Have you met the folks who moved here thinking South Dakota was still the land of the freest and home of the bravest? I have.
I’ve met them when they first arrived during COVID, starry-eyed, flush with their home sale proceeds and convinced that Kristi Noem was real and that they’d found Shangri La.
And I’ve met them five years later, realizing that our state, our governor and our legislature are a red mirage. Long on substance and platitude. But just as corrupt, compromised and on our way to hell as the rest of the nation. Just a little further behind in the pack.
“Why does she take credit for things she doesn’t do?” asked one.
“How in hell does a Red State like South Dakota get suckered so bad by a carbon pipeline company,” asked another. (Money talks. Big money talks louder.)
“How does a town like Rapid City get taken over and turned into a Minneapolis-style shit hole inside of five years,” asked another. (NDN Collective, MacArthur Foundation jail quotas.)
“We’re moving again. To the Deep South, probably. They’ll at least fight if things get really bad. I think they’re gonna.” said the same. (Yes. Yes, they are.)
All good questions with bad answers that deserve proper airing. But few ears willing to hear. Red States have more land defended by fewer people, which makes us easy pickings both for far leftist political organizations like NDN Collective, (a Marxist Native American group headed by an accused felon that keeps company with Antifa, BLM, and the Squad) and by Summit Carbon Solutions, a multibillion dollar CO2 pipeline company that makes more billions fooling and bribing lawmakers and silly governors into stripping private property rights for the transport of soda pop fizz and airborne plant fertilizer through pipelines full of hot air. Same hot air belched by the politicians, ethanol plant owners and lobbyists who do their dirty work.
Maybe if the new arrivals knew about Kristi Noem’s four terms in Congress and her 50% voting score, (27% in 2012) they would have seen through the spin. Maybe if they knew that green energy companies and carbon pipeline salesmen paid for Kristi’s inaugural soiree when she was reelected Governor, they would have pointed their cars in a different direction during the great COVID exodus. Maybe if they knew that beneath all that expensive cosmetic work and MAGA talk, she and Tim Walz have more in common than just tampons, they’d have saved themselves a wasted trip and spared the rest of us this fine adventure into increased land and mortgage costs and bigger city hassle. Live and learn. On both sides.
Seeing supposed “Red State” South Dakota through the eyes of newcomers disenchanted with the bullshit has been a lesson to all of us about things that are real and things that are pretend.
There’s no accounting for the political corruption of people willing to pretend about things that matter most. Whether it’s about their Botox regimen, or their betrayal of freedom.
Maybe it’s time for a lot of South Dakotans to make other decisions about where to hang our hats. Or, just do a better job of picking the people we send to Pierre and Washington.
If it’s not already too late.
KEEP SOUTH DAKOTA FREE.
