FRONTIER JUSTICE
Between the end of the civil war and about 1880, disputes in the aptly named “wild west” were often settled with fists or the Colt revolver. This short period of American history is probably most notable for having kept Hollywood in business cranking out “oaters” featuring such legendary lawmen as Pat Garrett, Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterson and such colorful outlaws as Sam Bass, Billy the Kid and Jesse James. Montana was a part of that history, with the Plummer gang and the vigilantes that finally brought them to bay. Having lived for almost the last decade in what many call, “the last best place,” I can tell you that there is still a frontier spirit in a state that is the fourth largest in our country with barely a million inhabitants. Some residents here jokingly but accurately note there are more cows in Montana than people. The local high school closes on the first day of hunting season; housewives routinely carry guns in their purses and know how to use them; there are still bar fights on a Saturday night. And as Butte resident Rob Oneill, the former Navy Seal who double tapped Osama Bin Laden to hades notes, “you don’t get in somebody’s space.” At least not in Montana. While politicians routinely visit the Big Sky country more for a vacation than to acquire votes, making the state a backwater for national politics, that changed with the recent special election to fill the congressional seat vacated when prexy Trumpee appointed another former Navy Seal, Ryan the Zinky as
Secretary of the Interior.
The Donkeys, in their continuing zeal to demonstrate that the last prexy election was an aberration, went all out to try to put one of their own in Congress. For some unfathomable reason, however, they nominated a guy with a history of bad debts whose main claim to fame was that he was a guitar plucking “good old boy.” His opponent was a rich businessman who came to Montana about 20 years ago, built a successful tech company, sold it and donated large sums to charity. I ask you, objectively, who would you rather have in the House of Representatives, the body in Congress that controls the national purse strings? But objectivity and politics are always, as they say, “strange bed fellows.” The elephant candidate was, of course, painted as a rich carpet bagger and it appeared the election might be close. Then, the ante was raised when on the day before the election, the Repub body slammed a reporter who apparently got in his face.
Ah, heaven! Or so the Dems thought. But it was not to be. The Repub won by six or so percentage points, not a bad margin in any election. The Repub reminds me of Doc Holliday, at best, a shady character, who nevertheless always skirted responsibility because he often found himself on the side of the law as when he stood with Wyatt Earp at the shootout at the OK corral.
Our newly elected rep will be off to Washington with a misdemeanor assault charge hanging over his head. And maybe that’s appropriate for a state where “men are men and women are glad of it” as some might argue. Violence, of course, is not a rational way to settle disputes. The new rep’s people tried to argue that the liberal reporter, pursuing the media’s attempts to exterminate every elephant they can find, had somehow attacked the candidate. Ironically, it was reporters from the liberals’ hated Fox News that backed up the reporter’s claims that he never touched the candidate before he ended up on the floor. It is also ironic to note that in a PC culture where the Left continues to argue for “safe spaces” they seem to have no tolerance for anyone else’s safe space. And here in Montana, that may have been a big mistake.