I've met 2/3ds of our people in Congress from this state, and I may have met, but just don't remember doing so, the remaining 1/3d.
I can't say that I know any of them well, but I have spoken to the ones I've met, before they were in office, in a different context. One in a commerce sort of sense, and the other just as two folks sort of sense.
All of them are very smart people.
I frankly don't believe that they believe a lot of what they're saying. When they stand up and talk about "Biden's radical green agenda", I don't believe that they believe what they're saying. I've strongly suspected that in at least one case the speaker would be speaking for a green agenda if they had remained in their native state. And when one stated that just recently, it was combined with waiving the banner of a new mask mandate that hasn't happened and isn't going to happen, and the speaker, who is no dummy, knows that.
I think they're throwing red meat to the dogs.
They're pitching to people at the top of the GOP Central Committee here and its supporters. Those people actually do believe what they say, which raises the bigger question of how they believe it. Some of it may be due to narrowed horizons, both professionally and in reality. I.e., if you never leave your village, you'll only have the views of the villagers and the village occupations.
An example of that, I think, is the discussion on electric vehicles. All the time, around here, I'll hear somebody say something like "we'll they'll never work here. . . har, har, har."
Well, they will, and are. Technology is advancing. On top of it, they don't build cars and trucks for Wyoming. Not once, in the entire history of the automobile industry, as somebody in the industry said; "so what do Wyomingite's want? We better build that".
No, they build cards for Denverites, and Daytonites, not people who live in Bairoil.
But if you live in Bairoil, and always have, well how would you know better?
Politics at a certain level evolves from a concern of working people, who man it at the lower levels, to people who have a lot of time on their hands. That's why, at one time, the legislature, which meets in the winter, was made up of ranchers. Shipping had happened, and gathering was yet to come. Hanging out in nice warm hotel rooms in Cheyenne sounded okay and they had the time to do it.
That's repeated in the party in a different way today
At the upper levels today, we have a rancher of course, but we also have figures who are retired military officers. The latter is particularly weird for the isolationist anti-government GOP today, as how somebody who spent their entire career in the most expensive branch of the government living off the government teet would suddenly hate the government hard to explain, but whatever. They have the time.
People on county commissions, etc., they don't have the time.
So the closed circle at the top, fed by the disgruntled populist at the bottom, is convinced of extreme right wing positions.
Those at the very top of elective office, not universally, but pretty commonly, repeat the positions.
But is it out of genuine belief?
I doubt it.
Indeed, of the top elected officials at the state and the national level from this state, there's only one that I think might believe part of what that individual is saying, but only part, and I don't know how that person, whom I once knew somewhat, got there. Back in the day, I would have thought that person, based upon that person's circle of friends, to have been a liberal Democrat.
I may have well been wrong. If they were really right wing, they kept it to themselves.
Which brings me to cowardice.
I'm not referencing that person today, but many others.
I can't say how many times I've been somewhere where somebody said a racist joke, or made an extreme political comment, and nobody said anything. Probably thousands. Most people don't want a fight or an argument, and most people who do want a fight or an argument are complete and total assholes. Indeed, people who say "well I want to be a lawyer because I like to argue", and mean it, are actually saying "I'm a total asshole".
It's so much easier to simply smile at a comment and move on it isn't funny. When the local anti-maskers made comments, that's what we often did around here. And when the Trump supporter in the lunchroom spouts off, figuring everyone else agrees, it's easier just to take a drink of coffee and comment on something dull, like football.
But at some point, you should say or do something.
The Apaches used to have a custom in which hey'd sacrifice a young woman annually. It endured into the horse era, during which, at one annual such event, a young man rode in, scooped up the young woman, and carried her off. The event never happened again.
That took courage, but it changed the course of things.
On rare occasions, I've seen people do that in conversations. Simply state what they believe when that belief seems to be contrary to the audience, and people immediately start agreeing with the stated.
In others, it makes the person a pariah.
But in an era in which we're asking why has so much gone wrong, and much that's being ignored is going wrong, it's time to say something.
The advice here isn't Bayard Rustin's "Speak truth to power" maxim, and it sure isn't Noam Chomsky's "speak truth to the powerless", but rather, simply; Speak the truth.
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