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Collapse of government authority, factionalism within regulatory agencies, breakdown of community trust, refusal of one branch of government to recognize another, armed vigilantes, mass infection, and resulting brain drain - there is full-on state failure out here in the West.
“Third world” is problematic. “Banana republic” is offensive. This is just state collapse, American-style. The Wyoming govt got press for cutting off svcs to their small towns, but my county is bookended by two places that have it worse: the Flathead and Bitterroot Valleys.
About 150k people live between these two beautiful places. They are represented by a health board overtaken by Bundy family acolytes, a county commission too cowardly or inept to stop them, a County Attorney who denies the Executive branch’s authority, https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/annehelenpetersen/annie-bukacek-montana-coronavirus-covid-lockdown-protests
a State Senator who denies COVID’s lethality, & a Sheriff who’s part of the “Sovereign Citizens” movement. The good people at the Health Dept - overworked in normal times serving a pop. that thinks vaccinations are a tool of state control - cannot cope. https://ravallirepublic.com/news/local/article_51371442-1099-56d4-8c96-b45af967585c.html
Public health officials are *literally begging* those in authority to change course. But they can’t or won’t. So no one masks, gatherings are not limited in any way, and a general feeling of lawlessness prevails. As a result, people are dying of COVID. https://flatheadbeacon.com/2020/11/06/public-health-officials-take-aim-county-leaders-failure-act-covid-19/
Its no coincidence that these places are also hotbeds of white nationalism. R*chard Sp*ncer, the bigot who coined the term “alt-right” is from Whitefish. Militia insignias are not uncommon. The public utility commissioner(!) fomented violence against BLM protesters in my town....
...and she got endorsed by my local paper for it - then unendorsed.
And I, and so many others, live among the wreckage. You could read this from afar and think “yeah, seems about right for a place like Montana” but you’d be wrong. And condescending. https://missoulian.com/opinion/editorial/the-missoulian-retracted-this-public-service-commission-endorsement/article_af26d2b3-635c-55a4-9b0e-6167fbeae9bc.html
And I, and so many others, live among the wreckage. You could read this from afar and think “yeah, seems about right for a place like Montana” but you’d be wrong. And condescending. https://missoulian.com/opinion/editorial/the-missoulian-retracted-this-public-service-commission-endorsement/article_af26d2b3-635c-55a4-9b0e-6167fbeae9bc.html
The vast majority of us out here are not white nationalists, not anti-vaxxers, not Sovereign Citizens, not militia members, nor anti-maskers.
But we are ruled by those who are. And those people are tearing down what little state authority we had out here in the first place.
But we are ruled by those who are. And those people are tearing down what little state authority we had out here in the first place.
“But this just sounds like Trump’s America. State failure is melodramatic - it’ll get back to normal!”
Leaving aside whether “getting back to normal” is even what we want, Montana isn’t New England. Civic institutions are simply weaker here. That’s why I say “state failure”.
Leaving aside whether “getting back to normal” is even what we want, Montana isn’t New England. Civic institutions are simply weaker here. That’s why I say “state failure”.
Bc now I have friends who are planning to leave. As in move away. They are invariably nurses, teachers, civil servants, etc - the kind of people affected by state collapse who *also* have the financial means to escape. When this happens in other countries we call it brain drain.
But what do we call it when it happens in parts of America? And how can we help rebuild these places and their institutions so that the people who *can’t afford* to leave aren’t further preyed upon by the militias, the conspiracists, and the broken government itself?
Thumbing through your dog-eared copy of “Hillbilly Elegy”? Stop.
The communities I’m talking about are experiencing *unprecedented prosperity*. Their population is growing, building new housing and roads. They’re getting richer. All rural places aren’t Appalachia.
The communities I’m talking about are experiencing *unprecedented prosperity*. Their population is growing, building new housing and roads. They’re getting richer. All rural places aren’t Appalachia.
But that prosperity is not breeding confidence in civic institutions (let alone mask mandates) because it so so *profoundly* unequal. Seattle-ites are building million dollar COVID cabins, Glacier National Park is a perpetual traffic jam, we’re getting direct flights to LGA...
...the world has come to Montana. But if you live in Evergreen, under the flight path to the airport, the world has not brought prosperity. Housing in your small town - already scarce and unaffordable anyways - is now commodified by a nationalized property market.
Minimum wage is *half* what it takes to pay for basic necessities, college tuition for your kids is about to increase (they couldn’t handle the debt load and stay in Montana anyways) and there’s a ceiling to your success bc the economy has now pivoted almost entirely to tourism.
There is also a pandemic. But Annie Bukacek, MD is here to tell you that masks are yet another attempt by outsiders to control your life. The Sheriff - who you might know personally, as this is a small community - tells you that his local authority trumps all outside authorities.
Your State Senator denies COVID can even kill you, the local paper is endorsing a white nationalist to be in charge of regulating the power company, and public health officials are mocked for being alarmists (who, not incidentally, want to force you to wear masks).
Given all this, I would also question the utility of civic institutions - that is if I wasn’t elected to the legislature.
At the root of it all, at the root of state failure out here in the rural West, is inequality - of advancement, of opportunity - that no political party has even attempted to address.
Republicans are able to win right now - due to their noxious scapegoating of people of color - but for how long will *they* even maintain trust? And who wants to rule over the wreckage anyways but bad actors who will further victimize the communities they claim to serve?
My fellow national Democrats should take note - what happens here, out on the periphery of the American political landscape, will make its way to the center. It already has.
And the only way we can fight it is to attack the vicious inequality that is the root cause of state failure, whether in a “third world country” or here in Montana.
#mtpol
#mtpol
