("Old West"?). It isn't. This fight has always been with us. At the end of the day, it has always pitted the apostles of money and industry against everyone else,, but I don't mean for that to sound as harsh as it does, as many of those apostles truly believe in the Gospel of Money, and almost all Wyomingites are in that congregation, somehow or another. That's in part why its such a long running fight.
And its a multifaceted one as well. I think that there's at least 1) the extractive industries and their fellow travelers; 2) agriculture; 3) the dazzling urbanites; 4) the forces of distinct culture and 5) most of us, the regular folk.
I don't know of anyone else who looks at this as a five way struggle, but I do. Let's break it down a bit and see if it fits. And lets' do that by looking at each of the five.
And in doing that, let's keep in mind that this struggle hasn't played out and isn't playing out in the big rectangle that is Wyoming alone. No, it's being fought, and has been fought, throughout the entire west.
And finally, in doing that, let's concede right off the bat that this struggle is the epitome of blurred lines, which is why it keeps reoccurring.
So on to the five.
1. The extractive industries and their fellow travelers.
Grass Creek, Wyoming Oilfield in the early days, before World War One. At the time of this photo, oil
entrants could still patent their claims, in the same way that mining
claims could be patented, and indeed as "placer oil claims".
Wyoming my call itself the Cowboy State, but even since its earliest days, it's looked to the extractive industries, oil and coal, and mostly oil, as what was going to make the state rich. You can go back at least as early as the 1890s and find newspaper articles just gushing about oil prospects.
The Wyoming Oil Observer, an energy centric newspaper published in Casper as least as far back as 1918. Today, the Casper Star Tribune follows in its wake by publishing its energy edition every week.
The concept that there's wealth in oil is hardly misplaced. The same is true of coal, and uranium. Early in the states history, and from time to time throughout it, there's been other minerals that would likewise fit the bill. Gold and heavy metals, for example, have had their eras, although they provide a cautionary tale, just as uranium and coal presently do, about the fickleness of mineral wealth. I suppose the same cautionary tale can be told throughout the nation and even the globe.
The point isn't, as some who would be hurling their copies of the High Country News at me right now would maintain, that the extractive industries are bad (hey there. . . yeah, you in the espresso shop in Ft. Collins, I can see you getting ready to hurl your copy of the High Country News at me, stop it). They aren't. But their nature can blind those in deep in them to other things, which is true of everything.
This has always been the case, however, to a distinct degree with the extractive industries and other local industries, and again for a real reason. The reason for this is that almost everyone in Wyoming has come connection with the extractive industries. Many people do very directly. That is, they work for coal companies or oil companies. Others do more remotely, but there's still a connection. Companies that supply oilfield equipment, or vehicles, or even just people who work for grocery stores where a lot of the population works in the oilfield. This is pretty obvious to most people.
This leads to the "a rising tide lifts all boats" type of theory, but in actuality that's a really poor analogy as the energy money doesn't really act like a rising tide. That is, it doesn't lift all boats equally, like a tide does, at least not directly. Indeed, if we're to use an aquatic reference, it lifts boats more like a wave, or even a tsunami, with everything lifting at some point, but a person's craft not necessarily lifted to the peak of the wave. And some crashing goes on. This type of thinking, however, is also additionally problematic as the way this impacts the average person isn't as focused on the profit aspect of life as people who are captains of industry, no matter how small or local that industry may be. This is how people in industries like the extractive industries can get lost and baffled by the fact that most people, even people who work for them, aren't all that receptive to their arguments. "We'll all make more money" actually doesn't motivate people that much, particularly if that more money equates with the destruction of something they value more, which this sort of thinking can. Its sort of a secular application of Mark 8:13:
And what do you benefit if you gain the whole world but lose your own soul?
A lot of average Wyomingites grasp this in an instinctive way that applies directly to them. That is, most Wyomingites don't see the value of gaining more employment or bringing in more money wealth if it means the destruction of their fishing hole.
Another reason that the arguments of the industry focused fall flat is that they don't tend to contemplate industry, let alone the extractive industries, as we know them to really be, and as most Wyomingites have direct personal experience with this, their arguments aren't convincing.
Right now, as back in the 1980s, the big argument is that if we only could get direct control over the public lands ourselves, i.e., if the State of Wyoming could get them, we'd roll back regulation and everything would be super. But we know that this is very unlikely to be true.
We know this in part for the reason discussed immediately above. If we have long enough lives to have experienced it, most of us agree that some of the regulation was pretty necessary. We might not agree on how much of it was, but few would maintain that we should return to the conditions of the 1950s and 1960s.
More than that, however, this argument falls into an erroneous assumption that there's stability in the product to be produced, but we know that is not true. Basically, arguments about the mineral products that are supposed to gain us perpetual wealth are subject to the myth of the beaver pelts, although not in the way that people like to cite it.
Free trapper Bill Williams, 1839.
Everyone has heard this myth. The myth is that there was a beaver felt craze, this sparked a trapping boom in the west, all the beavers were trapped out, and the end of trapping was the result.
The reason that this myth, and that's exactly what it is, is relevant is that it is similar to the myth of mineral production in the West, and its a Western based myth. The central thesis is that a) we have a limited scarce commodity, and b) its valuable, and c) as it can't be replaced, the price can only go up.
None of that was true, however.
What was true is that the beaver trade was industrial in nature, but relied upon local, and rustic, folks for the raw product. In that fashion, it's very much like the modern petroleum and coal industries. Us local folks are on the trap and swamp end, and we like that. The commodity is produced, as a raw product, and shipped elsewhere for refinement and use, for the most part.
But what really occurred is more instructive.
The beaver were never trapped out.That is simply a myth. Indeed, you can buy beaver felt hats today, and I have several Really good cowboy hats have a high percentage of beaver felt in them, and for a really good reason. It's darned near impervious to water in any form. It's the perfect felt. That's what made it valuable in the first place.
But that's what made for the competition as well. What really occurred is that as the price and demand went up, competition developed from other materials, some of it radically different. Some was similar, like rabbit and nutria felt (Army campaign hats of the 19th Century were usually nutria). But silk, which was simply a material of style, competed equally well in terms of the whims of style. So when beaver felt ran its course as a matter of simple style, or simply became too expensive, perhaps, silk stepped in and replaced it.
That may seem like a pretty poor analogy, after all beaver is a renewable resource and oil is not, but it really is pretty close, actually. Beavers were trapped by the hardy of the Frontier, just as oil likewise tends to be produced by hardy men, and fewer women, who are willing to engage in the risky business of producing it. Both were products that were shipped out for refinement, and largely for use, elsewhere. And when the market developed, competition did as well.
That's what booster of the extractive industries seem to have failed to learn here. The petroleum industry isn't in trouble locally due to regulation from Washington D. C. It's in trouble as Saudi Arabia turned on the tap. We can do almost nothing about that. And coal isn't in trouble because of Washington's heavy had, it's in a century old decline that has been headed in one direction.
Indeed, the fate of coal is particularly instructive and should be closely examined on this topic. Coal isn't in trouble now because Washington suddenly started picking on it. It's been in trouble since Winston Churchill, First Lord of the Admiralty, ordered the Royal Navy to switch from coal to oil.
Oil, you see, doesn't blow up, taking the ship with it.
The wreck of the USS Maine. Stuff like this give you the "war on coal".
Its' been one long downhill slide for coal ever since the Royal Navy decided to the replace it with oil. Every Navy did that shortly thereafter. By the 1940s diesel locomotives began to make inroads as well and by the 1960s coal fired locomotives were a thing of the past.
This last item is particularly instructive, as oil furnaces are now becoming a thing of the past. They're being replaced, in many places, by natural gas furnaces, which burn cheaper and cleaner. In other regions of the county people went directly from coal (or even wood) to natural gas.
The United States has natural gas in abundance. Indeed, the practice of simply flaring it off remains common in the US, although it has to be wondered how long that will be allowed to continue. At any rate, it's natural gas that's finishing off coal. Coal's last bastions were power generation and industrial coke and furnaces. Power generation is switching to natural gas and the price of the gas is driving that. No amount of deregulation will change that.
And that should be instructive for petroleum as well. We will, quite obviously, be suing petroleum oil for a long time to come, but the evidence is that it's on the same production curve as coal. And combined with that, the price has dropped due to foreign actions we cannot change. So at the present time we're witnessing the change in transportation to viable electric motors, something that no amount of deregulation will now be able to impact greatly, and a pricing regime determined by the House of Saud, not the White House.
Nonetheless, as is so often the case for people caught in these economic revolutions, it's not possible or popular to face them square on. Facing this situation square on would require us to concede that coal is likely in its final stages of being regulated to coking use only, it's just not quite there, and the coal in the West won't be part of that. That's the hard reality of that. Eliminating regulation won't impact that. And petroleum's price drives employment in petroleum, and it will not be rebounding soon. When it does, new technology will mean that employment in that field will not return to historic levels. But here on the ground its much easier to imagine that Happy Days Will Come Again and they'll be just like old times. They won't be. But there will be those, including those with honest motives, who believe that employment is everything, the only employment we have is that which we just had, and we can get it all back. We can't. We can wreck things in the meantime, however.
Which brings me too:
2) Agriculture.
Nebraska homesteaders, 1886.
The last time we went through this here in the 1970s ranchers were the motivating force behind it. That go around it was termed the Sagebrush Rebellion, and the ranchers were the rebels. While not necessarily remembered this way, it was really the average folks, the last category (Category 5) we will look at here, who put that rebellion down, with the last shots being fired here locally when agricultural interests attempted privatize the state's wildlife, which sparked a huge counter reaction.
This go around, however, farmers and ranchers have been relatively quiet locally. And where they have been in the forefront it is a qualified participation in that it may have more to do with Category 4 than this Category, Category 2. There's probably a good reason for that, and that reason is that its becoming to be obvious to farmers and ranchers that if the Federal lands go to the state, at a bare minimum the state may be a worse landlord than the Federal government, and at the worst, the state will sell the land to the rich who live elsewhere.
Ranchers fueled the Sagebrush Rebellion in the 1970s because that was really the first time that they really faced much in the way of any kind of regulation. They hadn't been happy about the Taylor Grazing Act all the way back to 1932, however. Ironically, and something they should learn from, the Taylor Grazing Act saved ranching in the West. It saved it as it eliminated new homestead entries, which were chopping up and wiping out grazing land so fast it wasn't even funny. Indeed, the Wyoming Supreme Court actually threw its hands up in once case in the 1920s about homesteading entries as it stated that the land was being homesteaded so fast that whatever the ranchers cause of action was when he field it the damages couldn't be determined as his public domain lands were disappearing so quickly. Had the Franklin Roosevelt administration not stepped in, the land would have been chopped up into tiny pieces and overgrazed rendering ranching as we know it a thing of the past.
That didn't keep ranchers from being mad about the Taylor Grazing Act as they didn't feel that they should have to lease the land at all. And this gets us back to something noted above about the extractive industries. It isn't that they were greedy, its just hat they were in the business and too close to it to appreciate that their few was flawed.
Indeed, however, it was highly flawed, and remains so to some extent, in the case of land. Most ranching had only gotten a start in the West because the Federal government aided it through the homestead acts. Had the Federal government kept its pre Civil War approach to things settlement of the West would have been much, much, slower, but it would also have been of an entirely different character. Recognizing that farmers of any kind were not stopping in The Great American Desert Congress decided to do something about it by trying to make acquiring an agricultural unit as cheap as conceivably possible. Ranchers of the early 1930s, if the had in business for awhile, had forgotten that they were the descendants of people who had accepted the Federal government's helping hand. It's really been forgotten now.
And they were also the beneficiary of a much more distributist economic view on the part of the Wyoming people at the time. Viewed through economic lenses, the Johnson County War was an effort at appropriating the Federal domain violently at the expense of smaller ranchers. The large ranchers lost that war, and the ranchers of the 1930s, and today, are the heirs of the efforts of the small ranchers, not the large ones. Efforts to force the Federal government to hand over the land today are really very much akin to what the Invaders of 1892 sought.
The Invaders of 1892
As noted, many ranchers sympathize to some degree with the take the Public Lands movement, but not nearly to the extent they once did. Something has definitely changed and what it is, I suspect, is that the Invaders who tried to take their lands in 1892 are back in the form of out of state interests that buy land to be a playground.
Back in the 1970s, when we last saw this effort, it was still possible for ranchers to acquire ranch land. The reason had to do with the hideous economy of the 1970s. A lot of land went back to banks locally and local ranchers, via loans and foreclosure sales, were able to expand. This was really a blip in the long term economy, but it lasted quite awhile. As late as 1990 or so my father and I were in this situation and came very close to buying a small ranch. He took ill, however, and died, and we did therefore not do it.
Those days, however, are gone. Now when large ranches go up for sale they go to monied out of state interests or real estate developers. Ranchers are under siege and they know it.
They also tend to know that the State of Wyoming, and any other Western state, is not trustworthy with the land. When the State talks about land, it talks about oil and coal, something that may be under the land the ranchers have but which often benefits them in no real way at all. Just because its under your land, they know well, does not mean you own it.
Indeed, amongst all the proposal to extract the land from the Federal government there is not a single one to require that the minerals that are under the surface owners lands should go to them. And there is not going to be. Should the state acquire the lands, it's going to keep the minerals no matter what. And that's something that doesn't help agriculture at all.
Indeed, the state even owning land doesn't help agriculture. There's no reason to believe that the State will be as generous to ranchers as the Federal government has been. Pinched for money, the state would feel free to raise grazing rates. It'd also feel free, at some point, to sell them to the highest bidder and that won't be any local rancher.
Ranchers have been pretty quiet this go around. This is an interesting, and hopeful, sign.
And let us keep in mind what they already know. . there's a group that they have to fear, and for which this entire movement is nothing more than opening an Pandora's Box. Oddly, the extractive folks haven't been able to grasp this, but at some point they will. That group is:
I'll confess that I stole the title here from Blazing Saddles, the irreverent Mel Brooks comedy that insults everyone. Amongst those insulted are rural people, in the line where where Gene Wilder asks the new sheriff how a "dazzling urbanite" became the sheriff. The film was made in the 1970s, fwiw, during which city life was undergoing a strong attraction in the nation.
Anyhow, one of the things that gets improperly noticed in this debate is that there are now, and have been for some time, a collection of large cities in every region and the residents of those cities have a completely different view of this topic than anyone else. Because they outnumber everyone else their views have to be taken into account. Poke them and basically you are awakening a sleeping bear. The Wyoming, Utah and Idaho legislators are getting close to really poking them.
That's an easier thing for the Wyoming legislature to do, or perhaps a more unthinking thing for it to do, than it is for Utah. Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana really have no large metropolis's. Utah does have one. Indeed, that makes the fact that Utah has been the center of this movement even more surprising, but we'll get to that in a moment. Wyoming's big metropolis, although we don't think of it that way, is Denver Colorado.
The Colorado Rockies playing the New York Yankees, 2016. The Rockies don't have a "Wyoming Day" for no reason at all, and it isn't accidental that every Wyomingite except for me is a fan of the Denver Broncos.
Denver is our regional hub. Anyone in business knows this. For those in the southwestern corner of the state, Salt Lake City is. If you are in Montana you'll look to Denver as well, or Minneapolis, or Calgary. In the context of modern communications these big cities are regional capitols. As a Wyomingite I hate the thought of Denver being the regional capitol, but it is. And for that matter,I'd rather have it be, given the gigantic city its become, than have Cheyenne or Casper be that.
The residents of these cities live in the West. These cities have been features of the West, along with a host of others, for decades or even, in the case of cities like Denver and Salt Lake City, for well over a century. But they aren't cow towns or even oil towns anymore. They're business centers with Western, but urban, populations.
Those populations have a playground view of the public lands. Going to depositions with lawyers from them, who have no other connection with the West, really makes this obvious. While those of us from the rural West hunt and fish, or hike, etc. the dazzling urbanites ski and mountain bike. Indeed, not all that long ago I sat through depositions in which two lawyers, one from Salt Lake and the other from Denver, spoke endlessly about the mountain biking options in Jackson Hole. Wyomingites do not speak about mountain biking in Jackson Hole. They might mountain bike, but going on a high speed grueling ride for fun would not be their first priority.
So far, this group has been relatively quiet, although it does make up and feed an element of radical environmentalism and, therefore, people in Category 1 need to be very cognizant of what they are going. Dazzling Urbanites have, so far, generally tolerated or ignored extractive us of the public lands, and agricultural use, but only barely really. And as noted, they form a strong percentage, perhaps the overwhelming percentage, of radical environmentalist. It does little good to point out to people in cities that they depend on petroleum or agriculture because if they don't' see it, it isn't real. And to many of them, quite frankly, they don't. People making money in the financial sector in Denver or the Weed sector really don't depend upon coal or oil in any significant way.
Which is why, I suppose, that you don't see a "take the Public Lands" movement in Colorado.
At some point, and that some point is soon, these people are going to get really mad and start backing efforts to simply shut the public lands down to extractive and economic use. Don't believe it? Pick up a copy of the High Country News. And there's a lot more of them than there are of anybody else we're discussing here. If urban Coloradans and urban Salt Lakers get mad this movement isn't only done, the counter movement will be hard to work with.
By the way, this gets into something that Americans fail to really grasp. In most of the Western world public reaction to access to the land has been to cause the recognition of the "right to roam." I'm convinced that day is coming in the Untied States. The right to roam wipes out trespassing on rural lands as a concept. In Scandinavia a right to roam has long been recognized as an inherited right and Scandinavians can camp, hike, hunt and fish where they like. Even in densely packed England there's a right to roam, although its provided statutorily.
(1)Any person is entitled by virtue of this subsection to enter and remain on any access land for the purposes of open-air recreation, if and so long as—
(a)he does so without breaking or damaging any wall, fence, hedge, stile or gate, and
(b)he observes the general restrictions in Schedule 2 and any other restrictions imposed in relation to the land under Chapter II.
(2)Subsection (1) has effect subject to subsections (3) and (4) and to the provisions of Chapter II.
(3)Subsection (1) does not entitle a person to enter or be on any land, or do anything on any land, in contravention of any prohibition contained in or having effect under any enactment, other than an enactment contained in a local or private Act.
(4)If a person becomes a trespasser on any access land by failing to comply with—
(a)subsection (1)(a),
(b)the general restrictions in Schedule 2, or
(c)any other restrictions imposed in relation to the land under Chapter II,
he may not, within 72 hours after leaving that land, exercise his right under subsection (1) to enter that land again or to enter other land in the same ownership.
(5)In this section “owner”, in relation to any land which is subject to a farm business tenancy within the meaning of the M2Agricultural Tenancies Act 1995 or a tenancy to which the M3Agricultural Holdings Act 1986 applies, means the tenant under that tenancy, and “ownership” shall be construed accordingly.
This this can't happen here? It already has. In Oregon and Washington states this has been fought out in regards to beaches, and there are recognized rights to public access to them in some circumstances. Its not much of a leap from beaches to mountains and the prairie. It particularly isn't much of a leap when you tell a Denver mountain biker that he can't use a mountain trail, or a Salt Lake skier that he can't cross your empty woods to the back country.
Beyond that, in the urban areas, there are a lot of people who do not believe that there should be any, and I mean any, industrial use of the land. Any effort to "take back" the Public Land will be regarded as an effort to take it away by industry, and that's going to include in their minds the extractive industries and agriculture, and they'll argue in turn that these entities should have no access to the public land. Indeed, that argument is already being made but so far not successfully. Efforts to "take" the public lands will inspire those groups and gain them adherents.
So, Wyoming legislature, be careful. You are poking a sleeping bear with a stick.
Well, we've been mentioning Salt Lake City, so perhaps we should go to this next
4) the forces of distinct culture
The Utah state house, the epicenter of the "take" the Public Lands movement. But why?
Now why would the last sentence lead to this.? Well, as has been fairly obvious, Utah, Idaho, and the ranching areas of Nevada, have been particularly active in the "take back" movement. Indeed, Utah really got it rolling, while other states, like Colorado and Montana have sat it out. So, what's distinct about Utah, Idaho and the ranching regions of Nevada?
They have a high percentage of Mormons.
Now, already, I can feel people's hackles come up and I can hear the "you are bigoted as you are saying . . ."
No, I'm not, I'm making a demographic observation in the context of this story. And it won't, fwiw, be limited to the cultural view of Mormons (or rather some Mormons) in this context, but of others as well.
So the question is does this have something to do with the support of the "take back" movement in these areas, and if so, why?
I think it does.
But I'll note that this isn't the only cultural group we'll look at here.
I've pointed out before here that cultures have very long memories. This is pointed out in Holscher's Third Law of History, which provides:
And I think that plays into the popularity of this movement in the areas mentioned, and the absence of it in others.
Most Americans are completely ignorant of Mormon history, but Mormons aren't. People in Manhattan are dimly aware that Mormons moved to the Salt Lake Valley in the 19th Century, maybe, but they know little more than that. What they don't know is that the Mormon's immigrated there in the process of basically fleeing the mainstream, Protestant, American culture of mid 19th Century. Indeed, Mormon polygamist practices were found so abhorrent that even John Stuart Mills, who wrote On Liberty, in the United Kingdom, mused on the British landing a military expedition in Texas to march on the Salt Lake Valley to stop it.
And amongst the forgotten that in 1857 to 1858 the Mormons fought a war with the United States. This followed earlier local conflicts and became a full scale effort to ensure Mormon dominance over the newly colonized territory and perhaps to even wrest control of it and sever it from the US entirely. The Mormons lost and an uneasy peace was restored which included the posting of Federal troops in Salt Lake.
Cultures that win wars often tend to forget them or to place them in the permanent past. Cultures that lose them do not. All anyone has to do to be reminded of this is to bring up the topic of the American Civil War to southerners, many of whom remain bitter about it and many of whom have a distinctly alternative history view of it.
This is not to say that the Mormon's have an alternative view of the Mormon War. They do not, but they do know that an armed effort they backed, and which was solely made up of their faith, failed and was put down. This followed, as they recall, distinct oppression in the East, their support of the US in the Mexican War, and bitter fights to colonize the region early on. Indeed, the extent to which Mormon militias were involved in really bloody battles with the native Indians is also largely forgotten, except by Indians, a group we will get to in a moment in this same category. But t his plays into a cultural view as well, in that they are both a defeated, and colonizing, people, and recall that.
Having colonized the region in a dedicated effort that commenced before the Homestead Acts, and having fought a failed war in an attempt to separate it, and consisting of a distinct culture, Mormons, I suspect, have a cultural heritage that doesn't trust the Federal Government much.
Mormon farmers, Oneida County Idaho. The Salt Lake Valley was the center of outward colonization from there, which is fairly unique compared to the settlement of the rest of the West.
Whereas most Americans don't really distrust the Federal government, in spite of what they may say, and have a generally favorable outlook on the American military past, Mormons share with Southerners a feeling of having been conquered, but I suspect the cultural heritage is even deeper. They're generally culturally unique in being about the only religious group that was put down and even modified their beliefs as a result, in the face of the larger culture.
I'm not saying that they are not patriotic. But when the Utah legislature votes to "take back" land form the Federal government, in some ways its hearkening back to the failed effort of the Mormon War. Or when the Bundy's strike out in Nevada or Oregon against the Federal government, the fact that the effort is made up of men who are almost all members of the Mormon faith, and heirs to its rural colonization, isn't an accident. There's a different view here at work, and one that's deeply ingrained and likely not easy to overcome in spite of the bad idea that seizing the Federal domain is. This should be kept in mind by people when they oppose these ideas as they may not understand the cultural context.
It also be kept in mind by those boosting them in those regions. Already in Salt Lake the demographics have shifted so that the LDS faith does not claim the majority of residents. Being too close to a movement that has cultural roots, but which does not claim a religious element, is dangerous. Indeed that seems to be known already as certainly most Mormons do not support the Bundy's and have made that clear, even if the national press hasn't really listened as it hasn't picked up on the under currents of the story.
Mural of the Virgin Mary in downtown Salt Lake City. This isn't a Mormon image, but a Hispanic Catholic one, showing how Salt Lake has already changed enormously.
What may be less obvious, however, is that things are changing fairly quickly in Utah due to Category 3, it just hasn't hugely impacted politics yet, but it will. Salt Lake City, the major city in the region, has a minority of Mormon residents now, the majority being other things. This does not mean that they are not influential, they are hugely influential, and it does not mean there's a majority of some other faith, that would be in error. But Salt Lake, the seat of Utah's government, isn't same city it was in the 1970s. So things are changing there.
Which in some ways may emphasize these movements. Cultures under the stress of changing conditions tend to grasp towards old ideals.
And turning to old ideals, we also see this playing out, I suspect, in regards to the entire Dakota Access Pipeline story. Here too, culture is at work.
On this, I'm continually amused by my (white) friends from outside the region who perceive this in terms of an environmental movement, or perhaps as a generalized Indian rights movement. It may be both of those, but it's hugely cultural as well.
Red Cloud. Just because he converted to Catholicism and became quite devout, and recognized the futility of trying to carry on with wars against the United States, doesn't mean that he adopted European American views. Nor does it mean that Sioux protestors at Standing Rock today are Starbucks sipping granola's from Berkeley, even if Starbucks sipping granola's thinks so.
Now, the area we're speaking of is one that doesn't have a lot of public lands. But western North Dakota, South Dakota and Nebraska do, so it's part of the story. And its all part of the West. And what's going on is native cultures are using this as a focal point on their discontent with being a conquered people. It may have other elements, but that's a big part of it.
Cultures do not simply get absorbed in 100 years, and the native cultures, highly stressed, are still there. The Dakota Access issue has drawn a lot of Indian attention as Indians are still here and they're still stressed. That's the point, more than any other.
That plays into the conflict over what the Tribal Court is going to be in Wyoming as well. This story hasn't been well covered by the news, but the dispute between the two tribes, and the one tribe and the US, is a deeply cultural story.
That, once again, may raise the issue of what on earth does all of this have to do with the Public Lands, but it does. On the latter story, there are large enclaves of native people that hold a completely different view of how benevolent the state is likely to be towards them, and what their rights on the land are. This past year we saw a Crow game warden tried in Wyoming for shooting an elk, who cited the 1868 Treaty. That says something. Back in the early 1980s the pueblo people around in the Sangre de Cristo's of Colorado reacted so negatively to an effort by an East Coaster who bought a ranch in the area to close access to it for timer and hunting sparked an effort by some to kill him by shooting through his roof at night. On the Standing Rock Reservation right now a group of native people are essentially telling the entire modern American economy to stick it. These things can't, and shouldn't be ignored and there will be a reaction to anyone state trying to run everything on its own, when the states are less trusted than the Federal Government is. Wyoming, it should be noted, hasn't fared well in recent litigation with the Tribes or Federal Government and it might want to factor that cost into trying to grab lands that were themselves grabbed from these very same people only about 150 years ago.
Indeed, Wyoming is already fighting a losing battle with the Wind River Reservation over who owns the land that Riverton sits on. Is it in, or without, the Reservation. We may be in a period of time where the Reservation is actually expanding for the first time ever. If the state acquires the land, why would the Reservation not seek to control as much as it could. It's easier, much easier, to take on the State than the Federal government.
Conversely, when those who back this idea make heroes out of people like the Bundy's, or admire the Utah legislature thinking its just super Republican, they may be participating in a back story that they don't understand and in a cultural matter that they don't even conceive of. You cannot make fun or diminish a people's culture, but you should understand that people's motivations are dictated by culture quite often. Just because it sounds like "we can manage it better" doesn't mean that deep down there's not another deep seated and perhaps unacknowledged motivation that looks back to losses of the 1850s as much as the economy of the 2010s. Efforts in Utah may have much less to do with a "let's get Federal regulation off our backs" viewpoint so much as it might "we haven't forgotten that you forced things on us in the 1850s and we still don't really trust you now, U.S. government". That view may be wholly legitimate, but it doesn't apply equally to everyone. Indeed, ironically, the protesting Sioux at Standing Rock and the Utah Legislature have more in common on this point that the backers of this view in Wyoming do, even if they hold polar opposite views about how they'd approach industry on the land, maybe.
And then there's: 5) most of us, the regular folk.
The irony here, I'd note, is that the "regular folks" category here includes the average folks in every single group I've noted above. The Mormon welder in town, the Indian truck driver in Ft. Washakie, the regular derrick hand in Riverton. Everyone. Every average person, that is.
It was Arlo Guthrie, son of the famous author of This Land Is Your Land, who lamented:
Just last week I was on my bike I run into a friend named Mike Run into my friend named Mike Mike no longer has a bike. He cries:
I don't want a pickle Just want to ride on my motorcycle And I don't want a tickle 'Cause I'd rather ride on my motorcycle And I don't want to die I just want to ride on my motorcycle
What's that have to do with anything? Well, sort of the same thing John Prine meant when he sang:
When I was a child my family would travel
Down to Western Kentucky where my parents were born
And there's a backwards old town that's often remembered
So many times that my memories are worn.
And daddy won't you take me back to Muhlenberg County
Down by the Green River where Paradise lay
Well, I'm sorry my son, but you're too late in asking
Mister Peabody's coal train has hauled it away
Eh?
Well, most folks aren't all that interested in super wealth, or even progress. Truth be known, progress itself isn't all that its cracked up to be, and a lot of progress is pretty darned non progressive. Quite a few people would regarding reversing progress as real progress.
Now, what does all that mean?
Just this.
Most folks want decent lives. And for Wyomingites, that means getting outdoors, hunting, fishing, camping, and just enjoying the country. People view the land as theirs, and it is.
Quite a few Wyomingites work outdoors. Quite a few of them work outdoors because they like the outdoors, not because they're enamored with a particular industry. So, quite a few guys driving those oilfield service trucks, for example, are doing it as they like driving outdoors. Geologists may read journals that deal with oil and gas production, but mot of them were granola's in their twenties and still are. I know, as I was a geologist.
Lots of people would be ranchers or farmers if they could be, just to live and work outdoors. They can't, because they're living in the 2010s, not the 1910s. But that doesn't mean that in their heart of hearts, that's not where they are.
So, it gets back to Wendell Berry's famous question, "what are people for?".
Economics isn't it. Economics only serves people.
Which is why the last time this occurred, it was put down by angry locals. And they're angry again, and getting angrier.
All the argument about Federal regulation and how nasty it is, and how the economy will be revived, etc and resume its old (1970s?) form is not only inaccurate, it's just so much unconvincing babble if it doesn't address the issues that really matter to the people who are really from here. The state is our life. We have sacrificed just to stay here. Giving it away, and that's what will occur, on the pretext that we will all have more money in our bank accounts doesn't mean much if we give away the state to do it.
