How can we best describe our local elected officials? With a couple of exceptions, a single word will suffice: boring. They’re serious, thoughtful, and in their own way dedicated to doing whatever is best for the city. Usually. But if a comfortable majority of voters approve more outlets for us dimwitted residents to buy the demon weed and its evil offspring? The voters must have been misled – so let’s have another election!
What? This is just such a bush league decision, sadly reminiscent of rigged elections in the American South before the civil rights movement. But speaking from my own experience as an elected official, I know that city councilmembers, once elected, believe they have been divinely ordained to guide the destiny of our fair city.
Statistically, we’re a major western city. We’re in the same league as Denver, Salt Lake City, Phoenix and Las Vegas. Unfortunately, we’re a distant second to Denver among Front Range cities – always a bridesmaid, never a bride. Cheyenne is just an insignificant little dump north of Denver, but it gets to be a capital city. Unless western state boundaries are radically redrawn, we’ll never be out there running with the big dogs.
We need to recreate the West, throw off the shackles that bind us to the eccentricities of the Trump/Musk fever dream and go on our own path. So, here’s my own political fever dream!
First step: we join with the other ten States of the American West to create the Confederation of Western States (appropriately enough, COWS!). Each state elects its COWS commissioners and recognizes it as its sole federal entity. State boundaries are radically redrawn, dividing California into four states and making Colorado Springs the capital of a new state incorporating parts of Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico and Utah.
That’ll eventually draw the attention of Musk and Trump, but since they’ve thrown the government into total disarray, they won’t be able to do much about it. Tens of thousands of experienced government officials and disgruntled service members will head west to our prosperous land of rationality, achievement and fun. Elon will see the light, slip quietly out the back door of the White House and persuade Texas to join the Confederation.
Life will be steady, predictable, bureaucratic, peaceful and dull.
Barely noticing his geographical shrinkage, President Trump will wade even more deeply into the swamp of dementia. His still fawning and worshipful lackeys will keep him in good spirits. Eventually, they’ll decide to reroute his weekend flight to Mar-a-Lago to a different destination – Saint Helena, the remote island in the South Atlantic Ocean to which Napoleon was exiled in 1815.
The fractured union will reunite and elect our first woman President, DJT will be little mentioned and soon forgotten, and Saint Helena will quickly ban American tourists from their peaceful island. And as for Melania, forget Washington! She’ll enjoy her homes in New York, London, Paris, Slovenia and the West Indies. And for the rest of us, life will be steady, predictable, bureaucratic, peaceful and dull. I dunno – maybe I’ll have to move to where the action is.
Saint Helena, here I come!
