Lauren Boebert’s American Dream

[ZiprHead]

Open a smaller place selling Trump sandwiches - baloney on white bread with a small pickle and a salad with Russian dressing.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Open a smaller place selling Trump sandwiches - baloney on white bread with a small pickle and a salad with Russian dressing.

Sell it for $20.

 

[ZiprHead]

 

[ZiprHead]

 

[Politesse]

Oh Jesus, I stopped for gas in Rifle not too long ago. Everyone there seemed bloody insane, and this makes a lot more sense now.

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

White trash family doing white trash antics. Reminds me of Sarah Palin's white trash family weirdness.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Oh Jesus, I stopped for gas in Rifle not too long ago. Everyone there seemed bloody insane, and this makes a lot more sense now.

It didn't strike me as a place I would want to stop. Drove through twice.

 

[Jarhyn]

Oh Jesus, I stopped for gas in Rifle not too long ago. Everyone there seemed bloody insane, and this makes a lot more sense now.

It didn't strike me as a place I would want to stop. Drove through twice.

Why would anyone with half a brain want to ever interact with a town named after a deadly weapon?

 

[Politesse]

Oh Jesus, I stopped for gas in Rifle not too long ago. Everyone there seemed bloody insane, and this makes a lot more sense now.

It didn't strike me as a place I would want to stop. Drove through twice.

Why would anyone with half a brain want to ever interact with a town named after a deadly weapon?

I needed gas. The Kum & Go was there.

In defense of the town, it takes its name from the creek it is found on the banks of, not necessarily its favorite pasttime. The area does have a grim history, though, and the modern town seems more than a bit far gone into montagnard-style right wing politics.

 

[ZiprHead]

We have a river named the Rifle River. Quite populer with canoe and kayakers.

 

[Politesse]

Your Rifle River is much larger than Colorado's. I think it'd be a bit of a trick fitting a canoe down Rifle Creek, when it isn't flooding. It does end in a reservoir suitable in size for watersport, though, even scuba diving (Coloradans have a strange love of cultivating talents most useful on the sea)

 

[ZiprHead]

Your Rifle River is much larger than Colorado's. I think it'd be a bit of a trick fitting a canoe down Rifle Creek, when it isn't flooding. It does end in a reservoir suitable in size for watersport, though, even scuba diving (Coloradans have a strange love of cultivating talents most useful on the sea)

There's SCUBA enthusiasts here in Michigan too. There's a store dedicated to the hobby near where my wife works.

 

[Elixir]

Wtf were you doing in Rifle?
I can’t think of one good excuse.

 

[Politesse]

There's SCUBA enthusiasts here in Michigan too. There's a store dedicated to the hobby near where my wife works.

In Sparks, Nevada, there's a little quasi-artificial lake next to an outlet mall, into which the Air Force deliberately scuttled a twin-engine F-4 Phantom for no other purpose than to give the local scuba diving clubs something interesting to dive to. It's not even necessarily the weirdest thing about the lake.

Wtf were you doing in Rifle?
I can’t think of one good excuse.

Driving to Denver, the pretty way. The only real alternative would have been spending more than half a day driving through Wyoming, and if you think the politics in Castle Rock or Cheyenne are any better than those in Rifle (or any safer for a pair of traveling gay men) I have some unfortunate news for you about fuckin' Wyoming.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

Driving to Denver, the pretty way. The only real alternative would have been spending more than half a day driving through Wyoming, and if you think the politics in Castle Rock or Cheyenne are any better than those in Rifle (or any safer for a pair of traveling gay men) I have some unfortunate news for you about fuckin' Wyoming.

Sounds like too much lead mining over too may years. That exposure has consequences.

 

[Politesse]

It is rather difficult to cross the Divide without passing through some very angry former mining towns... but lead poisoning is not the only reason people might have to feel angry and dispossessed, in the regions that capitalist projects of mass extraction inevitably leave in their wake once their profitability has spun out. Conservative politicians are good at spinning and redirecting that rage toward false targets - no, illegal immigrants don't cause mines to play out or fisheries to die - but it comes from a real place of alienation and despair. Tourists may love going and visiting the "ghost towns" of the American West, but the process that creates ghost towns is a merciless and precipitous.

Rifle is in a weirdly characteristic state of life support. Mining is gone and dead. Rifle is mostly dependent on two sources of income: a cattle industry that becomes less profitable every year and on the commerce that comes off the Interstate 70, to stop them from going the same way as so many other towns that used to exist on the Roan Plateau. If ranching goes, and it might go, it will just be the tourism trade. But 10,000 some people live there, and for most part they aren't actually struggling yet - fewer than 5% of the civic population is below the poverty line, and they aren't beset with the kinds of crime or drug use problems endemic to many other conservative regions of the country. What they have is less an immediate economic crisis than a perpetual state of justified anxiety (and less justified paranoia). This is the exact kind of situation that creates that paramilitary, stock-up-the-weapons kind of attitude you find in many Rocky Mountain towns from Colorado to Alberta. It's a combination of the politics of fear and dispossession, combined with the spendable income needed to amass private armories.

Boebert took her seat in a surprise upset, an election she wasn't supposed to win. But she is a true "child of these hills" for semi-rural Coloradans, and she knows how to talk to people - especially angry middle class whites in need of a target for their ire and paranoia. Her family's business success in both mining and retail is symbolically theirs, her fear of obsolescence in the new globalized economy likewise. The image of her heckling Biden like a drunken high schooler during the State of the Union may be an embarassment to the nation generally, but to rural Coloradans it is an image of their very own Two Minutes Hate, an invitation to momentarily participate in the expression of their deepest resentments and fear. She screams, yes, but she screams for them.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Oh Jesus, I stopped for gas in Rifle not too long ago. Everyone there seemed bloody insane, and this makes a lot more sense now.

It didn't strike me as a place I would want to stop. Drove through twice.

Why would anyone with half a brain want to ever interact with a town named after a deadly weapon?

It's on the interstate. Drive from Denver to Salt Lake City and you'll go through Rifle. You'll probably stop somewhere along the way. The Rockies are a formidable barrier to roads, there's some impressive engineering to do it. I don't know if there are any other roads through that part of the country, asking Google the alternate that it gives me that avoids Rifle is 270 miles and 3 hours longer. Dragging the road it's offering me by the back ways 100 miles and 4 hours longer. Playing with it caused another variant to pop up, 100 miles and 2 hours more. I was also able to find 100 miles and 4 hours longer by going north.

 

[Jarhyn]

Oh Jesus, I stopped for gas in Rifle not too long ago. Everyone there seemed bloody insane, and this makes a lot more sense now.

It didn't strike me as a place I would want to stop. Drove through twice.

Why would anyone with half a brain want to ever interact with a town named after a deadly weapon?

I needed gas. The Kum & Go was there.

In defense of the town, it takes its name from the creek it is found on the banks of, not necessarily its favorite pasttime. The area does have a grim history, though, and the modern town seems more than a bit far gone into montagnard-style right wing politics.

Oh Jesus, I stopped for gas in Rifle not too long ago. Everyone there seemed bloody insane, and this makes a lot more sense now.

It didn't strike me as a place I would want to stop. Drove through twice.

Why would anyone with half a brain want to ever interact with a town named after a deadly weapon?

It's on the interstate. Drive from Denver to Salt Lake City and you'll go through Rifle. You'll probably stop somewhere along the way. The Rockies are a formidable barrier to roads, there's some impressive engineering to do it. I don't know if there are any other roads through that part of the country, asking Google the alternate that it gives me that avoids Rifle is 270 miles and 3 hours longer. Dragging the road it's offering me by the back ways 100 miles and 4 hours longer. Playing with it caused another variant to pop up, 100 miles and 2 hours more. I was also able to find 100 miles and 4 hours longer by going north.

Gross.

 

[Politesse]

Technically I-80 is a bit faster, actually. Out to Cheyenne then straight south for an hour and a half. But again, I would ask whether trekking through Wyoming is any sort of improvement over Northern Colorado in terms of "nice places to stop". Generally speaking, I would say that no town is actually all that dangerous to a tourist, most anywhere in the world that isn't an active war zone. But some places are without a doubt more comfortable than others.

 

[starwater]

Colorado native here. I also have a contract with CDOT (Colorado Department of Transportation). I70 is very difficult to drive as a trucker. There are numerous out of control truck ramps - east and west bound because truckers do not know how to drive it and loose their brakes. I 70 is right outside my office window. A few years ago an out of control trucker came down I 70 east bound, lost control of the truck - did not use the out of control truck ramp, came screaming down the hill along the breakdown lane because he lost his brakes and was going 100 mph plus. Had to come into traffic under a bridge - right outside my window and killed 10 people.

Truckers will use I 80 because it is much easier to drive.

I 70 has so much traffic - CDOT has numerous ideas on the drawing board to improve - but no money.

Stop in Silt or Grand Junction instead of Rifle.