Visitors…be on your way now!

Been nice seeing you all. Glad you could come but it’s about time for you to head on home. You see, there’s a reason Cheyenne Frontier Days lasts 10 days and not eleven. Over time we’ve learnt that if folks visit any longer than about 10 days, they start telling us how they did things back home. Some of them begin making plans to stay.

We’d be grateful if you all’d plan to be outa here by sundown tomorrow evening. That’ll give us plenty of time to roll up the streets and get back to what it is we do best when nobody is here to tell us a “better” way.

Please know it’s not because we don’t like you, we do. But we’ve kinda figured out how we like things done. The longer you stay the more likely you are to start meddling. Not too long ago some Unitarian Universalist preacher comes to town. You know the kind. Not long after she set up house, she decided she should grace us with her opinion on guns. Well, we haven’t run her out of town yet but don’t think the boys ain’t working on it.

In the last half a century we’ve honed a way of moving backward at a pace we’re comfortable with. Like, it’s 2014, and one of the major candidates for governor says he’ll arrest federal employees “for impersonating law enforcement officers.” Heck, the governor himself doesn’t believe we humans cause climate change. One of our “Equality State” legislators, an Africa-American, begged gays to "please stop carpet-bagging on our civil rights movement."

They’re taken seriously here for a couple of reasons. One, we’ve been pretty successful driving out anyone who thinks differently and, two, the only thing resembling a two-party system in Wyoming is the Republican Party. Among Wyoming politicians there are two types of folks, the far-right and those who don’t believe the far-right is far-enough-right.

We haven’t had a Democrat in our congressional delegation since 1979. Don’t have much to show for it. That’s not the point. We don’t expect them to get much done. They can’t work with Democrats and the Republicans back there take ‘em for granted.

You gotta say, the sound they make raising Cain about the EPA, the BLM, Obamacare, anything Obama and everything that federal gov’mint does, is like the sound of a lullaby in a calf’s ears.

We know what it’d be like if a bunch of you stayed. We’ve a colony of liberals in “The People’s Republic of Jackson Hole.” We used to count on Jackson folks. Then a bunch of lefties moved in. Now they might as not elect a liberal to office, someone who might vote to expand Medicaid to insure folks who can just go to the emergency room if they’re really sick.

Not only are there no Democrats in the congressional delegation, there aren’t any in none of the statewide offices. There’re only 10 Democrats left in the entire state legislature. You can bet we’ve issued huntin’ license for them.

They’re not really “liberals.”  But they ain’t Republicans either. Don’t need their votes. Even with ‘em voting no, we banned the implementation of those doggone national science standards that mention goofy ideas like evolution and climate change. But they stand between us and us becoming the Reddest state in the country. What would we get for that? Not sure.

Still we can’t risk being so hospitable that you’ll spend more than a few days here. We appreciate your money; your ideas not so much. In the meantime I’ve got one question of you. We know Wyoming is the greatest place on earth…and so we wonder if you’re so darned smart, why you’d want to live here?

Be on your way now. That sun’s a’starting to set.

(Note to visitors: I write this morning with tongue in cheek. We’re all real glad you came, hope you had a great experience, and know you’re invited to come back…some even hope you’ll stay!)