Finding fertile ground for the know-it-all in Arizona

SIERRA VISTA Herald/Review ^ | Matt Hickman

[SandRat]

Remember last summer when it seemed all the world was out to get Arizona?

Countless boycotts were threatened, some of them by Latino Major League Baseball players, who vowed they would not play in the 2011 All-Star Game in Phoenix and the pressure on MLB Commissioner Bud Selig to move the game was intense. Meanwhile, the mainstream media piled on Arizona as a state staggering back to its Wild West origins at a breakneck pace.

Despite it all, two days from today, the Midsummer Classic will be played in 105-degree heat at Chase Field. By all accounts, the protests at the game will be limited to a handful of Latino special interest groups, some of them wearing white ribbons. There will be no Al Sharpton, no Michael Moore, no Lady Gaga, and no trace of widescale outrage that followed the Arizona Diamondbacks as they traveled from ballpark to ballpark last summer.

Why not?

Granted, the courts have put the kibosh on some of the most controversial aspects of SB1070 and put a hold on others, but are we not still a racist state? Are we not still xenophobic? Are we not still gun-toting lunatics gone crazy from the heat?

The simplest and most cynical explanation is that last summer, the Democratic Party was staring down a brutal mid-term election and needed to do all it could to fire up its Latino and progressive base.

Another reason, and I think a more meaningful one for this shift, came in the aftermath of the Jan. 8 shooting in Tucson that killed six and wounded Rep. Gabrielle Giffords.

The immediate assumption was that the accused shooter would be a card-carrying member of the Tea Party or some such right-wing fringe group. If he were, the Republican Party would be spending the next two election cycles trying to distance itself from a dynamic grassroots base.

But other than a tangential connection to a hyperindividualism, nothing in Jared Loughner’s meanderings could be linked to conservative politics.

The national media was as surprised and disappointed by this as the Bush Administration was to find no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. They stuck around long enough for Barack Obama’s speech at McKale Center, which was really more of a macabre pep rally than a memorial or presidential address. But once it was through, everyone left. A few columnists tried to pick the carcass for some advantage in the cause of gun control, and everyone gave obligatory lip service to the cause of civility, but once a specific political motive couldn’t be ascribed to Loughner, the book was closed.

Giffords’ amazing recovery was relegated to brief mentions in news outlets nationwide and her legacy appears headed straight to the back of a Trivial Pursuit card.

Ever since, you’ve heard nary a cry to remove the All-Star Game from Phoenix.

Arizona was off the hook, not so much forgiven as forgotten.

The book was closed with the verdict that Jared Loughner was just an angry, likely insane, young man who acted alone, free of any ideological or political influence. It was the kind of thing that could have happened anywhere.

But had anyone bothered to scratch the surface, they might have found what they were looking for — that the accused shooter was a proxy of a larger cultural dynamic.

A community college dropout lecturing society for its illiteracy is the epitome of the uniquely Arizonan sub-species of the genus “know-it-all.”

The Coen Brothers are masters at capturing the essence of a particular geography, and perhaps the crown jewel in their body of work is the 1987 film, “Raising Arizona.”

Its protagonist, Hi, played by Nicolas Cage, is a kind of wandering Anasazi soul, pulled every which way by his know-it-all wife Ed (Holly Hunter) and know-it-all prison chum Glen (John Goodman), who appropriately escapes from prison by crawling through a sewer and emerges above ground full of slime in the midst of a rainstorm, much like the Sonoran desert toad, which lives underground for all but a couple of weeks of the monsoon season. Mayhem ensues as Arizonans, who think they and they alone know how the world really works, make a pawn of the passive Hi, who more and more comes to live in his idyllic dreamworld.

There are know-it-alls everywhere, but I contend that nowhere else are they allowed to make themselves so at home. They make our state one ripe for conspiracy theorists, self-righteous tax cheats, and isolation and suspicion of one’s neighbor.

A lot of you probably know what I’m talking about, and if you don’t, there’s a decent chance I’m talking about you.

Few Arizonans are actually from Arizona, so people are encouraged to reinvent and reimagine themselves with impunity when they arrive.

People relocate from all over with an idea in mind of how much better things were run in their old haunts. Against these utopian pasts, nothing Arizona stands a chance of living up to anyone’s expectations.

Ask any of Buena High School’s eight football coaches over the last decade what it’s like.

To the state’s newcomers, native Arizonans are the equivalent of “townies” in a college setting, which naturally makes the townies resentful, even subconsciously.

They, too, adopt their own brand of know-it-all. If after Feb. 3 you went around Sierra Vista dropping the scientific fact that the 3-degree night was the coldest in recorded history, you were bound to run into some longtime Sierra Vistan who disputed your contention by recalling a night some 25 or 30 years ago when it was so cold all the mesquite trees froze to death.

The blend of these disparate types of know-it-alls create a climate that doesn’t necessarily create a Jared Loughner, but it makes for some awfully fertile soil.

[harpu]

"...the Midsummer Classic will be played in 105-degree heat at Chase Field."

BUT, it's 'dry heat'!

[hockea]

Non calor sed umor est quis nobis incommodat.

(it’s not the heat, it’s the humidity)

[stormer]

This author is way too over-analytical. The fact of the matter is that the attention span of the average American (of ANY political stripe) is the length of time between commercials...

[Caipirabob]

Despite it all, two days from today, the Midsummer Classic will be played in 105-degree heat at Chase Field.

105 down South? They're dreaming. 110-112 at best.

Funny thing. We took a nice afternoon swim and the water temp with no heater is 85 degrees just from the sun. The temp was 105 when we got out. We were cold. Am I finally acclimating? LOL!

[ETL]

"aftermath of the Jan. 8 shooting in Tucson that killed six and wounded Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. The immediate assumption was that the accused shooter would be a card-carrying member of the Tea Party or some such right-wing fringe group."

Not only wasn't he a "right-winger", he was a lib!

Latest responses are on top...

The Last Honest Liberal-Caitie Parker (Friend of AZ Shooter)
Multiple including twitter interview by Freeper ^ | 1-9-11 | Icwhatudo

Posted on Sunday, January 09, 2011 5:32:27 AM by icwhatudo
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/2653697/posts
______________________________________________________

Here are Caitie Parker's (a former friend of the shooter) original responses to 3 different Twitter posters (the 'at' symbol @ = To: _______ )

[ETL]

“Loughner’s former [BEST] friend [Zach Osler] said that he was mostly influenced by the Zeitgeist Movement. Below is the ABC video interview with Jared Loughner’s friend, Zach Osler.” [see first link below]

(ABC Good Morning America video at link)

Zach Osler: [pp] “Zeitgeist Movement had a PROFOUND effect on shooter and how he saw the world”
http://www.norcalblogs.com/gate/2011/01/shooter-never-listened-to-talk-radio-called-gifford-stupid-after-meeting-her.php
______________________________________________________

The ‘Zeitgeist Movement’ is basically a global Marxism one:

"According to the movement, there will be no decision-making process regarding greater social issues by human beings, those decisions are arrived at by using the scientific method, based on the carrying capacity of the Earth, rather than using human opinions.[7] The replacement of human decision making by artificial intelligence is termed 'Social Cybernation'.[8] Private property will not be abolished, but it will become obsolete as culture grows, being replaced by "a system of universal access".[9]"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Zeitgeist_Movement

[yefragetuwrabrumuy]

“Are we not still gun-toting lunatics gone crazy from the heat?”

Well, yes. But you have to parse that into three statements.

“Are we not still gun-toting?” Well, yes. And this is why individuals would have to be “lunatics”, to do something like armed robbery, when half the people in the place are armed.

Loughner’s life was actually spared because he had to reload. Another second or two and he would have had fire on his location from at least two other people who were armed. But because he was trying to reload, they just tackled him instead.

Oh, and don’t forget the third parse, “...gone crazy from the heat?”

You see a lot of that. But, as some wit observed, “At least it’s a dry crazy!”

[Jeff Vader]

what a load of crap, the writer thinks too highly of himself.

[JimSEA]

The newcomers to Arizona “taught” us natives that the once dominant three C’s (cotton, cattle and copper) were evil and environmentally damaging. Rangeland was being destroyed by grazing, cotton was an inefficient use of groundwater and copper mining polluted. All must be closed down. They were generally successful so most natives lost their jobs and, like myself, were exiled to other states in search of employment in their chosen occupations. More blessings of the all wise and knowing newcomers.

[count-your-change]

“Few Arizonans are actually from Arizona, so people are encouraged to reinvent and reimagine themselves with impunity when they arrive.”

UH....no. This they do with no encouragement at all. Having lived in the Valley for some time and worked all over the state my impression is that, apart from the retirees that wish their grown children would visit for two hours once a year and then go home, there are two major groups of people:
One, the people who actually like living in Arizona and wish everyone else would just leave, and Two, those who know disaster is just one lease payment away on the condo and BMW.
True, there is a huge group of people mowing grass and running leaf blowers that keep exotic pollens and valley fever spread far and wide, and others doing all the really necessary things like selling beer and smearing stucco in every imaginable place and shape but they are the grease not the wheel, the tide that comes and goes with the latest housing boom not the shore.
Besides, they're in the hateful, heated lower elevations while the “real” Arizona is found in Sedona and Prescott Valley or about the Rim.
New arrivals that feel the need of a reinvented self will find their matches quicker than E Harmony ever could. In the dark and dank pubs wedding rings and memories of “the ex” disappear just as quickly and easily as the new and improved version appears, and are just as real.

Arizona..When the coolest temperature of the day is over 100 degrees it really is the heat.

[Pigsley]

Yes, this guy is a blow hard. Can you imagine sitting next to him on a crowded plane? He’d spend the entire flight explaining to you how very smart and evolved he is compared to the idiots that surround him.

[SandRat]

... and he'd be talking to my big flight-line grade earphones that keeps all trash noise out.

[Jeff Vader]

personally I’m fine with the socialists in the rest of the country thinking we’re a bunch of ignorant gun toting rednecks here in AZ. makes it less likely that I’ll run into some new york city elitist.

[TheOldLady]

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[JSDude1]

Mr. Know-it-all? Where’s B.W?

[BizBroker]

I always laugh when I read articles like this. I moved to the Valley 10 years ago. I grew up in Ohio. I will take AZ and its culture, economy, and rugged individualism over the Midwest any day of the week. When I first arrived here, I did think it was the “wild west” a little bit. But the reason that I thought so, and to some degree still do, is that I was not used to the freedom here. There are fewer laws here than in Ohio. Taxes are lower and the scenery and weather are a whole lot better.

To those who complain about living here, I ask one question. Have you lived anywhere else? Yeah, its hot 4 months out of the year, with two of them being really hot. Try the Midwest, where it rains 6 months out of the year and the rest of the time its too cold to do anything outside!

As far as our laws go, if you do not like it, move a couple of hundred miles West. The libtards in Cali would love to have you! Just don’t come back or send any of them here, we don’t want them!

[count-your-change]

Having lived in the Midwest too I know the gray and cold winters can really depress the mind and the weather often has the upper hand.
But I still like the cool promises of the Spring and changing Fall weather. I get rich and famous I'll be a snowbird.

[Don Corleone]

Despite it all, two days from today, the Midsummer Classic will be played in 105-degree heat at Chase Field.

In a venue comfortably air conditioned to 72 degrees by an American invention made without government prompting or support.

[Pigsley]

Are they Bose noise blockers? Or something different/better. Always on the look out for my husband...he is trapped in airports and on planes all the time.