Guest Posts on County 10 are provided by contributors and the opinions, thoughts, and comments within are their own and may not necessarily reflect those of County 10.
It’s one of my favorite scenes in the classic basketball film, “Hoosiers.”
Newly hired Hickory head boys’ basketball coach Norman Dale is taking over from a local yokel named George, who is angry at getting replaced.
“Look, mister, there’s two kinds of dumb: a guy that gets naked and runs out in the snow and barks at the moon, and a guy who does the same thing in my living room. The first one don’t matter, the second one you’re kinda forced to deal with.”
That was true in the 1954 rural Indiana setting of the 1986 classic, but it’s no longer the case.
Today, social media brings everything into your living room.
It’s a phenomenon that many still don’t grasp.
Changing the rules of what is and isn’t true, along with blatantly lying and getting away with it, are all brought to you courtesy of social media.
Politicians who were caught with a woman who was not their wife quickly saw their careers come to an end. No longer, having two, three, or four ex-wives and openly cheating on one with the next before divorcing them in succession has become the norm, at least with the MAGA crowd that proclaims, “family values.” Every act they’re caught in, and the pattern is overwhelming, is quickly ignored and as quickly dismissed.
One action that’s interesting at our local level involves House District 55 Representative Joel Guggenmous.
The embattled representative can’t seem to remember where he lives. His House of Representatives information sheet lists one place as his permanent residence and another as his mailing address. His mailing address is within House District 55. His residence is not.
Now comes the fun part.
He claimed he had to move outside his district when his landlord increased his rent 600%. A common occurrence in Riverton?
He moved outside the district because of financial considerations, which might be allowable under the House rule.
Here’s the clincher. You have to live for a year in the district you’re running for office in. Guggenmous admitted he moved outside the district. He claims to still live there. The primary is in three months. If he somehow wins the primary, the general is in six. Unless he can scrunch six months into a year with some sort of time warp, there isn’t a way he can run for office again since he doesn’t currently live in the district. I haven’t heard if he’s entered the race again. But the logic of his extremist Freedom Caucus thinking is classic.
That guy running naked outside in the snow is a great metaphor for politics these days. The extreme left and the extreme right bombard the rest of us with their incessant banter. A generation or two ago, they were still there, but we didn’t get blasted with their inane rhetoric like we do today.
Most of us are somewhere in the middle, between those two extremes. There’s not much fundamentally different in the hopes and dreams of normal Americans.
We want a safe place to live, good schools for our children, good roads, good medical services, a good job, and a life devoid of idiots. Is that too much to ask for?
On the left, you have people so ideologically extreme that nothing they propose makes much sense.
I hunt and fish. I have friends who lease federal land to graze their cattle. I have other friends who cut firewood and poles in the mountains. I support all those uses of public land.
If some elected clown (is the term clown gender neutral?) spouts off about selling the national forest, clear-cutting timber, or drilling for oil in Yellowstone, I have a big problem with that.
The extremists on the left are annoying. Often, they’re like a housefly buzzing you as you try to sleep. I get a kick out of some of their inane comments and beliefs, but they’re mostly harmless.
You can’t say the same thing for the far right.
Sadly, our representatives in Washington have lost common ground with the people of Wyoming, and so has the liberal element in other states.
We don’t cheer ridiculous wars that jack up gas and diesel prices while not helping our friends who work in the oil patch. It is insane to think it’s “patriotic” to pay more for groceries or that paying $5 or more a gallon at the pump is somehow supporting America.
The clowns on the right proclaim that. The ones on the left are too busy trying to get shoes that match their tutu.
Taking away Medicare or not even trying to get the benefit for our people is criminal. We live in a state largely devoid of quality medical care already. Forcing people to choose between lifesaving medications and eating should be grounds for immediate removal from office.
We deserve better.
It’s tempting to stop watching the news, ignore the outside world, and just go about your daily routine, but that only makes it worse.
The Freedom Caucus is here because outsiders see Wyoming as a weak, largely ignorant place where anyone can roll in and take over. Think of us as the starting point in a national game of Risk.
Liz Cheney was never from here. Neither is Chuck Gray. Gray grew up in Los Angeles with his mother, but spent summers in Casper with his father.
Little Chucky worked as a program director and conservative talk show host at KVOC in Casper. A station owned by his father’s Mount Rushmore Broadcasting. He got a foothold on Wyoming politics through a classic mix of lies, mudslinging, and innuendo against perhaps the best prepared native Wyomingite to ever seek the Secretary of State position in Tara Nethercott.
If she’d won, we wouldn’t have to worry about our social security numbers, driver’s licenses, passports, tax records, and property ownership records being sent back to the feds. In 132 previous years in the Wyoming Secretary of State’s office, this never happened. That was all done by Little Chucky to get in good with the MAGA movement in D.C.
It did nothing for Wyoming and may have opened you up for even more scams, frauds, and spam than you already receive.
How about thinking about those of us in the middle? I can argue with a neighbor about the value of labor unions, then agree on water rights, hunting rights, and the latest wolf study that might have these Canadian invaders eating our cattle. That’s how it is supposed to work.
Debate, conversation, and compromise. You won’t find that with the Freedom Caucus. They don’t debate in public. They’re not supposed to. They’re just supposed to wait for their orders from Arizona or Northern Virginia.
Taking away local control is a key component of the Freedom Caucus and their desire to micromanage our lives out here in desolate, isolated, ignorant Wyoming. (their views, not mine)
Maybe it’s time to deal with that naked guy running around in your living room. Do the majority of us really want to turn our state into an army of just above minimum wage workers, with no property, no medical care, and no hope?
We’re the equality state, even if it means letting some guy bark at the moon. As long as he’s not in front of our TV.