Did you know that a Denver Post editorial last week apologized for Colorado’s U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert implying that Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota was a terrorist because of her religion? It’s always awkward when a third person feels it’s necessary to apologize for you, but in this case, silence would have been an endorsement.
It was the readers’ comments to the editorial that got even more awkward. Rather than take the apology as a profound stance by a main state newspaper against hate and mockery, readers railed against the western slope of the state for electing Boebert in the first place, calling them backwards, ill-educated and snively.
The western slope is a Great Wall of Colorado determined by the Continental Divide of the Rocky Mountains. The Continental Divide determines where water goes. Snow that melts on the western side of the Rockies flows toward the Pacific Ocean, and raindrops that land on the east side head for the Gulf of Mexico. The western slope has 38 percent of the land and 10 percent of the people.
The startling-amazing-distressing part is that readers would take a thoughtfully crafted few hundred newspaper words pleading for civility and turn them into weapons. People who choose to live in magnificent, mighty mountains are probably there for the magic, not the politics. One would think.
Those who live in Glenwood, Pagosa or Steamboat Springs, Gunnison, Ouray, Eagle, Rifle, Aspen or Alamosa, are the same as people on the eastern slope, which includes the Front Range, Sangre de Cristos, Pikes Peak, the Royal Gorge, Boulder, Denver, Ft. Collins and the U.S. Air Force Academy.
In Colorado, the sun shines 300 days a year. Anyone who wants to complain about residents “on the other side” of the mountains is looking for things to complain about. It shouldn’t take a miracle to translate activism into artwork, should it? Feels like it.
Santa, for Christmas I want a change to the mood of debate.
In Denver, the Colorado Rockies have to store baseballs in humidors or they’ll dry out and cause a homerun to probably sail 700 feet. The city is unusual in a country of unusual cities. The whole state is cockeyed and beautiful, just like here in Arkansas and over in Montana.
If we must bully, let’s go after those who say, “It is what it is” or “It’s neither here nor there” or “We’ll get there when we get there” or “I wouldn’t worry if I were you” or “I don’t mind either way” or “Whatever.”
But those people live everywhere and it would be futile to pick on them and still hold a full time job.
Which is the point. Just because someone says, “Harold was pinching a fit” instead of “pitching a fit” doesn’t mean they’re dumb, it means they’re creative, accurate or unconvinced.
Wherever we live, it’s easier to place blame on those we think of as piñatas rather than on those who are in charge and can’t decide which road to take but still keep the wheel. The ones in charge are the ones we elect and pay to be in charge. Why are they so mixed up?
One time I wrote a column and a woman in Pennsylvania sent me a letter saying her sixth graders were more coherent than I was. Except she wrote conherent.
Incoherence is rampant, governments are experts at hiding stuff, people are anxious about money no matter how much they have, power struggles rarely end well, and we’re just funny upright creatures striving to live in a head space that keeps encouraging us to calm down and appreciate each other. That’s hard and easy at the same time.
Yes, the Denver Post editorial board saw it was necessary to call out an elected official for being threatening. Yes, the elected official is a study in calamity. Both think only they are right.
If we did what we do best, what we enjoy most, what gives us a kick, instead of firing anger so intense it melts snow, it would be like having an extra Christmas.