Now Idaho Voters Doubt the Moon Landings

A fellow I spoke to last week agreed that the chemtrails crowd long ago slipped a gear. He also told me in all seriousness that the moon landings were faked. The movie Idiocracy has become reality, or I feel like Bob Newhart’s character, surrounded by lunatics, and looking for a refuge. Some 30 years ago, a respected candidate running for a prestigious seat asked me if I could define normal. We were talking for a moment after the microphone was turned off, and she expressed her frustration with what she was encountering while campaigning. Here we are in a nation with 40 trillion dollars in debt, probably another 100 to 150 trillion in unfunded liabilities, and people are worried about alligator people, Bigfoot, and little green men. I’m not sure the Republic can long endure.

The conservative Christian writer Rod Dreher believes we’re heading for Weimar America. He sees some parallels, if not the same conditions. Germany in the 1920s was a low-trust environment. A place where old institutions had been swept away, and people lived in the moment without consideration of the future. Charlatans promising easy answers and offering villains came to prominence. The occult and conspiracy theories replaced religion for many, as did politics.

I wouldn’t call the situation hopeless. The rabid screamers on Facebook at most represent no more than a couple of dozen people, and it’s the same banshees over and over and over. Mostly, people who need someone else, chemtrails, or the system to blame for their own shortcomings. Remember the general in Dr. Strangelove who blamed fluoride and communists for the lack of lead in his pencil? He blew up the world to cover for his failure to launch.

They Give the Political Right a Bad Name

Maybe it hasn’t occurred to the loons, but when people hear you spouting, they tend to paint the rest of the conservative movement as nuts, and the media is more than happy to promote that notion. When I worked in Delaware, I was the master of ceremonies for a Tea Party rally at the Capitol in Dover. We had a couple of thousand people, and one fellow on the periphery had a birther sign. Guess who attracted all the news media attention? The coverage that followed made it difficult to attract normal people to the movement.

In Idaho, the crazies have coalesced around the Branch Glennedians, who arrived as fiscal conservatives, then entered the conspiracy black hole. I haven’t determined if they were always a few beers short of a six-pack, or if they found it was a good way to build a reliable base in low turnout elections. The latter would imply they have a thinking process; therefore, I favor the former.

We used to call the other side the establishment, but considering their loss of prestige and seats in government, those people aren’t very established. I don’t endorse them. Both groups are controlled by lobbyists, just with different colored jerseys to make a sports analogy. I’ve written before that nobody challenging the Glennedians does much to excite the voting bloc. You can’t say there’s nearly as much enthusiasm. I listen to a lot of political advertising, especially for 20 hours every week, and it all sounds the same. All I know is that everyone in politics hates cops, farmers, and dogs. Or so the voices during the commercial breaks tell me.

I didn’t have any issues with the 2010 Citizens United decision because at the time, I thought it favored my side, and I didn’t look at the larger and long-term impact. It allows a handful of well-heeled special interests to control governments at all levels. I hear a lot of you talking about a balanced budget amendment to our federal constitution. Maybe the place to start is to create an amendment to control campaign spending. If regular, normal people want to gain some influence, then start there.

On Another Matter of Electoral Importance

I’m not a fan of our Governor. I wasn’t happy about his COVID response, and I more than made that clear at the time. I’m not really bothered by his description of an opponent’s base as recent California transplants. A tempest in a teapot. Yes, some of them are transplants, as are hundreds of thousands of other Idaho residents. Some will also vote for him. Some won’t. The future isn’t determined by a flippant remark. It’s not related to spending or regulations. I also saw several people on social media calling the Governor corrupt. Easy to say, but why don’t you offer people some evidence? Or did some neighbor say it over coffee, so it must be true? Now, you get me a picture of the man with his hand in the cookie jar, and that would inform voters. “I don’t like his looks,” doesn’t quite do the same. If this were in a court of law, it would be tossed for lack of evidence.

Someone recently told me backroom deals were going on in one county commission. When I asked for evidence, crickets! And backroom deals aren’t necessarily criminal. Know the law, and remember, there was a seven-figure judgment against one Idaho “citizen” journalist.

A similar version of this essay appeared at Substack.