Why People Live in Alaska?

Yes, this photograph was taken in Utah. I could live in Utah. Looks like a nice little fixer upper with room for expansion. And Trump seems to be in favor of selling parts of our public lands off. Alaska, my sister and I agreed this morning, has entirely too much winter but climate change could alter that. The perma frost is melting.

But it brings up why people choose to live in Alaska with all that winter. It has wonderful scenery and you can raise huge cabbages in just 45 days of "summer." And a traffic jam is a moose on your major route to work. I visited Alaska with a USO tour in August in some year in the 1970's. Could have been '76? Admittedly it was hard to get me out of the parka the government provided, but locals said you adapted.

So why Alaska? Or Utah? The people. Or the lack of people. And the people that are there are different than you find in big cities. And both have better tourists. What is a better tourist? One that doesn't tell you how much better your state would be if you built a huge Holiday Inn right there on the edge of the overlook and kept the rusting trucks and indigenous people in their place. Which brings up how the people are different. We don't see Holiday Inns destroying views. And our photographers love rusting trucks. We respect the land and see ourselves as its stewards. And we respect our neighbors regardless of their political views.

Utah and Alaska are red states. And Trump believes he can flip blue New Mexico to red because of border issues as he defines them. We define them differently. We see them as artificial at best. In the west borders are natural. They are wide rivers or high mountains with difficult passes. Micro climates are taken more seriously. We see fences only as ways to keep deer out of gardens, dogs home, or athletic exercises for elk. Gates and cattle guards are to keep your cattle in and not your neighbors out. Both not needed if you don't raise livestock or pander to tourists.

Tourists here used to be nice. Now they are too often rude. They come with a sense of entitlement. Constantly tell us we could not exist without them. We have and can again. But out in the real word that rude sense of entitlement is destroying the very fabric of our society. People are rude to shop staff as well as to even first responders. Watch and episode of an Australian show, Rescue, where a rescuer was even offered money to rescue him first before the others. Dad, during the Cuban Missile Crisis said he wouldn't build a bomb shelter because he wouldn't shoot his neighbors to keep them out.

Obviously in the time we are living in shooting your neighbor to save your hide first is not even a question. Of course they would. Of course, they are. The El Paso mass annihilator thought the brown skinned people at the Walmart were expendable to protect his way of life. Trump believes anyone not white and male has to pay for their survival. I like to believe here and in Utah and Alaska we don't make those judgments.