Jane Banner: Shouldn't we wait for back up?
Ben: This isn't the land of waiting for back up. This is the land of you're on your own.
Wind River.
In the film Wind River, set on the Wind River Indian Reservation, Tribal policeman Ben and FBI agent Jane Banner are confronted with gunfire while investigating a crime and have the exchange noted above.
Wyomingites love that quote, and there's a lot to it.*
Not only is there a lot to it, its very much the case regarding politics in this state. Our Congressional delegation doesn't support or represent us on many of the existential matters at play in the state. Not one darned bit.
And they're not going to. Just as in Wind River the two policemen, and an Animal Damage officer, were under assault by those that they were going to have to take on, on their own, so are the residents of this state.
The other day I saw a lifelong member of Wyoming's Republican Party, who once held positions within it, decried. Wyoming's Congressional Representation as "bought and paid for". This followed, by a period of a couple of years, a similar claim by a former significant Wyoming politicians that I somewhat know. Another person I know describe all three of Wyoming's Congressional delegation as "ass kissing sycophants".
There's something to all of that.
The vast bulk of their large campaign war chests comes from out of state money. Compared to it, the money from Wyomingites doesn't even amount to a drop in the bucket. It's more like a drop in a 55 gallon barrel. Wyoming public media, in a news story on the topic, reported:
JU: OpenSecrets reported that Rep. Harriet Hageman received $15,000 from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. Sen. John Barrasso has received over $70,000 from a private equity firm based in New York and California [from 2019 to 2024]. And Sen. Cynthia Lummis received over $100,000 from the Club for Growth, a conservative PAC [from 2019 to 2024]. In the face of more powerful organizations like those, how do individual or local donors in Wyoming make their voice more impactful? Or their donation more impactful?
Some group calling itself the Americans for Prosperity have been running non stop adds on social media thanking John Barrasso for his role in the Big Ugly.
Who are these people and organizations? Wyomingites?
Not hardly. Wikipedia says of them:
Americans for Prosperity (AFP), founded in 2004, is a libertarian conservative political advocacy group in the United States affiliated with brothers Charles Koch and the late David Koch.[6] As the Koch family's primary political advocacy group, it has been viewed as one of the most influential American conservative organizations.
Club for Growth is a radical right wing economic outfit as well.
American Israel Public Affairs Committee: What does have to do with the average Wyomingite?
Not freaking much.
In a couple of place around town, there are billboard featuring all three of our Congress people with the Tetons in the background thanking all three for standing with "American Energy", by which they no doubt mean petroleum and coal, not wind, solar and nuclear (as we've recently learned locally).
The bigger problem is that the Congressional delegation flat out ignores the views of Wyomingites on some major issues, public lands being one. Wyomingites are overwhelmingly opposed to the Federal lands going to the states, and are opposed to public lands being sold. That well known fact hasn't done anything to keep our Congressional delegation from supporting those things, and it's done nothing whatsoever to keep the Wyoming GOP from backing land transfers.
Dr. John Barrasso, who after all is a East Coaster and looks like one, has his head so far up Trump's ass on a daily basis that he can examine Trump's tonsils from the backside. He has no use for Wyoming anymore. My guess is that he's in his last term as he knows that he's not going to be the Senate Majority Leader so being a fascist flunky will be his career achievement, and he's okay with that.
Who knows what's up with Lummis. She's always been a Cheshire cat in the first place, with a sort of snarky smile. She goes her own way, and that way isn't yours.
Harriet Hageman is the most honest of the bunch. Sure, she's stuck in the Powder River Campaign, but her views, while not the same as most of hours, re honestly and openly held.
Chuck Gray? Gray is just using Wyoming, that's about it. And his politics bend with the wind. He's a far right winger Greenpeacer if you can make sense of that, and he's hoping you can't and will yell at you until you are distracted.
Right now, the Wyoming GOP is the Wyoming Freedom Caucus. The Wyoming Freedom Caucus is packed with people who are not from Wyoming, and how have brought their dumbass ideas with them and want to impose them on Wyoming.
They're succeeding in doing so. There's really no saving the GOP in the state. The old GOP, which was uniquely Wyoming in view, is dead, taking the path of the old Wyoming Democratic Party, which did as well, and which died first.
In its place we have the Dixiecrats and those whose one and only value is their pocket books.
They need to go.
But it would appear unlikely that they can be dislodged from the current GOP, put on plane, and shipped back to the their home states, like they should be.
The only two things the two failed parties agree on is that you should never vote for a third party. That's how we got into this mess.
So maybe it's time for some new parties not beholding to the crap these parties are.
And why not local parties?
Let's start with something that should be clear to all, but really seems not to be.
There's nothing American or Constitutional about a "two party system". The founders, while they rapidly fell into parties, didn't approve of them at all. A primary system, such as we and most other states have, is existentially anti democratic and existentially unconstitutional. They're nothing more than state funded party elections that are geared to conspire against any person from a third party, or just an independent running. Primary elections would make sense only if no party affiliation was noted on the ballot at all. Get 1,000 signatures to get you on, perhaps, and you are on.
Moreover, it's really time to allow for recalls of Congressional representation. If we had that, all three of our Congressional people would be facing a recall election right now. John Barrasso, who earnestly believes whatever you believe as you believe it, and even more than you do, would now be leading armed raids into Utah against Mike Lee if that was the case, rather than spending all of his time kissing Trump's ass.
Suffice it to say, we're not being served well.
What would a party that actually reflected Wyoming's values look like?
Well, of course, in stating something like that, I'm inevitably going to post what a party that reflected my values, mostly, would look like.
- It'd protect public lands.
- It'd have a land ethic.
- It'd protect democratic values, as in voting.
- It'd realize that science isn't a fib, and that some things have to adjust because of scientific reality.
- It would have a tax system that accepted that out of state imports with huge amounts of cash should be taxed.
Frankly, it'd look a lot like what the GOP here used to look like.
It's be overall conservative, without a doubt, but conservative in a Wyoming sort of Way, not in a Dixiecrat sort of way.
Most Wyomingites who are from Wyoming, save those who had drank the MAGA/Charlie Kirk Kool aide, would likely vote for it.
We're sure not going to be saved by the Democrats. They'll do anything they can to wreck their own chances at the ballot box. And we're not going to be saved by the Republicans either. The GOP has wiped out the real party and put in place a party that Nathan Bedford Forest would be proud of.
We're on our own.
Footnotes:
*I'll confess that I've done a lot of legal work on the Wind River Reservation, and it haunts me. This is a really good move, and I've watched it twice in the theatre, but I can't get through it again. May the perpetual light shine upon many there.
