The Country and State You Save Just May Be Your Own

Guest Editorial By Douglas Siddoway

We had a sheepherder on our outfit years ago who dressed like a cowboy, lived on cheese and onions, and was pretty certain the sun could be made to come up in the west.  He was eccentric even by ranch standards, but this was in a time when normal human behavior was more tightly defined.

By today’s standards he would be a pillar of thought and reason—not because he would have come to accept the laws of planetary motion, but because his oddity would pale in comparison to what now passes for rational thinking, by which I mean the Alice in Wonderland-like thinking that permeates the Republican Party nationally and in Idaho.

We’re in a completely new space now, unbounded by any conventional notions of truth and apparently capable—even willing—to ignore what we’ve seen with our own eyes since Kamala Harris exposed the former president for what he is:  an angry, grievance-filled and possibly cognitively-impaired grafter and convicted felon who lies about everything as easily as he breathes.

The stupidest part of the whole thing is that a lot of Idahoans who should know better (starting with our governor, our senators and representatives, and a good number of our legislators) apparently can’t be bothered with any of this despite the fact that Trump has taken over their national party and is giving every two bit, race-baiting Gem State politician permission to impose their warped views of Christianity on the rest of us by banning library books, defunding public schools, beating up on trans kids, denying a woman’s reproductive rights, and generally making life miserable for anyone who believes Constitutional principles like the separation of church and state are vital to a functioning democracy.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but there’s a through line to all of this—one that runs directly from the unhinged rhetoric of the former president to MAGA-inspired party hacks like Dorothy Moon and the dozen or so Idaho legislators, most of them transplants living off of their California pensions, who are hell bent on denying our heritage and changing our beliefs and way of life.  If you don’t believe me, just ask your local candidate—most likely a well-groomed, outwardly friendly, middle-aged mom who mumbles a lot about freedom and family values—whether the 2020 election was stolen or the January 6^th Capitol insurrection was really just a bunch of over-excited sightseers.

To be fair, Trump didn’t get us here on his own.  A lot of pathways have converged to bring us to this point:  inadequate funding of public education; toxic social media platforms; a religiously-inspired skepticism of science; opportunistic politicians who find it easier and more profitable to slipstream behind his ugly rhetoric and cruel ideas than call him out; the earthquake and aftershocks of a global pandemic; and a disquieting reluctance to exercise our God-given ability to think critically.  But one grotesque factor has tied all of this together and it is Donald Trump, a failed businessman whose campaign of fear and lies will continue to divide us if he is elected, and will serve as a blueprint for the next phony would-be dictator who comes on the scene if he isn’t.

The hope, of course, is that we will remember the chaos of Trump’s White House years and every untethered lie he has uttered since then when we go to the polls next month—that somehow these hellish memories will register with those among us who are firmly dug in, or have given up on politics, or can’t summon the courage to break with an orthodoxy that values party over country.  I’m not holding my breath.  As H.L. Mencken put it, “nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people.”

I won’t be voting for Donald Trump this November, to be sure, but I will be supporting Proposition 1, the open primary/ranked choice voting initiative that will be on the ballot.  Few ends would be more fitting for MAGA and the political extremists riding its coattails than demonstrating that the best way to restore American greatness and sound Idaho political leadership is with faith and hope rather than rage and fear.

Think about it.  The country and state you save just may be your own.

Douglas Siddoway farms and practices law in Fremont County.