An existential wakeup call.
Lex Anteinternet: Intellectual disconnect. With everything on fire, ...: The weather report for today from the Trib: A headline from Cowboy State Daily: ‘It Was Armageddon’: Eastern Wyoming Community Evacuated By ...
Now, from Cowboy State Daily, we learn this:
Wildfire Burns Harriet Hageman’s Family Homestead, More Evacuations Ordered
By any measure, this is tragic. And the story is well written, and sympathetic. Indeed, it provides some details about Hageman that I was unaware of, including the size of her very large family I didn't realize that she was one of six siblings.
That frankly explains why she's a lawyer. The law was, and to some extent still remains, the occupation that agricultural parents often want to see a child go into, often due to the erroneous belief that lawyers don't really work.
That's not the point here, however. At some point in her post high school life Hageman turned to the very hard right, or at least seemed to, and has been part of the Wyoming position that's all in on unaltered fossil fuel production.
The degree to which agriculturalist refuse to accept the science on this in Wyoming is itself really remarkable. Farmers and ranchers depend on the land being sustainable, worry about drought and heat, and then go on to dismiss what they're seeing with their own eyes.
The article notes that the Hageman's tragically lost their early home on the ranch, with this one currently belonging to a nephew. I believe that nephew may have appeared in her campaign ads. It also related:
About 8,000 acres of Hugh Hageman’s 25,000-to-30,000-acre spread burned, taking away some of the pasture needed for his 1,000 head of cattle.
“It’s devastating,” said Hugh Hageman when reached by Cowboy State Daily late Friday.
I'm sure it is.
Reality calls up on us to recognize it, not hide from it.
This ought to be the state's Pearl Harbor moment.
