| One of the reasons I predominately hung around with westerners at NN11 was that I sensed that talking with easterners about Montana and the mountain west left them slightly unnerved. I don't possess any psychic powers that tell me exactly why, but it seems to boil down to a trust issue. I get that they have a problem grokking our concept of space, and they distrust our more conservative ways and leanings. That's all good. But there was also a particular odor of worry, bordering on fear. It's not just me that senses such a thing.
It might have something to do with AP articles like the one that broke today. "Extremists finding fertile ground in Northwest US". Dateline Kalispell. Lovely. Gawker, of course, pokes their fun at what Montanans are all too aware of. I don't have a problem with any particular fact in the article, or even that it was written. The reality of where we live is what it is. Montana has a tradition of at least the illusion of letting people make there way as best they can. It's ironically humorous in the extreme that in the midst of a Google search for this article, one finds the Daily Interlake going on about horse races. In fact, the only Montana newspaper touching on what has been widely published across the nation is the Missoulian. That might change, but I'm cynical enough not to count on it.
One of the people I ran into at NN11 was David Neiwert. It was such a whirlwind of an event that when I talked with him on Thursday night, I didn't even recognize the man, truly to my shame. David is the online authority of western militia movements and domestic terrorism, founder of the award winning website Orcinus, and now a blogger at Crooks and Liars, author of In God's Country: The Patriot Movement and the Pacific Northwest and The Eliminationists: How Hate Talk Radicalized the American Right. If it sounds like I'm going out of my way to promote David's work, I really kind of am. He is that informative, he knows the mountain west intimately and he clearly sees the name Montana and Idaho will bare into our futures, that name which colors our progressives as something ... different? We briefly discussed the ongoing Bergert incident. David posited that if Bergert were smart, he would head for an urban area and blend into the diverse crowding. I don't see a man that ambushes police officers doing that for very long. He wants his war, and he'll have it. Bergert simply can't contain his angry racism, and David and I probably agree on that. We also briefly discussed the progressive online in Montana. He likes Montana Cowgirl, as I have grown to do as well. One thing you have to admit. The Cowgirl (or they) have pulled no punches when calling out the racism and xenophobia coming out of the northwest in this state.
Still, this is the brand we get to wear. Every single person I talked with at NN11 has seen Brian Schweitzer brand bills with his VETO irons, and yet almost none know what bills were branded. Thank you YouTube. What they also know is that there is a really white cancer growing in Montana, and they fear it. They should. We should. A guy who used to comment at DailyKos was a Native American who moved east. In every thread tagged "Montana" he would decry the state as racist. An African American at Kos, in a post about the racism in San Fransisco, posted a comment about how the most racist place he'd ever lived was the year he spent in Missoula, Montana. Everybody seems to know our name, and it isn't a good one. I call that "room for improvement".
UPDATE: It was noted in the first breakout session I attended at NN11 that the strength of the Tea Party rise was it's populist sentiment blended with the acceptance of racism. The seeds of this go back to the Reagan revolution. 'One needn't feel ashamed of being angry at welfare queens, because those dark takers of your effort are ruining the country.' It's not hard to figure out where those folks are acquiring the support for their awful ideas:
Obama has a big problem with white women. |
