I am out in New Mexico for Independence Day weekend, checking on family. The small town where the folks live has a big public celebration every year with speeches, food, and booze – just the way the Founders intended, though I found the lack of rum punch disturbing.
Unfortunately, somebody let it be known that I spend time in the DC area, which led, wouldn’t you know it, several people from the settler-colonist crowd up by Santa Fe to come and introduce themselves. These are folks who move into the West from the blue coastal regions and decide their new home needs to be “modernized,” and start with all sorts of programs like bike lanes, lactation stations, and wanting to reintroduce wolves.
As is the wont of their tribe, and thinking I was one of them, they tried to commiserate with me about the strange habits of the locals who not only don’t read the New York Times every day but have a strange fascination with all sorts of combustion involving things like gunpowder and gasoline.
As we talked and I planned my escape, I scrolled through the NY Times site and noticed on the front page that the paper has a weather index showing “extreme weather” around the nation, no doubt in order to keep the paranoia regarding climate collapse stoked among the readership. They had flagged Phoenix as having the “dangerous” heat index of 103-degrees. I showed them that and explained that we from Arizona call that “mild” and “early Fall” and it’s because of such shoddy reporting by the “newspaper of record” that we cannot have nice things.
I also saw that I needed to scroll way down the NY Times front page to find any mention that that day was a celebration of the founding of the greatest nation on Earth. Texas flooding, Hamas, deportations, and Trump of course got a lot of digital love. Finally I came across a mention of Independence Day with an article that had to qualify that the celebrations were being held despite a time of “deep divisions.”
Deep divisions, you say?
The NY Times is the type of news outlet that goes around and sets buildings on fire in order to report that there is an arsonist on the loose. Remember less than six years ago when the paper published the “1619 Project”? That piece of neo-Marxist, racist propaganda stated that the true American founding wasn’t 1776 when the Declaration of Independence was signed, but rather 1619 when the first slaves were landed in Jamestown.
To the NY Times, the founding of our nation was not based on freedom but rather racism and that it is part of our core DNA.
That piece of intellectual drivel would have made Goebbels and the CCP proud. In fact, the way it was both so quickly adopted by the Left as canon and demolished as quackery by professional historians makes me wonder if it wasn’t funded by a hostile power. It fit into the reality picture of the Left and anti-Americans (though I repeat myself) and provided the fuel for the Summer of Floyd the next year.
An excellent takedown of one of the most despicable acts in journalism is here.
You don’t hear much in the way of celebration about the 1619 Project anymore; the NY Times gives Duranty’s Pulitzer more love. If they had any guts they would publicly commemorate the “1619 Project” every Independence Day, but they won’t because they are cowards.
No take backs, NY Times, you own this.
As far as my new “friends” from Santa Fe, I decided, in true Arizona fashion, to stand my ground and told them to get back in their Subaru and get out of town.
Those transplanted “friends” are the reason many in the western states hate newcomers. As to the NYT, I don’t think that is in their DNA but has been in the last 50 years. Maybe less. They had a wonderful editor named Abe Rosenthal.
I still chuckle from a billboard I saw a few weeks ago on my last road trip. I had just crossed the AZ border, and it said:” Welcome Californians. Just please don’t bring California with you”.
Pretty much says it.
My daughter and I and Jamie the Wonder Grandson spent the 4th at Rockport, on Texas’ Aransas Bay, and the thing that we noticed — after seeing that American flags and patriotic flags and bunting were on display everywhere — was how marvelously friendly and companionable that everyone we met was. From the staff at the wonderful little hotel that we stayed in, to all the other guests (who ran to families, sometimes three generations worth) and everyone else that we encountered – the lady who sold me a ticket to tour the Fulton mansion on the last guided tour of the day, to the various people that we met in shops in old downtown Rockport.
True Texans – even us long or short-time transplants.
(And we are going back to the same hotel next 4th. We have already made reservations…)
We did some travelling in Montana for this holiday weekend– saw a bumper sticker on a car in Bozeman that had an outline of Montana, and an arrow pointing from there to an outline of California. The text read, “Like a good neighbor– stay over there”
We describe ourselves as “political and economic refugees from the Soviet Socialist State of Minnesota” to people we meet here in our TinyTown™ in NW Wyoming. It almost always gets a laugh; when it doesn’t, we know we’re talking to an idiot.
We would never have moved out of our former home- and birth-state had it not been run by collectivist/statist/authoritarians who are intent on destroying it in order have complete power and control over the people and the economy. But as soon as I retired from the job that had been keeping us there, we moved to a state that was much more in line with our standards, values, ethics and morals. A place where, when I take off my shirt in the doctor’s office, the nurse doesn’t freak out because, “OMG, he’s got a GUN!!!”. Instead she asks what I’m carrying and in what caliber. This is our kind of place.
Just remember that there are two kinds of people entering the Rep-wing states. Those who have shit their bed, don’t realize it, and want to act as “colonizers” for the collectivists. Then there are those who are fleeing the oppression and destruction engendered by the collectivists, and are “refugees” (like ourselves) who bring a warning of what can happen if you give the collectivists even a fraction of an inch (Spoiler Alert: They’ll take a mile).
And just as a by-the-way, despite the “lesbian limo” reputation they have on the East and Left Coasts, Subarus are VERY popular in Wyoming since they’ve got the best all-wheel-drive system ever made. There’s probably one Subie for every three 4WD pick-up trucks, and most of ’em have a couple of hundred thousand miles on ’em.
@BW1
Oregon east of the Cascades is much like your spot of Wyoming. We get transplants from California, but rarely from the coastal cities. It’s usually the inland folks, acting as refugees. (I’ll admit, we escaped Silicon Valley in 2003 when Silicon was no longer the defining element.) It’s rough being under the thumb of the NW corner of Oregon, and I hope (but don’t expect) for the success of the Greater Idaho project. Fairly rough winters (last one was quite expensive with tree and building damage) will chase away the fair weather transplants. It’s usually not worse than where I grew up, so Cali coastal weather didn’t spoil me.
And yes, Subarus are rather popular. My wife and I each have a Forester (hers is the designated backup car, seldom driven), along with a pickup truck. The Subie is handy when I have to make semiannual trips across the Cascades for medical visits and the necessary Costco run. Lack of bumper stickers helps, too.
Interesting about Subarus. Never saw many of them out in AZ but I do see plenty of them in the DC area and while they aren’t all “lesbian limos” they all seem to be driven by a predictable class.
I remember a while ago reading a piece on the marketing campaign Subaru directed toward the lesbian community.
As far as state differences…. there are other that predate the California-Blue State exodus. The inland parts of Maine vs. the coast.
In New Mexico, Santa Fe was seen as the playground of outsiders and of a different breed than Albuquerque and further down toward Las Cruces.
I should also add that New Mexico has an outsider problem for decades. It’s a poor state, well-dominated by native american and Hispanics (Spanish) and with a heavy influence of a tech. community and government agencies through national labs. While of the SW, it is very different culture than AZ or CO.
As an aside, I started to notice the California-exodus post-Rodney King riots, but it didn’t become a real poilitical problem until 20 years ago when the greater Phoenix area city governments decided it would be nifty top build a light rail system