As a born and raised Montana ex-pat, currently living in hell, you captured the zeitgeist(?) of the new Bozeman pretty well. The one thing missing is the price of housing and how this contributes to the backlash of what you call the underclass. Between the influx of coastal elites and AirBnB, the non landowning locals are toast. You wouldn't believe me if I told you I rented a 3 bedroom house on 5th Ave with two room-mates when I went to college there. 10 minute walk to class. And no, I'm not a boomer. When I dropped out of college I worked nights washing dishes at a local ski area restaurant. Ski all day. get a free dinner after my shift. Worked for the Forest Service in the summer time. Then collect unemployment in the spring and fall while road tripping across the western US. Rent was never an issue. Not possible today. The service workers get flown in from god knows where and are lucky to get put up in some shithole company dorm. I get nostalgic when I'm sitting on my barstool, acting like darn fool, dreaming of that past life. When I sober up it becomes clear as day. The place no longer exists.
You nailed it with your point about housing. I'm N. Idaho, and I see the same thing. My town is gone-- California plates on every other car, "boutique" shops crowding every street and "local" brew pubs owned by folks who moved here two years ago.
Locals can't afford to live or pay property taxes. An old lady down the dirt road from my parents' place lost her home because she couldn't pay the taxes on its new million dollar valuation.
There's a deep, deep divide between people who are from here and people who are new in town, and they all know it-- so they cling even tighter to each other, putting "Idahome" stickers on their new SUVs and removing the CA plates as soon as they can to try to blend in. Then they get on the school board and city council and start bringing the same shit attitudes here that caused them to flee wherever they were from.
We have a new neighbor who denied and denied that he was from CA, until one day he admitted "I'm from N. CA-- it's totally different. I usually carry a gun!". I'm not sure why that was supposed to impress me.
We're quite literally seeing our homes and futures stolen by people from places we wouldn't even want to visit, as they come paying cash and pricing our lives out of range. You can't support a family or pay a mortgage here on a mill worker's salary anymore, and there's a real sense of despair as what was always a pretty friendly tourist / logging town has become a wanna-be Vail wholly taken over by an artificial aristocracy.
Jul 27, 2022·edited Jul 27, 2022Liked by Isaac Simpson
As someone born and still living in northern California, the same thing happened here. We had a culture before the place turned into a tech casino surrounded by homeless camps on fire.
The Montana locals are growling at the wrong people, and as long as they don't address the real issue of corrupt politicians not introducing safety nets to help the locals benefit from this river of wealth flowing by. Not raising the state minimum wage to combat poverty, not providing healthcare to the druggies and their families but willing to sell their souls to bring this corporate money into their districts, to the benefit of whom?
Unfortunately, money is unstoppable, a civil war is unlikely due to the low population density in Montana, which wouldn't even matter because of how the government will always protect capital, and unless you have a religious zealousness in protecting your land, you'll last about as long as 1/10th the Palestinian struggle against wealth and government. 10 years tops before everyone with the means to leave Montana has left unless your hold your government officials accountable in serving the well-being of residents.
Either fight a losing fight against inevitable capital or swim with the flow and ensure the inevitable comes with a best possible outcome for the locals... Maybe even have the state buy more land to protect its identity with extra taxes on bourgeoisie items.
The government can count on lawyers, it cannot count on the cops. The government can count on its paid, useless, coward Generals but not the troops (I am a veteran- they can’t. )
In fact “Teacher, the Generals are of the elites, they are not us. “
That wasn’t soldiers.
That was the Soldiers kids in school, instructing the Teacher.
To compare any part of America to Palestine or our elites to the Spartan State that is Israel is a category error of unbridgeable magnitude, that is attempting to leap the Grand Canyon .
The elites have no force, they have lawyers. If you want to understand the relationship its the Congress that ran into Shelter on January 6 vs ...anyone at all who’s slightly stronger.
So Montana and Americans can quite win any fight, because they are the fighters. The other side are cowards - and frauds.
You know, I've met a lot of veterans in my line of work, great folk all around, even the Marines sometimes.
Unfortunately, Palestine is a war of colonial wealth vs natives, conceptually similar on a smaller scale to the struggle in Montana. It even shares the background of corrupt politicians using the opportunity to enrich themselves.
The idea that primal anger/rage/violence can achieve anything against an embedded capitalist system that has the tools to monitor your every move and infiltrate any organization is just too overwhelming for any grassroots anti-establishment struggle.
Tigers are indeed strong and scary, but they lost to humanity long before drones, fbi infiltrators and comprehensive state-funded surveillance became a thing.
With two million civil employees alone, the 1-million Montana residents stand no chance against an entrenched capitalist system.
The only viable option here is to take control of the system through democratic methods and catering to natives through those tools.
Who told you this bullshit? The Zionists? Yeah, If I was in the habit of stealing others people home and land I would come up with such fantastic stories.
Haz, the 🇺🇸 elites do not have an army, nor police in any real numbers. They do not serve. They have lost the army and military, they have spent decades making enemies among the police. These are my people and we’re all the same people from the same generational families.
(The best fighters Israel has are Druze, yes? Imagine if the Israelis all stopped serving in the military- Israel is Sparta FFS- and then went totally effete THEN ruined the Druze communities- how long does that last? )
They don’t have force- at the exact moment they need it the most.
Capitalism is another matter- the enemy does have money- far too greedy for their own good.
And they have closed off democracy to the very people in this article- who happen to be the same fighting stock . Money, law, voting are closed to us. They have all of that- we have land, trucks, guns, and roots BTW. They are rootless.
Tigers and men and drones-
Uh, men are what matters.
They lost us.
I’m drone qualified, relax they and the robots aren’t all that.
Haz- Actually if you want to ruin Israel get it too go very Capitalist gay, give them 40 years of peace so they end the Draft, get them all into office jobs...they’ll rot out from within. Entrenched capitalism my foot, rentier genes is the fatal instinct to cultivate (believe Glubb Pasha if not me).
Israel was founded by Socialist and Communist Spartans Haz.
Give them a chance to get rich and lazy, they’ll puss out.
From a Vanity Fair article -“Many liberal Americans do not actually understand how easy it would be to launch an insurgency in this country. “Everyone on the planet is redpilled on low-intensity warfare now,” a host of the dissident podcast Good Ol Boyz said recently, flicking at the way the Taliban was able to beleaguer and eventually defeat the American military, mostly using small arms. Pretty much every single guy in towns like Pinedale goes out to hunt elk every autumn, and the skills of overland navigation, long-range shooting, and use of high-quality optics involved in what is known as Western “spot-and-stalk” hunting are not very different from the skills involved in modern guerrilla warfare. Insurgencies are less a military war than a complicated political conflict, in which a few people demonstrate that they’re willing to kill, die, or go to prison, and dare governments to overreact, gaining support when innocent people end up shot or arrested. Blood becomes political currency, and it does not take all that much of it to create a conflict scenario.
exactly this- it's not the gay people, it's the corporations and private equity putting a pretty veneer over their hollow capitalism, appropriating a struggle that has historically been anticapitalist ("a gay landlord is still a landlord). fighting each other is not a substitute for solidarity. we're going to have to find a way to live together or we're going to die alone
The gay people can't help but promote their ideology and rub their "preference" in your face - THAT is where the problem lies. You don't see people driving around proclaiming how proud they are to be hetero. Normal people don't give a damn about your sexual preference, so stop rubbing it in people's faces - and stop trying to groom their children. That would go a long way toward reducing the animosity.
I couldn’t agree more with you my friend. I absolutely despise, homosexuals. Put it in perspective. Men sucking each other off. Screwing one another in the as-. Absolutely vile, sick, evil. All of them are pure evil. I will never call them gay. I haven’t figured out yet how they got so many people to buy into calling them that.
No, this is disastrously wrong. We do not need to learn to live together, we have every right to defend our land and our culture from the quick change artists, who aren't even really really capitalists, but cronies favored by the state system as well the economic system. Another name for a state capitalist monoculture is fascism.
In a small remote area that's similar to the Bozeman/Big Sky situation and in a very blue state, I lived this years (if not decades) ago. Let me tell you that eventually the corporations and government and their appendages (utilities, etc.) go after the elites too and then eveyone is kind of in the same mess - over-extend financially, whether it's by hundreds of dollars or thousands or tens of thousands. So there's a bit of camararderie that then happens, that includes all classes ("we're all being screwed"). But there's also much more "dog eat dog" too, so that's why you have that pensive "Hi ya!" with a look of suspicion that the author mentioned. It's because you can never be too careful - you've had your shopping bag stollen when you put it down for a quick second to pick up a magazine at Barnes and Noble.....
"Edit" is not working and I meant to type "Bozeman/Big Sky/Forks" and I meant to type "So there's a bit OF a comararderie..." (my spelling is terrible and spell check isn't working either).
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2023/02/new-right-civil-war-“Many liberal Americans do not actually understand how easy it would be to launch an insurgency in this country. “Everyone on the planet is redpilled on low-intensity warfare now,” a host of the dissident podcast Good Ol Boyz said recently, flicking at the way the Taliban was able to beleaguer and eventually defeat the American military, mostly using small arms. Pretty much every single guy in towns like Pinedale goes out to hunt elk every autumn, and the skills of overland navigation, long-range shooting, and use of high-quality optics involved in what is known as Western “spot-and-stalk” hunting are not very different from the skills involved in modern guerrilla warfare. Insurgencies are less a military war than a complicated political conflict, in which a few people demonstrate that they’re willing to kill, die, or go to prison, and dare governments to overreact, gaining support when innocent people end up shot or arrested. Blood becomes political currency, and it does not take all that much of it to create a conflict scenario.
What those idiots don't understand is history. It doesn't matter if the government has B2 bombers and F-35. They are useless against a guerrilla. War, including civil war, is not about conquering territories or setting a flag somewhere. As Clausewitz said, war is the continuation of politics by other means. So, any guerrilla action that advances the politics of the rebels in one way or another would be what would happen.
The pricing out nomadic behavior is nationwide, don’t feel alone.
What do you think happened in the urban areas 60s and 70s and is happening again now?
An argument can be made and substantiated that once Civil Rights became the Urban Criminal lobby the ultimate beneficiaries were real estate developers (who curiously were very generous in funding of Social Justice).
Take the Ambassador Bridge in Detroit. $500 million a day passes over that bridge into Canada. The Windsor Canada 🇨🇦 side is fine, Detroit is an American Mogadishu.
Now. In the long run Detroit will be bought and gentrification will happen, the land will essentially be bought for a farthing, or better yet taxpayer subsidized.
And the Developers will be very rich. Just as they were in Brooklyn, just as they were in Jersey City, just as they were in Seattle and I can go on.
You see this is long term thinking, more importantly the policy of decades that takes decades to bear fruit, but it does 💶💰💵💰💰. This is long term action. These are generational plans and policies.
As far as Cowboys vs Vampires or Race or Black vs Blue blah vs bleh - look at the winners.
That's because Canada is a social democratic country that looks after its people. Not perfectly but far better than the folks who cry liberty and freedom. We have health care, labour laws, pensions, employment insurance, maternity leave and much more. Our taxes, about the same as yours, serve the people not the military which serve American corporations. Americans spend all their tax money on military and police. The most frightened nation on earth.
Canada is collapsing due to stratospheric housing costs. The greedy old boomers own all the real estate while the younger generation can't afford the average $1 million home.
I would love to hear from you in about five years, if you can get the handcuffs and the duct tape over your mouth off. A little bit of studying history, especially of the last century, might help. Might.
But it sounds like you've already been fully indoctrinated.
lived there five years, yup, worked up on the hill in winter, FS in the summers, granolas took it all over. I long for the days of Richard Butler running loose.
Hit the nail on the head, sadly. There are fewer Idahoans in Idaho than there are Californians. Probably outnumbered 3-1 if you count first generation Idahoans that are children of Californians. The pace of growth has been too fast for the infrastructure and culture to keep up so the developers and real estate industry make bank and Idahoans lose their home (figuratively and literally).
That’s what I don’t understand, people that leave a place that has become untenable for them and move to a place like Montana, Idaho, etc and then vote to enact the same type of laws and policies that created the Hell they left behind. It’s beyond illogical and stupid.
Born and raised Montanan, and if they bring culture and a varied diet, I'm all for it. Beats the fatty bs Montana thought it was. And BTW, the "local" culture doesn't give a hoot for anything but its pride.
Ironically for all your lefty rhetoric you literally sound like a British colonialist talking about the "dirty job of civilizing India," and FUCK YOU for it.
You betcha it doesn’t exist any longer. I remember that Bozeman very very well my friend. I come from a 4th generation Montana land owning family that will never and I mean never ever sell my land!! no matter how many Microsoft executives want it.
So youre one of the pathetic losers that led America to total destruction. Lazy and selfish advocating the Govt should point a gun at my head and pay for your road trips. That was no way to go through life yo8u pathetic hippy.
I noticed this workers coming in from elsewhere when I’d go to Park city years ago. Marriott who at the time seemed to own the town and resorts would hired poor kids from various countries for the season to work as maids, servers, cooks, etc, allegedly holding the workers passports and charging them for every little thing even as the kids huddled 8 to an apartment.
The next year it would be a new batch of workers from another country.
I was working for cbs news at the time. A local business owner hoped I could get cbs to expose the unethical treatment of these kids. That year it was Bulgarians.
It changes into trite fake yuppie simulacra only if we let them do it, it's not inevitable, nothing is except the triumph of Jesus Christ over the woke platitude filled Satanists.
Montana land won with blood and foreign money is not legal tender... Montana could take it back and create a state currency for real estate. Currency is only for natives and only this currency can buy land.
So many places have become corpses. Even in fly over country. Greasey white towns of the past now only mock my constant flow of nostalgia. Once we had old trucks and western parades. Now the kids are mixed and cutting off their genitals in order to fit in. As you say, that place just simply doesn't exist anymore.
And here I was, hoping to retire to Montana (My old army boss lives there and he said I'd love it.) I would be an outsider, but not a soulless cosmopolitan, I was just looking for a few acres to retire on and watch the sun set over the mountains. Now it seems that I might be wandering into a minefield.
Are you REALLY willing to believe anyone who could write these words? "[T]hese are a new kind of country person. Angry, exasperated, poor, Trump-loving service-workers—the Oxy takers, the meth cookers, the eaters of Chick-Fil-A."
He drips with hate and condescension. Ignore him.
Visit Montana. Talk to the locals. You'll see what I mean.
In the 1950s, when Bozeman was just a small college town, you could see a sign on the highway: "Welcome to Bozeman, Montana! Home to 30,000 friendly people, and a couple of old soreheads."
That's about what you'll find in Montana today: Friendly people and a couple of old soreheads.
Thank you. I keep a watch on land prices in the western region of the state and I cannot believe how much they've skyrocketed. I found an older house (circa 1920's) on an eighth of an acre for almost 400k! The house was around 1600 square feet, which is smaller than the home I currently live in.
As our current asset bubble continues to pop over the next year, those prices could come down some.
For example, suppose someone can afford to make monthly house payments of $1700. At a 3% interest rate, they could buy a $403K house. But at a 6% interest rate, they could afford to buy only a $284K house.
If someone has millions to invest in real estate, they could buy up property as prices fall. However, even they might hesitate to buy a depreciating asset. If interest rates jump to 8%, $1700 per month could buy a house worth only $232K.
I don't think the asset bubble is ever going to pop. Too many people are overleveraged and overdependent on it, too many big businesses depending on slim margins around big ticket assets. Politicians know it'd be suicide to let that all fall apart, and they'll run the money printer until its plastic gears melt down to keep that bubble floating.
As someone who lives in a rural area I would say it matters tremendously the attitude of the new comer. If they come here humbly wanting to fish and enjoy the wilderness, that is certainly not a problem. If they come here as a demanding condescending Karen who always wants to speak to the manager, and who wants to impose blue state values like bringing drag queen story hour to local schools there will be trouble.
A real beauty to this writing, a style of unassuming description and incisive analysis that stands so strikingly opposed to the punitive prose of the national media. So appreciated the read.
I am Indian. I can be mistaken for nothing else. I just spent 4 days in a small town in Montana which, I'm just guessing here, is 97% white. Based on my experience, this piece is stark, raving bollocks. I walked extensively in modest parts of town (I'm trying not to say poor). The streets ran parallel to the railroad. As I walked i had: little towhead kids playing on the sidewalk say "Hi mister!" to me; a man in a pickup stop and ask if i needed a ride; an old man wave to me from his porch and say "Good afternoon"; a workman at a house who was listening to--gasp!--Country music nod at me and say "howdy." In dive bars i was treated as well as everyone else, by staff and drinkers alike. A guy sitting next to me said "You're not from around here, are ya?" after he heard me ordering my drink. Mr Simpson would think that was racist. His is a sloppy, fevered, risible, paranoid piece that panders to the prejudices of a Manichean liberal elite. Stay away from Montana, please. Reunite your family some other place next year. ~~ Tunku Varadarajan
thanks for your comment Tunku. Normally I do not respond to comments but I want to respond to this one.
I did not intend to characterize Montanans IN GENERAL as hostile or unfriendly. In fact, as you say, many were perfectly pleasant. I am trying to capture a milieu of fury towards not necessarily any outsider, but to outsiders REPRESENTING private equity/bourgeoisie who threaten their communities. That was particularly felt in Three Forks simply because it's so close to Bozeman/Big Sky. The locals in Gardiner and Livingston, for example, were not like this.
So point taken and thanks for taking the time to comment.
What is happening in MT happened in the cities twice in the last 57 years, it just happened in 2020, and while its hardly just a very long real estate game called Arson and crime to buy prime land cheap, there’s absolutely an element of sack and burn - then settle to all of this urban and rural.
This is 8th century England being invaded by Vikings with pens and bank accounts- the English were stunned too. They rallied.
I’m a native Montanan absolutely pissed about the bourgeoisie and Airbnb land grab. This isn’t just about private equity, everyone and their mother watched a stupid tv show and now want to buy a piece of Disneyland-Montana. I found your descriptions of people like me ridiculous and offensive. Yes, I listen to country and no, I’m not a one-toothed, methed-out teen mom. I’m college educated, a professional and creative, and gasp, celebrate pride month and I want people to stop whoring out and materializing my home state. I’m so glad you felt you could comment on something you obviously spent very little time interfacing with. Save your pretentious opinions for a piece about wherever you came from and please, don’t return to Montana.
Sounds like a first wave internal gentrifier to me. Why don't you go live in a city if you love "pride month" so much? We'll both be happier. And note I say that as a creative person, a writer, and a musician myself, but with the difference that I support the idea of a real diversity of local rooted cultures outside the banal uniformity of corporate HR imposed woke culture.
Just proves anyone can be triggered. Even you Torey. You may be the exception to his general summation, but for the most part he was spot on. I find people like you ridiculous, but you'd have to go a ways to be offensive. Keep trying though. Just because you are those three things doesn't mean the backwoods have been educated out of you. Your anger gives you away. And let's not even start with the art mafia, so proud of their creativity at the expense of other artists development.
You paint with a very broad brush, but what you say is true. I'm glad I read your entire take.
I expect that any black inner-city resident would feel the same about gentrification. I lived in New Orleans for a large part of my life, and found that being a bohemian is, by necessity, a mobile lifestyle. And unless you enjoy the insulation of wealth, as Don Henley said, "The wolf is always at the door."
Like others, I lived in the Quarter because it was a cheap, intimate, holistic
neighborhood where freaks, of whatever persuasion, were largely left alone (and because I had the coolest address in the world, 1000 Bourbon Street). Then it wasn't. So I moved to the Bywater for the same reasons, then it wasn't, so I moved to Riverbend, rinse and repeat.
I managed to enjoy the bohemian lifestyle long-term by moving aboard my sailboat. When a marina became too obnoxious, I threw off my lines and sailed to another. There will always be natives, and there will always be gentrification. Only the gentry will change.
There is too much money to be made for young people by scamming old people out of their things for it to ever stop. And don't look to politicians for help. They are too busy sniffing the fire hydrants for donor piss to care about you.
Property taxes being grandfathered in for long-term residents is a separate conversation but don't hope for too much, since once again, scumbag politicians are involved.
Brian, thank you for the “sniffing the fire hydrants...” quote. I’m stealing that for a future use. As a native Louisianian, I’ve seen that move executed by more politicians than I can count lol.
Use it in good health, Aaron. Sometimes it's hard to find the words to describe how craven some (most) politicians are. As my grandfather, who raised pigs, used to say, "You've got to stoop pretty low to eat out of a trough." Go Tigers!
I was thinking this sounded like New Orleans. I don’t live there but I know they are struggling with the destruction Air BnB is bringing to the city, it is so sad. Everything that is beautiful is being destroyed by everything being the same now everywhere, even the problems.
Only the gentry will change? Yipes! I hope not. Our entire culture isn't sustainable, and the children you think you care about will suffer the consequences.
He isn't saying gentrifiers are good, he is being a realist and saying they control our society and often come as wolves in sheeps clothing spouting banal wake platitudes to provide cover for their malodorous evil.
You were not at all clear about that, but oh so typical. This piece would have been so well-done if you hadn't chosen to be narrow and judgmental Montana HAS been taken over by "private equity" -- and by right wing crazies capitalizing on rural Western resentments. Take a look at those holding state offices right now and who the looniest members of the legislature are....People like you never look deep enough. Just like every where else, Montana is complicated. Folks like you act as though Montana isn't allowed to grow and change. That if it does it will upset everyone else's idea of what it's supposed to be. Montanans aren't allowed to have Strabucks, REI or any other retail establishments that the rest of the country enjoys? The Sac Inn is a "dive"? !?!? For every coastal elite who has moved to Montana in the last 30 years, five or six right wing "sovereigns"" have also arrived... This has ALSO upset Montana's "live and let live" philosophy and its historically "purple" bent. THIS is the Montana I am missing. I know it will return, but much damage will probably be done until then. Next time you visit you might want to take a trip to some different areas and your perspective may change. Montana used to be laughed at in all its seeming "backwardness".... It's very cool to be "outdoorsy" these days, but Montanans have always fly fished, hiked, enjoyed extreme sports, skiied, camped. The high cost of housing is a problem in any desirable area today, and, in case you haven't noticed, so are labor shortages.
"Montanans aren't allowed to have Strabucks, REI or any other retail establishments that the rest of the country enjoys?"
Some people "enjoy" Satanism too, it doesn't mean it's a good idea. How many dead eyed consumerist zombies do I need to see before I am allowed to come to the conclusion that corporate woke consumerism probably isn't a good idea either?
Hint progressivism is a spatial metaphor for a political process. But what is never asked is what are we progressing towards and why? If what we are progressing towards is gentrification and high land prices driving out people who lived in an area for many generations and given a rainbow flag smiley face to cover this malodorous process you can count me out!
Weak writing, and weak storytelling. That this would spawn an article written in Vanity Fair about Montana and the west is hysterical. There's gonna be a war in Montana. Really? Yeah, and as Garth said in Wayne's World, "and monkeys might fly out of my butt."
I was raised in a small Montana town. Worked in the oilfield with all types. We all got along great. Nobody cared what anyone looked like. Sure, we'd torment each other with whatever insult happened to be handy. No one ever took it personal. That was decades before the liberals came along. Now, suddenly it turns out all of us were racists.
Could you possibly repeat any more banal establishment media cliches that are used to demonize rooted people who are rightly protective of their local culture? Try harder little buddy I know you can repeat them all before the thread is done. Displacing rooted local poor people is all good as long as done under the Ukrainian flag window sticker that in fact represents the Nazi Azov Battalion idn' it?
I can second this. I was born and raised in the Bozeman area and am mixed race -Indian and White. I am clearly not white, but have not faced a single case of bigotry in my 27 years living here. I have family in Manhattan, MT, which is also very red and rural, and have never experienced anything close to the paranoid caricature presented in this article. I interact with the rural “dysenterytes” referred to, and they are not wantonly violent, bigoted, or stupid as presented in this piece. MT suffers from the same issues of misogyny, racism, and inequality as much of the country, but to present that as a unique boiling point in Montana is shameless editorializing and armchair socioeconomic diagnosis that should be left in the unpublished drafts folder.
You’re the exact kind of disgusting foreigner described in this article. Whatever your roots, you betray your true alleigances with your chosen buzzwords. Leave
Well said. I've never read anything on substack before, but if this is an indication of modern journalism or storytelling on substack, well where is the chatbot when we really need it?
My sentiments exactly. More importantly, you see this, so do us all a favor, write, contribute, and add to the pot of good writing and good journalism to balance out this juiced up blather
Thank you for your comment. This piece sounded like bullshit to me too. Upper-middle class that writes about poor and rural whites like he is Darwin observing a group of chimps. I don’t buy the n-word part for a minute and not everyone broke is some kind of addict.
Isaac, I agree with a lot of points you made, but having spent a lot of time in Bozeman / Three Forks / Ennis etc. I have never witnessed overt racism, or heard the N. Word uttered a single time. Yes I have seen a handful of gacked out tweekers but nothing on the order of magnitude on display here in the San Francisco Bay Area.
We almost purchased a home in Bozeman eight years ago, looking at how much it has changed in the last few years I am glad we didn't. The population boom, traffic congestion and increase of liberalism that has infected the area have dramatically impacted what we loved about Bozeman.
You mention the violence of the Trump supporters. Where is the evidence of the violent Trump supporters? Over the last five years the violence has clearly come from the left. There is no denying the property damage, theft, destruction, and murder has come from the left. I am always fascinated by how the left continually projects their problems onto the right.
Are you serious? Or do you watch right-wing media propaganda exclusively?
Volence of any kind has been vehemently opposed by all leaders on the left. I heard a few of those on the right condemn Jan 6th's violence --- for a day or two.
Gen5; I think you need to review 2020 and the Floyd protests before mentioning either Jan 6 or the Left pretending to condemn violence they incited and funded all fsking year long, killing dozens, 542 riots, billions in damages, etc. yes they condemn it after inciting it, they’re about as sincere in this as Al Sharpton.
I don’t watch TV and pretty much do my own homework since you ask.
The Jan 6 protestors killed no one, 2 of them were killed, both women. It is true they broke some glass. The Left broke many thousands of windows.
You spent a year burning, looting, murdering your way into the White House then call yourselves victims of violence. The truth is you love violence IF its all your way and 💩💩 yourselves when a tiny bit came back.
As far as I’m concerned Jan 6 still leaves us in deep deficit, we owe you.
So typical. Right wingers ALWAYS "do their own research".... Did your research include the more than 15,000 people who were arrested during the 2020 demonstrations most for low level offenses? Hundreds were charged with more serious crimes like looting and burglary. Only about 3.7% of the demonstrations resulted in property damage.
What jan. 6th violence? The only violence was by the police and capitol guards, committed against a bunch of unarmed protesters. The violence was all in your imaginationz
LOL, most peaceful burning down whole urban neighborhoods protests, that literally caused billions in damage and often to POC owned small businesses.
Lie much?
And you know what I didn't used to be right wing. I used to be a co-opy Earth First! supporting peace and pro speech lefty actvist. But the rise of vile scum woke regime apologists like you turned the left to being pro proxy war against Russia, and anti free speech with woke cancellations. So I bailed on the left like millions of other good hearted people who abhor war and censorship.
I think you misunderstood the author's intent. What I got was the locals are wholly justified in their rage at the corporatist developers who displace them and insult them with woke platitudes.
What a fraud this piece is. I live here. Have for 30 years. I am a well-known journalist. I don’t just visit an extremely expensive guest ranch for annual family reunions. This is histrionic baloney with no real supporting evidence for its clickbait headline, no identifiable witness testimony, and nothing that makes journalism journalism, just a lot of wild extrapolation from half-glimpsed public behavior built on a generic culture-war framework.
The Left destroy everything they touch. Everything. They can't stand to see someone living in a way they don't dictate and control. The Right just want to be left alone - and don't mess with their lives or culture ... but the Left cannot STAND to see someone happy living their lives by their own rules. Seattle used to be a really cool city (in the late 80's) - and then it got Kalifornicated. The Communists and self-important twats moved in and almost over night they destroyed it. The same cancer has infected Utah - and there are many more examples.
It's soul-crushing to see these parasites moving into another host state hell-bent on destroying it too. I had always dreamed of retiring in Montana - on a ranch out in the middle of nowhere - but that's seeming like less and less of a possibility thanks to the Leftist cancer. One can only hope that the natives finally get their fill and excise the tumor.
I'm not a native Arizonan - my family moved here when I was 10 - but I have lived in this state for 50 years. Back in the old days, each state had its own unique flavor or personality. When you came from Illinois, like my family did, you didn't roll in and just assume you had as much say as native Arizonans in how the state ran or what its policies should be.
And I think that's the real problem here.
We don't appreciate people from California, New York, or anywhere else coming in with their overwhelming numbers, attempting to escape the hellhole dystopian "paradise" their progressive policies created in their home states....just to begin feverishly working to create the exact same systems in *OUR* states.
Same problem here in Texas - unbelievable what those fleeing the coasts have done to real estate here in the nicer parts of the Lone Star Republic. Mostly welcome as long as they leave the attitudes that screwed up their home state there but unfortunately often, they do not.
I know exactly what you mean. After Arizona was completely overrun by Californians and retirees from Chicago, my wife and I were giving Texas some serious consideration. There's a little town just outside Dallas we fell in love with named Paris. The homes were magnificent. You could buy a beautiful brick home on 5 acres for less than $200K.
I don't think you can buy a pole barn for that money today.
I was rereading this old post and found your comment. If you want cheap land, please buy some desert in Arizona. You've already ruined Texas by giving the land speculators hope.
You will have to venture farther than 30 miles from the Bozeman airport to have any understanding of Montana. Big Sky is the Disney World of the state. A trip to Orlando doesn't make you an expert on Florida.
The people are getting restless, huh? You hit the nail on the head! Unfortunately, it's not just Montana. They should look here at Oregon as an example of what happens when liberals get ahold of a state. People are getting pushed to their breaking point for sure!
Meh, sometimes no, this is just internal colonialism and sometimes people resist colonialism and win like the Taliban did in Afghanistan. This doesn't mean the Taliban are nice people, far from it, but often the people who actually have the balls to vanquish invaders aren't nice people they are hard ass strong men.
I read your piece on Montana with great interest. I live in a very small town in Montana, but my business is in Three Forks, and has been for over 20 years. Your characterization of the demographic here is egregious; I would have hoped that you would have an understanding of a writer’s responsibility for his voice.
In June of 2022, the average home price in Three Forks was $611,500. In 2019, the mean income was $65k. I mention these statistics because your writing is so rife with generalizations.
I’ve never seen an electron cloud of trailers. Three Forks, generally, is surrounded by large ranches; increasingly, there are subdivisions not for “stragglers,” but for people priced out of Bozeman. The subdivisions are priced in the $700 range and upwards.
I’m curious why you write such a piece-either your fact checkers should be canned, or you leaned out of your vehicle’s window on the way through Three Forks, saw a pick-up truck with a heeler inside
and were suddenly overcome by Trump derangement syndrome.
I would like to invite you to come back. It isn’t my opinion that you’re simply a florid writer with poor research. I think you have a narrow world view. You could really benefit from a trip to small-town Montana-the peace, the people and nature would do you a world of good.
Also, there are no Chick-fil-A franchises in Montana.
He wrote of an "an electron cloud of mobile homes and trailers" in Three Forks. I can't remember seeing even one mobile home there. Are there possibly some north and west of the rodeo grounds? I haven't driven through that area in decades.
Charley
P.S. I just checked and there's apparently ONE Chick-fil-A in Montana—in Kalispell.
Northwest of the rodeo grounds is pretty crowded with new houses; I too am mystified by the mobile home comment. Truly, this writer had an idea for a commentary (groundbreaking-influx of outsiders disturbs local communities,) and tailored his narrative to fit his concept. It doesn’t matter to him if his statements are accurate-it matters that they work for this fiction piece.
Boy was I wrong! As a writer, I automatically assume that there must be SOME truth in what I read online because readers can use the web to disprove falsehoods. But the OP apparently made up his post out of whole cloth. The only verifiable facts in that piece are...
...A hotel named Sacajawea IS in Three Forks
...It DOES have a veranda
...It DOES have a bar
...Two other bars are a few blocks away
But he could have discovered all of that information with Google maps. The rest was made up from whole cloth.
I wonder if he's EVER been to Three Forks?
You know the road by the talc plant that leads across the flat and up the hill? It was named after my father. With that information, you can google me.
Or else, you might know a lady named Beth. She's in her early 70s; her last name is a type of hat; and she has a great sense of humor. If she doesn't have my email address, she certainly has the address for Ed, the magician, who DOES have my email address.
Drop me a message. When I visit Three Forks on rodeo weekend—hopefully next year—I'll stop by your place of business and say hello.
There’s a Chick fil A in Billings too, I just had lunch there. We bought lunch for a homeless guy on the corner and when we handed it to him he said “thanks, I freaking love Chick fil A”. So that part of the story was honestly pretty spot on.
Tom Baugh talks about this sort of thing in his book, Starving the Monkey. He tells a tale of how liberalism began, and if they had just thrown that first liberal off a cliff at the first sign, society could have been saved. But the original "tolerance" was a non-liberal trying to tolerate a liberal.
First are pleas for tolerance, then it becomes an expectation of acceptance. Lastly, it becomes a demand for approbation. This is the mechanism by which a society is destroyed. We are so worried about losing the 2nd Amendment, we never noticed that they took away the right to be intolerant toward the intolerable.
"Took away the right to be intolerant toward the intolerable". Please can you just say what you mean? What exactly is your complaint? In what ways do you want to be intolerant? Who are the "intolerable". And who exactly has taken away your right to be intolerant towards this group? Please be specific
Dude you already wrote Hitler apologia lmao dont be shy. What exactly is the "sexual perversions" that are intolerable and what should be done about it?
Adult men with hormone breasts parading around girl’s locker room naked in front of 8 year old girls. There’s an intolerable situation. Wee Spa incident. Similar men competing against girls in sports. At least Lea Thomas isn’t a registered sex offender like the guy the Wee management demanded others to accept.
Cool. Heres how I, a lib who votes Dem would handle that. Btw issue polling backs up that this applies to many Dems.
- Prosecute pedophiles to full extent of the law
- I dont support mtf trans playing in womens sports
- Vote Dem because there are a thousand other issues than just these and my family needs healthcare and I dont want religious beliefs forced on others like many Conservatives want to do. (Many Conservatives want to take away my sisters right to marry her partner or to take away my other sisters right to marry a non-white person)
Your voting for the people who gave you Obamacare genius, and you libs force your religion, the religion of Liberalism on everyone at every opportunity. Go be smarmy with your man bun buddies, quit moving to states with people who hate you.
Yeah i know. My dad was denied insurance because of his cancer before Obamacare. Then after Obamacare he was able to get it and afford treatment since insurers were no longer allowed to deny him because of pre-existing conditions. So yeah Obamacare helped my loved ones tremendously. And I never moved. I am going to stay in Georgia and help keep turning it Blue. :)
1. I didnt move. I live in Georgia and have always lived in Georgia and I am happily helping to turn it Blue. My family has greatly benefited from Democrat policies. My dad was able to get health insurance for his cancer thanks to Obamacare. Before that he was denied for pre-existing conditions by insurers. And my sister was able to marry her partner thanks to liberals. On the other hand Republicans have no policies to offer me. A wall? Nah I have first gen immigrants in my family who I know and love. Great people. Immigrants helped make this country great.
2. No one should be forced to stsy in the town of their birth that they did not choose to be born in their whole life. I support freedom and liberty so if someone does want to move they should feel free to and we should help balance the interests of freedom and its consequences. (Like how we can try and remedy gentrification etc)
Meh. How do you ecen define immorality? Even if its The Bible the founding fathers violated it plenty so even they "tolerated immorality". They had misstresses and slept around. Many murdered and encouraged gemocide of native. Many owned other people against their will with chattle slavery.
Your thoughts on whether or not society would be better today if Hitler had been thrown out a window before he ever had a chance to give his first speech?
How do you know the service workers are trump-loving? A huge chunk of people don't vote, especially the poorest people, and even the most reliable conservative demographic like working class rural white people have a large democratic minority. It's very likely that the minimum wage making 18 year old in rural montana just doesn't vote period.
It's just his TDS showing. Any chance to associate Trump with anything unpalatable he must do it. It's a virus but the only vaccine for it is functioning original cognition. Sigh-- So it's a lost cause...
I graduated from Three Forks High School, then worked in Bozeman for five years after college and Vietnam. The Bozeman I knew then no longer exists today.
But Three Forks is another matter...
When I spent a week there just two years ago, I saw the same types of people I grew up with. They were hard-working, often wise, and usually friendly. Yes, they were often opinionated, just as you certainly are.
You highlight the "propaganda" of their bumper stickers. They were proclaiming their opinions; they weren't trying to manipulate yours. According to your bio, you're the propagandist. They aren't.
You complain that a biker gang thundered through town. You know, of course, that the gang is no more relevant to Three Forks than it is to any other town through which they thundered. That's a classic propaganda technique of guilt by association, I believe.
You tell us that the Sacajawea's bar is one of three nearby dives. They're not taverns; they're not bars; they're not pubs. They're dives, you write. That seems a lot like name-calling, which is another propaganda technique.
You complain that the locals either ignored you or they were "overtly" friendly. That is, like everywhere else on the planet, some of the locals ignored you and some were openly friendly. "Overtly" means "openly," but it SOUNDS suspicious—like the ancient political smear that a candidate's wife is an "admitted thespian."
You made fun of the woman who commented to her family about your laptop. Perhaps she had a sense of Western history that you lack. The Sacajawea Hotel was built in 1910—just 34 years after Custer's Last Stand, and seven years BEFORE Buffalo Bill died. It's a member of Historic Hotels of America. When I was working on my laptop on "the Sac's" veranda during my last visit, I also thought about the contrast between its historic setting and my laptop with its Wi-Fi connection.
You say they hate you. Perhaps it's because you were hateful to THEM. You found "palpable nativism" there—as any other ugly American would who's appalled that the natives don't speak woke.
I can't remember ever hearing the N-word spoken in Three Forks—with one exception. There's an area about 25 miles west of town that is now officially called Negro Hollow. But if you Google it, you probably won't find it under that version of its name. Nor will you likely hear the updated version of its 100-year-old name spoken anywhere nearby.
Finally, just be glad that you didn't visit the small town in the very Blue state where I now live. "They call it the tourist season," one long-time resident grumbled. "So why can't we shoot 'em?"
I'm completely neutral (actually, on the side of the locals) and I didn't take any of that as complaining, but more like setting the scene. For instance, when he says "dive" that tells me it's my kind of place (as opposed to some soulless, corporate shithole), with real people. Maybe I'm biased, because these people are ruining my town too, but I thought he was harsher on the corporate douchebags.
I understand your point about "dive," but most bar owners, I suspect, would view it as an insult. I think that all three BARS or TAVERNS he mentioned—and at least one more that I can think of—would be your type of place. There are NO corporate bars in Three Forks!
As I just wrote to Elizabeth, the only verifiable facts I've found in the piece could have come from Google Maps. So I'm not sure he's ever been to Three Forks.
This is happening all over the United States, mostly in red states that have been invaded by people from failing blue states. Half or more of these people are Trump conservatives who move because they prefer a state that aligns with their values. The others are like carpet baggers who destroy everything they touch. I have lived as a "foreigner" in several states from Tennessee to Utah and Idaho. I have never had any problems fitting in because these people are like me. If there is a "war" be careful of the people you are aiming at. They may be your best friends.
As a born and raised Montana ex-pat, currently living in hell, you captured the zeitgeist(?) of the new Bozeman pretty well. The one thing missing is the price of housing and how this contributes to the backlash of what you call the underclass. Between the influx of coastal elites and AirBnB, the non landowning locals are toast. You wouldn't believe me if I told you I rented a 3 bedroom house on 5th Ave with two room-mates when I went to college there. 10 minute walk to class. And no, I'm not a boomer. When I dropped out of college I worked nights washing dishes at a local ski area restaurant. Ski all day. get a free dinner after my shift. Worked for the Forest Service in the summer time. Then collect unemployment in the spring and fall while road tripping across the western US. Rent was never an issue. Not possible today. The service workers get flown in from god knows where and are lucky to get put up in some shithole company dorm. I get nostalgic when I'm sitting on my barstool, acting like darn fool, dreaming of that past life. When I sober up it becomes clear as day. The place no longer exists.
You nailed it with your point about housing. I'm N. Idaho, and I see the same thing. My town is gone-- California plates on every other car, "boutique" shops crowding every street and "local" brew pubs owned by folks who moved here two years ago.
Locals can't afford to live or pay property taxes. An old lady down the dirt road from my parents' place lost her home because she couldn't pay the taxes on its new million dollar valuation.
There's a deep, deep divide between people who are from here and people who are new in town, and they all know it-- so they cling even tighter to each other, putting "Idahome" stickers on their new SUVs and removing the CA plates as soon as they can to try to blend in. Then they get on the school board and city council and start bringing the same shit attitudes here that caused them to flee wherever they were from.
We have a new neighbor who denied and denied that he was from CA, until one day he admitted "I'm from N. CA-- it's totally different. I usually carry a gun!". I'm not sure why that was supposed to impress me.
We're quite literally seeing our homes and futures stolen by people from places we wouldn't even want to visit, as they come paying cash and pricing our lives out of range. You can't support a family or pay a mortgage here on a mill worker's salary anymore, and there's a real sense of despair as what was always a pretty friendly tourist / logging town has become a wanna-be Vail wholly taken over by an artificial aristocracy.
As someone born and still living in northern California, the same thing happened here. We had a culture before the place turned into a tech casino surrounded by homeless camps on fire.
The Montana locals are growling at the wrong people, and as long as they don't address the real issue of corrupt politicians not introducing safety nets to help the locals benefit from this river of wealth flowing by. Not raising the state minimum wage to combat poverty, not providing healthcare to the druggies and their families but willing to sell their souls to bring this corporate money into their districts, to the benefit of whom?
Unfortunately, money is unstoppable, a civil war is unlikely due to the low population density in Montana, which wouldn't even matter because of how the government will always protect capital, and unless you have a religious zealousness in protecting your land, you'll last about as long as 1/10th the Palestinian struggle against wealth and government. 10 years tops before everyone with the means to leave Montana has left unless your hold your government officials accountable in serving the well-being of residents.
Either fight a losing fight against inevitable capital or swim with the flow and ensure the inevitable comes with a best possible outcome for the locals... Maybe even have the state buy more land to protect its identity with extra taxes on bourgeoisie items.
Oh Haz,
The government can count on lawyers, it cannot count on the cops. The government can count on its paid, useless, coward Generals but not the troops (I am a veteran- they can’t. )
In fact “Teacher, the Generals are of the elites, they are not us. “
That wasn’t soldiers.
That was the Soldiers kids in school, instructing the Teacher.
To compare any part of America to Palestine or our elites to the Spartan State that is Israel is a category error of unbridgeable magnitude, that is attempting to leap the Grand Canyon .
The elites have no force, they have lawyers. If you want to understand the relationship its the Congress that ran into Shelter on January 6 vs ...anyone at all who’s slightly stronger.
So Montana and Americans can quite win any fight, because they are the fighters. The other side are cowards - and frauds.
You know, I've met a lot of veterans in my line of work, great folk all around, even the Marines sometimes.
Unfortunately, Palestine is a war of colonial wealth vs natives, conceptually similar on a smaller scale to the struggle in Montana. It even shares the background of corrupt politicians using the opportunity to enrich themselves.
The idea that primal anger/rage/violence can achieve anything against an embedded capitalist system that has the tools to monitor your every move and infiltrate any organization is just too overwhelming for any grassroots anti-establishment struggle.
Tigers are indeed strong and scary, but they lost to humanity long before drones, fbi infiltrators and comprehensive state-funded surveillance became a thing.
With two million civil employees alone, the 1-million Montana residents stand no chance against an entrenched capitalist system.
The only viable option here is to take control of the system through democratic methods and catering to natives through those tools.
Just to be clear, it's the so-called Palestinians that are Jordanian, Egyptian, and Lebanese colonizers with Iranian money.
Who told you this bullshit? The Zionists? Yeah, If I was in the habit of stealing others people home and land I would come up with such fantastic stories.
Haz, the 🇺🇸 elites do not have an army, nor police in any real numbers. They do not serve. They have lost the army and military, they have spent decades making enemies among the police. These are my people and we’re all the same people from the same generational families.
(The best fighters Israel has are Druze, yes? Imagine if the Israelis all stopped serving in the military- Israel is Sparta FFS- and then went totally effete THEN ruined the Druze communities- how long does that last? )
They don’t have force- at the exact moment they need it the most.
Capitalism is another matter- the enemy does have money- far too greedy for their own good.
And they have closed off democracy to the very people in this article- who happen to be the same fighting stock . Money, law, voting are closed to us. They have all of that- we have land, trucks, guns, and roots BTW. They are rootless.
Tigers and men and drones-
Uh, men are what matters.
They lost us.
I’m drone qualified, relax they and the robots aren’t all that.
Haz- Actually if you want to ruin Israel get it too go very Capitalist gay, give them 40 years of peace so they end the Draft, get them all into office jobs...they’ll rot out from within. Entrenched capitalism my foot, rentier genes is the fatal instinct to cultivate (believe Glubb Pasha if not me).
Israel was founded by Socialist and Communist Spartans Haz.
Give them a chance to get rich and lazy, they’ll puss out.
It works.
From a Vanity Fair article -“Many liberal Americans do not actually understand how easy it would be to launch an insurgency in this country. “Everyone on the planet is redpilled on low-intensity warfare now,” a host of the dissident podcast Good Ol Boyz said recently, flicking at the way the Taliban was able to beleaguer and eventually defeat the American military, mostly using small arms. Pretty much every single guy in towns like Pinedale goes out to hunt elk every autumn, and the skills of overland navigation, long-range shooting, and use of high-quality optics involved in what is known as Western “spot-and-stalk” hunting are not very different from the skills involved in modern guerrilla warfare. Insurgencies are less a military war than a complicated political conflict, in which a few people demonstrate that they’re willing to kill, die, or go to prison, and dare governments to overreact, gaining support when innocent people end up shot or arrested. Blood becomes political currency, and it does not take all that much of it to create a conflict scenario.
TL:DR, globohomo wrecks itself through decadence which is absolute true and verboten to say by the new corporate HR driven establishment.
You're really saying that troops and cops don't need their wages, their pensions, their medical insurance? Really??
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2023/02/new-right-civil-war They are waking up to that in an MSM publication
exactly this- it's not the gay people, it's the corporations and private equity putting a pretty veneer over their hollow capitalism, appropriating a struggle that has historically been anticapitalist ("a gay landlord is still a landlord). fighting each other is not a substitute for solidarity. we're going to have to find a way to live together or we're going to die alone
The gay people can't help but promote their ideology and rub their "preference" in your face - THAT is where the problem lies. You don't see people driving around proclaiming how proud they are to be hetero. Normal people don't give a damn about your sexual preference, so stop rubbing it in people's faces - and stop trying to groom their children. That would go a long way toward reducing the animosity.
I couldn’t agree more with you my friend. I absolutely despise, homosexuals. Put it in perspective. Men sucking each other off. Screwing one another in the as-. Absolutely vile, sick, evil. All of them are pure evil. I will never call them gay. I haven’t figured out yet how they got so many people to buy into calling them that.
The Sailor doth protest too much, methinks.
No, this is disastrously wrong. We do not need to learn to live together, we have every right to defend our land and our culture from the quick change artists, who aren't even really really capitalists, but cronies favored by the state system as well the economic system. Another name for a state capitalist monoculture is fascism.
In a small remote area that's similar to the Bozeman/Big Sky situation and in a very blue state, I lived this years (if not decades) ago. Let me tell you that eventually the corporations and government and their appendages (utilities, etc.) go after the elites too and then eveyone is kind of in the same mess - over-extend financially, whether it's by hundreds of dollars or thousands or tens of thousands. So there's a bit of camararderie that then happens, that includes all classes ("we're all being screwed"). But there's also much more "dog eat dog" too, so that's why you have that pensive "Hi ya!" with a look of suspicion that the author mentioned. It's because you can never be too careful - you've had your shopping bag stollen when you put it down for a quick second to pick up a magazine at Barnes and Noble.....
"Edit" is not working and I meant to type "Bozeman/Big Sky/Forks" and I meant to type "So there's a bit OF a comararderie..." (my spelling is terrible and spell check isn't working either).
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2023/02/new-right-civil-war-“Many liberal Americans do not actually understand how easy it would be to launch an insurgency in this country. “Everyone on the planet is redpilled on low-intensity warfare now,” a host of the dissident podcast Good Ol Boyz said recently, flicking at the way the Taliban was able to beleaguer and eventually defeat the American military, mostly using small arms. Pretty much every single guy in towns like Pinedale goes out to hunt elk every autumn, and the skills of overland navigation, long-range shooting, and use of high-quality optics involved in what is known as Western “spot-and-stalk” hunting are not very different from the skills involved in modern guerrilla warfare. Insurgencies are less a military war than a complicated political conflict, in which a few people demonstrate that they’re willing to kill, die, or go to prison, and dare governments to overreact, gaining support when innocent people end up shot or arrested. Blood becomes political currency, and it does not take all that much of it to create a conflict scenario.
What those idiots don't understand is history. It doesn't matter if the government has B2 bombers and F-35. They are useless against a guerrilla. War, including civil war, is not about conquering territories or setting a flag somewhere. As Clausewitz said, war is the continuation of politics by other means. So, any guerrilla action that advances the politics of the rebels in one way or another would be what would happen.
People don't want welfare. They want the parasitic Wall Street and SillyCon Valley grifters out of there.
Hopefully that can be done peacefully, and if not, not, as Gertrude Stein would say.
No, I'd believe you. It's a familiar story.
The pricing out nomadic behavior is nationwide, don’t feel alone.
What do you think happened in the urban areas 60s and 70s and is happening again now?
An argument can be made and substantiated that once Civil Rights became the Urban Criminal lobby the ultimate beneficiaries were real estate developers (who curiously were very generous in funding of Social Justice).
Take the Ambassador Bridge in Detroit. $500 million a day passes over that bridge into Canada. The Windsor Canada 🇨🇦 side is fine, Detroit is an American Mogadishu.
Now. In the long run Detroit will be bought and gentrification will happen, the land will essentially be bought for a farthing, or better yet taxpayer subsidized.
And the Developers will be very rich. Just as they were in Brooklyn, just as they were in Jersey City, just as they were in Seattle and I can go on.
You see this is long term thinking, more importantly the policy of decades that takes decades to bear fruit, but it does 💶💰💵💰💰. This is long term action. These are generational plans and policies.
As far as Cowboys vs Vampires or Race or Black vs Blue blah vs bleh - look at the winners.
It ain’t us.
That's because Canada is a social democratic country that looks after its people. Not perfectly but far better than the folks who cry liberty and freedom. We have health care, labour laws, pensions, employment insurance, maternity leave and much more. Our taxes, about the same as yours, serve the people not the military which serve American corporations. Americans spend all their tax money on military and police. The most frightened nation on earth.
Canada is collapsing due to stratospheric housing costs. The greedy old boomers own all the real estate while the younger generation can't afford the average $1 million home.
I would love to hear from you in about five years, if you can get the handcuffs and the duct tape over your mouth off. A little bit of studying history, especially of the last century, might help. Might.
But it sounds like you've already been fully indoctrinated.
Oh, Canada.....you're dying.
Well, if you believe Euthanasia for the poor is good health care, who I am to say you're wrong.
Sounds like Sandpoint. Buddy of mine lives there. Housing is insane.
lived there five years, yup, worked up on the hill in winter, FS in the summers, granolas took it all over. I long for the days of Richard Butler running loose.
Hit the nail on the head, sadly. There are fewer Idahoans in Idaho than there are Californians. Probably outnumbered 3-1 if you count first generation Idahoans that are children of Californians. The pace of growth has been too fast for the infrastructure and culture to keep up so the developers and real estate industry make bank and Idahoans lose their home (figuratively and literally).
That’s what I don’t understand, people that leave a place that has become untenable for them and move to a place like Montana, Idaho, etc and then vote to enact the same type of laws and policies that created the Hell they left behind. It’s beyond illogical and stupid.
Born and raised Montanan, and if they bring culture and a varied diet, I'm all for it. Beats the fatty bs Montana thought it was. And BTW, the "local" culture doesn't give a hoot for anything but its pride.
Ironically for all your lefty rhetoric you literally sound like a British colonialist talking about the "dirty job of civilizing India," and FUCK YOU for it.
You betcha it doesn’t exist any longer. I remember that Bozeman very very well my friend. I come from a 4th generation Montana land owning family that will never and I mean never ever sell my land!! no matter how many Microsoft executives want it.
So youre one of the pathetic losers that led America to total destruction. Lazy and selfish advocating the Govt should point a gun at my head and pay for your road trips. That was no way to go through life yo8u pathetic hippy.
Mitch you're hurting my feelings. stop it.
Yes, I thought that when you got unemployment you had to report what companies you went to, looking for a job. Otherwise, they cut you off!
I noticed this workers coming in from elsewhere when I’d go to Park city years ago. Marriott who at the time seemed to own the town and resorts would hired poor kids from various countries for the season to work as maids, servers, cooks, etc, allegedly holding the workers passports and charging them for every little thing even as the kids huddled 8 to an apartment.
The next year it would be a new batch of workers from another country.
J4 visa ... my step daughter from Costa Rica worked in Hawaii and Minnesota under that program.
Did she have a good experience? I hope she did.
Yep. I remember that Cynthia. Same thing right down in Jackson-Hole.
I was working for cbs news at the time. A local business owner hoped I could get cbs to expose the unethical treatment of these kids. That year it was Bulgarians.
Surprise surprise …cbs not interested.
Well I’ll be damn.
You are the problem Bug. A ski bum, a welfare bum, and a bar fly.
You can never go home
It doesn't matter if you never left, either. It changes around you, until you can't even recognize it anymore.
It changes into trite fake yuppie simulacra only if we let them do it, it's not inevitable, nothing is except the triumph of Jesus Christ over the woke platitude filled Satanists.
A trite platitude to disguise an ugly internal colonialist agenda.
Montana land won with blood and foreign money is not legal tender... Montana could take it back and create a state currency for real estate. Currency is only for natives and only this currency can buy land.
You should look into Georgism, it has a lot of ideas along those lines.
So many places have become corpses. Even in fly over country. Greasey white towns of the past now only mock my constant flow of nostalgia. Once we had old trucks and western parades. Now the kids are mixed and cutting off their genitals in order to fit in. As you say, that place just simply doesn't exist anymore.
And here I was, hoping to retire to Montana (My old army boss lives there and he said I'd love it.) I would be an outsider, but not a soulless cosmopolitan, I was just looking for a few acres to retire on and watch the sun set over the mountains. Now it seems that I might be wandering into a minefield.
Don't you believe that post. Believe your friend.
Are you REALLY willing to believe anyone who could write these words? "[T]hese are a new kind of country person. Angry, exasperated, poor, Trump-loving service-workers—the Oxy takers, the meth cookers, the eaters of Chick-Fil-A."
He drips with hate and condescension. Ignore him.
Visit Montana. Talk to the locals. You'll see what I mean.
In the 1950s, when Bozeman was just a small college town, you could see a sign on the highway: "Welcome to Bozeman, Montana! Home to 30,000 friendly people, and a couple of old soreheads."
That's about what you'll find in Montana today: Friendly people and a couple of old soreheads.
Thank you. I keep a watch on land prices in the western region of the state and I cannot believe how much they've skyrocketed. I found an older house (circa 1920's) on an eighth of an acre for almost 400k! The house was around 1600 square feet, which is smaller than the home I currently live in.
As our current asset bubble continues to pop over the next year, those prices could come down some.
For example, suppose someone can afford to make monthly house payments of $1700. At a 3% interest rate, they could buy a $403K house. But at a 6% interest rate, they could afford to buy only a $284K house.
If someone has millions to invest in real estate, they could buy up property as prices fall. However, even they might hesitate to buy a depreciating asset. If interest rates jump to 8%, $1700 per month could buy a house worth only $232K.
I don't think the asset bubble is ever going to pop. Too many people are overleveraged and overdependent on it, too many big businesses depending on slim margins around big ticket assets. Politicians know it'd be suicide to let that all fall apart, and they'll run the money printer until its plastic gears melt down to keep that bubble floating.
Yeah, and what was the end game of the Weimar Republic when they tried that little stunt?
As someone who lives in a rural area I would say it matters tremendously the attitude of the new comer. If they come here humbly wanting to fish and enjoy the wilderness, that is certainly not a problem. If they come here as a demanding condescending Karen who always wants to speak to the manager, and who wants to impose blue state values like bringing drag queen story hour to local schools there will be trouble.
Real talk.
I don't think he was condescending. More like, describing how the mainstream culture he is giving a literary bayonetting looks on the "rubes."
A real beauty to this writing, a style of unassuming description and incisive analysis that stands so strikingly opposed to the punitive prose of the national media. So appreciated the read.
He fit in a lot with the column space alotted. Allusions and all.
I am Indian. I can be mistaken for nothing else. I just spent 4 days in a small town in Montana which, I'm just guessing here, is 97% white. Based on my experience, this piece is stark, raving bollocks. I walked extensively in modest parts of town (I'm trying not to say poor). The streets ran parallel to the railroad. As I walked i had: little towhead kids playing on the sidewalk say "Hi mister!" to me; a man in a pickup stop and ask if i needed a ride; an old man wave to me from his porch and say "Good afternoon"; a workman at a house who was listening to--gasp!--Country music nod at me and say "howdy." In dive bars i was treated as well as everyone else, by staff and drinkers alike. A guy sitting next to me said "You're not from around here, are ya?" after he heard me ordering my drink. Mr Simpson would think that was racist. His is a sloppy, fevered, risible, paranoid piece that panders to the prejudices of a Manichean liberal elite. Stay away from Montana, please. Reunite your family some other place next year. ~~ Tunku Varadarajan
thanks for your comment Tunku. Normally I do not respond to comments but I want to respond to this one.
I did not intend to characterize Montanans IN GENERAL as hostile or unfriendly. In fact, as you say, many were perfectly pleasant. I am trying to capture a milieu of fury towards not necessarily any outsider, but to outsiders REPRESENTING private equity/bourgeoisie who threaten their communities. That was particularly felt in Three Forks simply because it's so close to Bozeman/Big Sky. The locals in Gardiner and Livingston, for example, were not like this.
So point taken and thanks for taking the time to comment.
Yeah people need to read what author wrote.
It is $
And power.
What is happening in MT happened in the cities twice in the last 57 years, it just happened in 2020, and while its hardly just a very long real estate game called Arson and crime to buy prime land cheap, there’s absolutely an element of sack and burn - then settle to all of this urban and rural.
This is 8th century England being invaded by Vikings with pens and bank accounts- the English were stunned too. They rallied.
Will we? We’ll see.
More like laptops than pens
I’m a native Montanan absolutely pissed about the bourgeoisie and Airbnb land grab. This isn’t just about private equity, everyone and their mother watched a stupid tv show and now want to buy a piece of Disneyland-Montana. I found your descriptions of people like me ridiculous and offensive. Yes, I listen to country and no, I’m not a one-toothed, methed-out teen mom. I’m college educated, a professional and creative, and gasp, celebrate pride month and I want people to stop whoring out and materializing my home state. I’m so glad you felt you could comment on something you obviously spent very little time interfacing with. Save your pretentious opinions for a piece about wherever you came from and please, don’t return to Montana.
Sounds like a first wave internal gentrifier to me. Why don't you go live in a city if you love "pride month" so much? We'll both be happier. And note I say that as a creative person, a writer, and a musician myself, but with the difference that I support the idea of a real diversity of local rooted cultures outside the banal uniformity of corporate HR imposed woke culture.
Just proves anyone can be triggered. Even you Torey. You may be the exception to his general summation, but for the most part he was spot on. I find people like you ridiculous, but you'd have to go a ways to be offensive. Keep trying though. Just because you are those three things doesn't mean the backwoods have been educated out of you. Your anger gives you away. And let's not even start with the art mafia, so proud of their creativity at the expense of other artists development.
Stopped reading at “I listen to country”.
Mr. Simpson,
You paint with a very broad brush, but what you say is true. I'm glad I read your entire take.
I expect that any black inner-city resident would feel the same about gentrification. I lived in New Orleans for a large part of my life, and found that being a bohemian is, by necessity, a mobile lifestyle. And unless you enjoy the insulation of wealth, as Don Henley said, "The wolf is always at the door."
Like others, I lived in the Quarter because it was a cheap, intimate, holistic
neighborhood where freaks, of whatever persuasion, were largely left alone (and because I had the coolest address in the world, 1000 Bourbon Street). Then it wasn't. So I moved to the Bywater for the same reasons, then it wasn't, so I moved to Riverbend, rinse and repeat.
I managed to enjoy the bohemian lifestyle long-term by moving aboard my sailboat. When a marina became too obnoxious, I threw off my lines and sailed to another. There will always be natives, and there will always be gentrification. Only the gentry will change.
There is too much money to be made for young people by scamming old people out of their things for it to ever stop. And don't look to politicians for help. They are too busy sniffing the fire hydrants for donor piss to care about you.
Property taxes being grandfathered in for long-term residents is a separate conversation but don't hope for too much, since once again, scumbag politicians are involved.
Brian
Brian, thank you for the “sniffing the fire hydrants...” quote. I’m stealing that for a future use. As a native Louisianian, I’ve seen that move executed by more politicians than I can count lol.
Use it in good health, Aaron. Sometimes it's hard to find the words to describe how craven some (most) politicians are. As my grandfather, who raised pigs, used to say, "You've got to stoop pretty low to eat out of a trough." Go Tigers!
I was thinking this sounded like New Orleans. I don’t live there but I know they are struggling with the destruction Air BnB is bringing to the city, it is so sad. Everything that is beautiful is being destroyed by everything being the same now everywhere, even the problems.
Only the gentry will change? Yipes! I hope not. Our entire culture isn't sustainable, and the children you think you care about will suffer the consequences.
He isn't saying gentrifiers are good, he is being a realist and saying they control our society and often come as wolves in sheeps clothing spouting banal wake platitudes to provide cover for their malodorous evil.
You were not at all clear about that, but oh so typical. This piece would have been so well-done if you hadn't chosen to be narrow and judgmental Montana HAS been taken over by "private equity" -- and by right wing crazies capitalizing on rural Western resentments. Take a look at those holding state offices right now and who the looniest members of the legislature are....People like you never look deep enough. Just like every where else, Montana is complicated. Folks like you act as though Montana isn't allowed to grow and change. That if it does it will upset everyone else's idea of what it's supposed to be. Montanans aren't allowed to have Strabucks, REI or any other retail establishments that the rest of the country enjoys? The Sac Inn is a "dive"? !?!? For every coastal elite who has moved to Montana in the last 30 years, five or six right wing "sovereigns"" have also arrived... This has ALSO upset Montana's "live and let live" philosophy and its historically "purple" bent. THIS is the Montana I am missing. I know it will return, but much damage will probably be done until then. Next time you visit you might want to take a trip to some different areas and your perspective may change. Montana used to be laughed at in all its seeming "backwardness".... It's very cool to be "outdoorsy" these days, but Montanans have always fly fished, hiked, enjoyed extreme sports, skiied, camped. The high cost of housing is a problem in any desirable area today, and, in case you haven't noticed, so are labor shortages.
"Montanans aren't allowed to have Strabucks, REI or any other retail establishments that the rest of the country enjoys?"
Some people "enjoy" Satanism too, it doesn't mean it's a good idea. How many dead eyed consumerist zombies do I need to see before I am allowed to come to the conclusion that corporate woke consumerism probably isn't a good idea either?
Hint progressivism is a spatial metaphor for a political process. But what is never asked is what are we progressing towards and why? If what we are progressing towards is gentrification and high land prices driving out people who lived in an area for many generations and given a rainbow flag smiley face to cover this malodorous process you can count me out!
Weak writing, and weak storytelling. That this would spawn an article written in Vanity Fair about Montana and the west is hysterical. There's gonna be a war in Montana. Really? Yeah, and as Garth said in Wayne's World, "and monkeys might fly out of my butt."
True to your moniker (I can explain that if you like) out comes the foul language. Grow up.
I was raised in a small Montana town. Worked in the oilfield with all types. We all got along great. Nobody cared what anyone looked like. Sure, we'd torment each other with whatever insult happened to be handy. No one ever took it personal. That was decades before the liberals came along. Now, suddenly it turns out all of us were racists.
"Decades before the liberals came along?" As a fifth generation liberal Montanan, I have to tell you, we were there all along!
Could you possibly repeat any more banal establishment media cliches that are used to demonize rooted people who are rightly protective of their local culture? Try harder little buddy I know you can repeat them all before the thread is done. Displacing rooted local poor people is all good as long as done under the Ukrainian flag window sticker that in fact represents the Nazi Azov Battalion idn' it?
I can second this. I was born and raised in the Bozeman area and am mixed race -Indian and White. I am clearly not white, but have not faced a single case of bigotry in my 27 years living here. I have family in Manhattan, MT, which is also very red and rural, and have never experienced anything close to the paranoid caricature presented in this article. I interact with the rural “dysenterytes” referred to, and they are not wantonly violent, bigoted, or stupid as presented in this piece. MT suffers from the same issues of misogyny, racism, and inequality as much of the country, but to present that as a unique boiling point in Montana is shameless editorializing and armchair socioeconomic diagnosis that should be left in the unpublished drafts folder.
You’re the exact kind of disgusting foreigner described in this article. Whatever your roots, you betray your true alleigances with your chosen buzzwords. Leave
Born and raised here, dumbass. Nowhere for me to go. Have fun being a bitter and lonely asshole.
Keep whining about "misogyny, racism, and inequality", nobody over here wants to hear that crap
Domestic Anthropology is a new field, give the man some credit 😉
Lol Tunku mic drop LMAO
Well said. I've never read anything on substack before, but if this is an indication of modern journalism or storytelling on substack, well where is the chatbot when we really need it?
My sentiments exactly. More importantly, you see this, so do us all a favor, write, contribute, and add to the pot of good writing and good journalism to balance out this juiced up blather
Thank you for your comment. This piece sounded like bullshit to me too. Upper-middle class that writes about poor and rural whites like he is Darwin observing a group of chimps. I don’t buy the n-word part for a minute and not everyone broke is some kind of addict.
Isaac, I agree with a lot of points you made, but having spent a lot of time in Bozeman / Three Forks / Ennis etc. I have never witnessed overt racism, or heard the N. Word uttered a single time. Yes I have seen a handful of gacked out tweekers but nothing on the order of magnitude on display here in the San Francisco Bay Area.
We almost purchased a home in Bozeman eight years ago, looking at how much it has changed in the last few years I am glad we didn't. The population boom, traffic congestion and increase of liberalism that has infected the area have dramatically impacted what we loved about Bozeman.
You mention the violence of the Trump supporters. Where is the evidence of the violent Trump supporters? Over the last five years the violence has clearly come from the left. There is no denying the property damage, theft, destruction, and murder has come from the left. I am always fascinated by how the left continually projects their problems onto the right.
Are you serious? Or do you watch right-wing media propaganda exclusively?
Volence of any kind has been vehemently opposed by all leaders on the left. I heard a few of those on the right condemn Jan 6th's violence --- for a day or two.
Gen5; I think you need to review 2020 and the Floyd protests before mentioning either Jan 6 or the Left pretending to condemn violence they incited and funded all fsking year long, killing dozens, 542 riots, billions in damages, etc. yes they condemn it after inciting it, they’re about as sincere in this as Al Sharpton.
I don’t watch TV and pretty much do my own homework since you ask.
The Jan 6 protestors killed no one, 2 of them were killed, both women. It is true they broke some glass. The Left broke many thousands of windows.
You spent a year burning, looting, murdering your way into the White House then call yourselves victims of violence. The truth is you love violence IF its all your way and 💩💩 yourselves when a tiny bit came back.
As far as I’m concerned Jan 6 still leaves us in deep deficit, we owe you.
Stuff a Tampon in it Gen5.
Its what Tampons are for; Drama.
Holy Mamma, you are so delusional. A cop died, or was that not advertised on your precious "research". You suck at homework.
A cop died of what Bill? It's you who haven't done homwork.
A cop died when? It certainly wasn't on the day of the protests you disingenuous weasel. I read a cop commit suicide, whose fault is that?
Hey now those protests were fiery but mostly peaceful and I know that because I saw the nice news man say it with a city in flames behind him.
Is that a threat?
No, it’s an insult.
Someone over there 👁 adjust the Python script ^ for the non English speaking bot, eh?
So typical. Right wingers ALWAYS "do their own research".... Did your research include the more than 15,000 people who were arrested during the 2020 demonstrations most for low level offenses? Hundreds were charged with more serious crimes like looting and burglary. Only about 3.7% of the demonstrations resulted in property damage.
Receipt never brought of course, the lying smear merchants of the left like nothing better than LYING. Saint will gorge on what remains of your souls.
Bring the receipts for 3.7 percent.
What jan. 6th violence? The only violence was by the police and capitol guards, committed against a bunch of unarmed protesters. The violence was all in your imaginationz
LOL, most peaceful burning down whole urban neighborhoods protests, that literally caused billions in damage and often to POC owned small businesses.
Lie much?
And you know what I didn't used to be right wing. I used to be a co-opy Earth First! supporting peace and pro speech lefty actvist. But the rise of vile scum woke regime apologists like you turned the left to being pro proxy war against Russia, and anti free speech with woke cancellations. So I bailed on the left like millions of other good hearted people who abhor war and censorship.
Now gaslight and smear me as a MAGAt, I dare you!
Author’s projecting fear of war, not violence from Trumpers.
He’s also pointing out they have a case.
Yes that's what I got as well.
I think you misunderstood the author's intent. What I got was the locals are wholly justified in their rage at the corporatist developers who displace them and insult them with woke platitudes.
What a fraud this piece is. I live here. Have for 30 years. I am a well-known journalist. I don’t just visit an extremely expensive guest ranch for annual family reunions. This is histrionic baloney with no real supporting evidence for its clickbait headline, no identifiable witness testimony, and nothing that makes journalism journalism, just a lot of wild extrapolation from half-glimpsed public behavior built on a generic culture-war framework.
Also, what's elk "with au jus"?
You literally said nothing of substance. I am a long time resident of a rural area, and everything he said rings absolutely true.
The Left destroy everything they touch. Everything. They can't stand to see someone living in a way they don't dictate and control. The Right just want to be left alone - and don't mess with their lives or culture ... but the Left cannot STAND to see someone happy living their lives by their own rules. Seattle used to be a really cool city (in the late 80's) - and then it got Kalifornicated. The Communists and self-important twats moved in and almost over night they destroyed it. The same cancer has infected Utah - and there are many more examples.
It's soul-crushing to see these parasites moving into another host state hell-bent on destroying it too. I had always dreamed of retiring in Montana - on a ranch out in the middle of nowhere - but that's seeming like less and less of a possibility thanks to the Leftist cancer. One can only hope that the natives finally get their fill and excise the tumor.
Its conquest.
Its normal.
Fight or go extinct.
It’s gonna be extinct, cuz 🇺🇸 is all wave AR and no fight.
Oh that it were not so.
I'm not a native Arizonan - my family moved here when I was 10 - but I have lived in this state for 50 years. Back in the old days, each state had its own unique flavor or personality. When you came from Illinois, like my family did, you didn't roll in and just assume you had as much say as native Arizonans in how the state ran or what its policies should be.
And I think that's the real problem here.
We don't appreciate people from California, New York, or anywhere else coming in with their overwhelming numbers, attempting to escape the hellhole dystopian "paradise" their progressive policies created in their home states....just to begin feverishly working to create the exact same systems in *OUR* states.
Same problem here in Texas - unbelievable what those fleeing the coasts have done to real estate here in the nicer parts of the Lone Star Republic. Mostly welcome as long as they leave the attitudes that screwed up their home state there but unfortunately often, they do not.
I know exactly what you mean. After Arizona was completely overrun by Californians and retirees from Chicago, my wife and I were giving Texas some serious consideration. There's a little town just outside Dallas we fell in love with named Paris. The homes were magnificent. You could buy a beautiful brick home on 5 acres for less than $200K.
I don't think you can buy a pole barn for that money today.
I was rereading this old post and found your comment. If you want cheap land, please buy some desert in Arizona. You've already ruined Texas by giving the land speculators hope.
Its conquest.
Its normal.
You will have to venture farther than 30 miles from the Bozeman airport to have any understanding of Montana. Big Sky is the Disney World of the state. A trip to Orlando doesn't make you an expert on Florida.
The people are getting restless, huh? You hit the nail on the head! Unfortunately, it's not just Montana. They should look here at Oregon as an example of what happens when liberals get ahold of a state. People are getting pushed to their breaking point for sure!
And then at the breaking point-
They reliably- break.
Meh, sometimes no, this is just internal colonialism and sometimes people resist colonialism and win like the Taliban did in Afghanistan. This doesn't mean the Taliban are nice people, far from it, but often the people who actually have the balls to vanquish invaders aren't nice people they are hard ass strong men.
Yes...
Isaac,
I read your piece on Montana with great interest. I live in a very small town in Montana, but my business is in Three Forks, and has been for over 20 years. Your characterization of the demographic here is egregious; I would have hoped that you would have an understanding of a writer’s responsibility for his voice.
In June of 2022, the average home price in Three Forks was $611,500. In 2019, the mean income was $65k. I mention these statistics because your writing is so rife with generalizations.
I’ve never seen an electron cloud of trailers. Three Forks, generally, is surrounded by large ranches; increasingly, there are subdivisions not for “stragglers,” but for people priced out of Bozeman. The subdivisions are priced in the $700 range and upwards.
I’m curious why you write such a piece-either your fact checkers should be canned, or you leaned out of your vehicle’s window on the way through Three Forks, saw a pick-up truck with a heeler inside
and were suddenly overcome by Trump derangement syndrome.
I would like to invite you to come back. It isn’t my opinion that you’re simply a florid writer with poor research. I think you have a narrow world view. You could really benefit from a trip to small-town Montana-the peace, the people and nature would do you a world of good.
Also, there are no Chick-fil-A franchises in Montana.
Elizabeth,
He wrote of an "an electron cloud of mobile homes and trailers" in Three Forks. I can't remember seeing even one mobile home there. Are there possibly some north and west of the rodeo grounds? I haven't driven through that area in decades.
Charley
P.S. I just checked and there's apparently ONE Chick-fil-A in Montana—in Kalispell.
I stand corrected re Chick-Fil-A!
Northwest of the rodeo grounds is pretty crowded with new houses; I too am mystified by the mobile home comment. Truly, this writer had an idea for a commentary (groundbreaking-influx of outsiders disturbs local communities,) and tailored his narrative to fit his concept. It doesn’t matter to him if his statements are accurate-it matters that they work for this fiction piece.
Elizabeth,
Boy was I wrong! As a writer, I automatically assume that there must be SOME truth in what I read online because readers can use the web to disprove falsehoods. But the OP apparently made up his post out of whole cloth. The only verifiable facts in that piece are...
...A hotel named Sacajawea IS in Three Forks
...It DOES have a veranda
...It DOES have a bar
...Two other bars are a few blocks away
But he could have discovered all of that information with Google maps. The rest was made up from whole cloth.
I wonder if he's EVER been to Three Forks?
You know the road by the talc plant that leads across the flat and up the hill? It was named after my father. With that information, you can google me.
Or else, you might know a lady named Beth. She's in her early 70s; her last name is a type of hat; and she has a great sense of humor. If she doesn't have my email address, she certainly has the address for Ed, the magician, who DOES have my email address.
Drop me a message. When I visit Three Forks on rodeo weekend—hopefully next year—I'll stop by your place of business and say hello.
Charley
There’s a Chick fil A in Billings too, I just had lunch there. We bought lunch for a homeless guy on the corner and when we handed it to him he said “thanks, I freaking love Chick fil A”. So that part of the story was honestly pretty spot on.
"Trump-loving service-workers—the Oxy takers, the meth cookers, the eaters of Chick-Fil-A."
What, you think these guys commute from Kalispell every day?
And some of them, I'm sure, are nice people.
It confirms the thesis that statements like the one you noted should be expected to create an equal and opposite reaction.
Me, too!
Tom Baugh talks about this sort of thing in his book, Starving the Monkey. He tells a tale of how liberalism began, and if they had just thrown that first liberal off a cliff at the first sign, society could have been saved. But the original "tolerance" was a non-liberal trying to tolerate a liberal.
First are pleas for tolerance, then it becomes an expectation of acceptance. Lastly, it becomes a demand for approbation. This is the mechanism by which a society is destroyed. We are so worried about losing the 2nd Amendment, we never noticed that they took away the right to be intolerant toward the intolerable.
"Took away the right to be intolerant toward the intolerable". Please can you just say what you mean? What exactly is your complaint? In what ways do you want to be intolerant? Who are the "intolerable". And who exactly has taken away your right to be intolerant towards this group? Please be specific
The Left and their sexual perversions are intolerable. For starters.
Dude you already wrote Hitler apologia lmao dont be shy. What exactly is the "sexual perversions" that are intolerable and what should be done about it?
Cutting off the genitals of healthy children which is Dr. Mengele level stuff speaking of "Nazis."
Adult men with hormone breasts parading around girl’s locker room naked in front of 8 year old girls. There’s an intolerable situation. Wee Spa incident. Similar men competing against girls in sports. At least Lea Thomas isn’t a registered sex offender like the guy the Wee management demanded others to accept.
Cool. Heres how I, a lib who votes Dem would handle that. Btw issue polling backs up that this applies to many Dems.
- Prosecute pedophiles to full extent of the law
- I dont support mtf trans playing in womens sports
- Vote Dem because there are a thousand other issues than just these and my family needs healthcare and I dont want religious beliefs forced on others like many Conservatives want to do. (Many Conservatives want to take away my sisters right to marry her partner or to take away my other sisters right to marry a non-white person)
Your voting for the people who gave you Obamacare genius, and you libs force your religion, the religion of Liberalism on everyone at every opportunity. Go be smarmy with your man bun buddies, quit moving to states with people who hate you.
Yeah i know. My dad was denied insurance because of his cancer before Obamacare. Then after Obamacare he was able to get it and afford treatment since insurers were no longer allowed to deny him because of pre-existing conditions. So yeah Obamacare helped my loved ones tremendously. And I never moved. I am going to stay in Georgia and help keep turning it Blue. :)
First word! You're...that's the word you're looking for, genius.
Maybe you could stay where you are and not move to where they live? Concerned Citizen?
1. I didnt move. I live in Georgia and have always lived in Georgia and I am happily helping to turn it Blue. My family has greatly benefited from Democrat policies. My dad was able to get health insurance for his cancer thanks to Obamacare. Before that he was denied for pre-existing conditions by insurers. And my sister was able to marry her partner thanks to liberals. On the other hand Republicans have no policies to offer me. A wall? Nah I have first gen immigrants in my family who I know and love. Great people. Immigrants helped make this country great.
2. No one should be forced to stsy in the town of their birth that they did not choose to be born in their whole life. I support freedom and liberty so if someone does want to move they should feel free to and we should help balance the interests of freedom and its consequences. (Like how we can try and remedy gentrification etc)
The logical conclusion of the tolerance of immorality.
Meh. How do you ecen define immorality? Even if its The Bible the founding fathers violated it plenty so even they "tolerated immorality". They had misstresses and slept around. Many murdered and encouraged gemocide of native. Many owned other people against their will with chattle slavery.
I always love how liberals take a minute away from advocating for baby killing to tell conservatives about how to be a Christian.
Child groomer pedophiles in our schools. That clear enough for ya ass sucker?
"and if they had just thrown that first liberal off a cliff at the first sign, society could have been saved." Yikes.
Its a small sacrifice to save society
Murder is bad, actually.
It happens all the time. That one murder eons ago would have saved so many today.
Prove it
Your thoughts on whether or not society would be better today if Hitler had been thrown out a window before he ever had a chance to give his first speech?
How do you know the service workers are trump-loving? A huge chunk of people don't vote, especially the poorest people, and even the most reliable conservative demographic like working class rural white people have a large democratic minority. It's very likely that the minimum wage making 18 year old in rural montana just doesn't vote period.
It's just his TDS showing. Any chance to associate Trump with anything unpalatable he must do it. It's a virus but the only vaccine for it is functioning original cognition. Sigh-- So it's a lost cause...
I graduated from Three Forks High School, then worked in Bozeman for five years after college and Vietnam. The Bozeman I knew then no longer exists today.
But Three Forks is another matter...
When I spent a week there just two years ago, I saw the same types of people I grew up with. They were hard-working, often wise, and usually friendly. Yes, they were often opinionated, just as you certainly are.
You highlight the "propaganda" of their bumper stickers. They were proclaiming their opinions; they weren't trying to manipulate yours. According to your bio, you're the propagandist. They aren't.
You complain that a biker gang thundered through town. You know, of course, that the gang is no more relevant to Three Forks than it is to any other town through which they thundered. That's a classic propaganda technique of guilt by association, I believe.
You tell us that the Sacajawea's bar is one of three nearby dives. They're not taverns; they're not bars; they're not pubs. They're dives, you write. That seems a lot like name-calling, which is another propaganda technique.
You complain that the locals either ignored you or they were "overtly" friendly. That is, like everywhere else on the planet, some of the locals ignored you and some were openly friendly. "Overtly" means "openly," but it SOUNDS suspicious—like the ancient political smear that a candidate's wife is an "admitted thespian."
You made fun of the woman who commented to her family about your laptop. Perhaps she had a sense of Western history that you lack. The Sacajawea Hotel was built in 1910—just 34 years after Custer's Last Stand, and seven years BEFORE Buffalo Bill died. It's a member of Historic Hotels of America. When I was working on my laptop on "the Sac's" veranda during my last visit, I also thought about the contrast between its historic setting and my laptop with its Wi-Fi connection.
You say they hate you. Perhaps it's because you were hateful to THEM. You found "palpable nativism" there—as any other ugly American would who's appalled that the natives don't speak woke.
I can't remember ever hearing the N-word spoken in Three Forks—with one exception. There's an area about 25 miles west of town that is now officially called Negro Hollow. But if you Google it, you probably won't find it under that version of its name. Nor will you likely hear the updated version of its 100-year-old name spoken anywhere nearby.
Finally, just be glad that you didn't visit the small town in the very Blue state where I now live. "They call it the tourist season," one long-time resident grumbled. "So why can't we shoot 'em?"
I'm completely neutral (actually, on the side of the locals) and I didn't take any of that as complaining, but more like setting the scene. For instance, when he says "dive" that tells me it's my kind of place (as opposed to some soulless, corporate shithole), with real people. Maybe I'm biased, because these people are ruining my town too, but I thought he was harsher on the corporate douchebags.
Cary,
I understand your point about "dive," but most bar owners, I suspect, would view it as an insult. I think that all three BARS or TAVERNS he mentioned—and at least one more that I can think of—would be your type of place. There are NO corporate bars in Three Forks!
As I just wrote to Elizabeth, the only verifiable facts I've found in the piece could have come from Google Maps. So I'm not sure he's ever been to Three Forks.
Charley
👍
Hahahaha great comment
FYI: Black Rifle is a NeoCon/Establishment shill coffee company.
This is happening all over the United States, mostly in red states that have been invaded by people from failing blue states. Half or more of these people are Trump conservatives who move because they prefer a state that aligns with their values. The others are like carpet baggers who destroy everything they touch. I have lived as a "foreigner" in several states from Tennessee to Utah and Idaho. I have never had any problems fitting in because these people are like me. If there is a "war" be careful of the people you are aiming at. They may be your best friends.
IF
I’d faint with joy ❤️ if 🇺🇸 fought.
I see lay down and die.
You are a piece of shit.