The writers of the TV series in which we are all un-consenting cast members are getting lazy:
Lauren Boebert, the 34-year old Congresswoman and gun rights activist who refuses to come to work without her Glock, lives in Rifle, Colorado. She’s married to a man named Jayson. They have sons named Kaydon, Brody and Tyler. She gave birth to Kaydon in the front seat of a pickup truck on the way to the hospital. She says working at McDonald’s as a teenager made her a conservative. She received her GED a week before the Republican primary, having dropped out of high school when she first got pregnant. She’s been arrested several times, including once while drunk at a country music festival. She’s failed to show up in court on at least two occasions. She and husband Jayson have both been arrested for domestic violence against the other. She has two large pit bulls that attacked a neighbor and their dog for which Lauren was convicted of “animal at large”. She and Jayson own a gun-themed restaurant called Shooters Grill which they purchased with money they made when they both worked in oil and gas operations. Boebert first went viral hijacking a Beto O'Rourke event to tell the then-presidential candidate that “Hell no” he wouldn’t be taking her assault weapons. Back in 2004, her husband Jayson was arrested for and later convicted of exposing his penis to two women at a bowling alley— Lauren was present and was 17 at the time. She became a born again Christian in 2009.
And now, some members of congress have stopped just short of accusing Boebert by name of lying about having given "reconnaissance" tours of the Capitol the day before it was stormed by people who mysteriously knew the layout including where all the important offices were.
Coup-related intrigue aside for the moment, the fact that this woman was even elected says something about the brain rot of the spiraling American empire. But I wonder if the strangely predictable absurdity of the above biography doesn't also speak to this country’s rife emulative cultural conformity. Yeah, this was gonna be a “bit”, but I’m taking it in a different direction. When performative aesthetics and culture-signaling supersede substance, you get walking memes like Lauren Boebert. Today’s tech and media landscape exacerbate troubling balkanization (not that anyone can be blamed for not wanting to be around Trump people) but to point to ideological polarization, heated rhetoric, misinformation, or endemic racism alone— while correct, and while each is both a cause and an effect— is not entirely sufficient to explain all of the unwittingly camp, right wing golems walking around.
We are as geographically (and therefore culturally) segregated as ever, which is a central factor in generating the volatile politics of the moment. The stifling embrace of reductive cultural identity over the cultivation of interests, integrity and a personality distances people from one another when they're already distant. Eventually, we’re going to have to find some way to get more Americans who wouldn’t otherwise meet... to hang out.
When we can all congregate and travel again, I hope some people will put off their trips to Thailand and explore their own country. America happens to be a pretty interesting place full of people who share more of your values than you may have been conditioned to believe. With each positive interaction, you're chipping away at flimsy pre-conceptions.
Rather than flying over the middle of the country we could invest in high speed rail to traverse it at eye level. We could talk about class in a way that engages common moral principles and seeks to uplift. We could embark on big projects and outline big aspirational ideas. And we could reinstate a form of mandatory national service that would bring young people of all backgrounds together and channel their tragically untapped energy and talent towards productive endeavors for the common good (it’d be a great way to teach civics and make tuition-free college a reality, too).
Forget this hollow “unity” drivel you’re hearing a lot this week and will probably hear more and more of in the coming months— most of it is disingenuous anyway. Unity is what happens when people come together to do something, it’s not a passive state of being. We need big ideas that bring us all into contact with one another, uncomfortable though it may be at first, so we can Make Americans 3-Dimensional Again.
Aidan Kahn
Insta: @canaidan
Twitter: @aidan_kahn