Utah and a dozen or so other states are presently leading yet another wave of public health ignorance, ultra-libertarianism and COVID-19 case increases. Utah is frankly also leading in hypocrisy, given that our state legislative leaders promised us Utah would lead the nation out of the pandemic, rather than back into it over and over again, as we have.
But it is wrong to pin the problem just on Utah, or just on Republican states. Disingenuousness (soft lying) is symptomatic of the whole national culture. We like to talk about ourselves using only the highest superlatives.
Everything we do is “awesome.” Even the smallest little accomplishment is judged “perfect” by our perfectly trained customer service flatterers. Lately we have taken up the British adjective “brilliant,” even as we languish in a perpetual state of urban hog wallow.
Our propensity to see awesomeness in obvious awfulness is the strategy of the business class to seduce every last dime out of our increasingly impoverished masses, before the ship of state slides noiselessly under the surface like the Titanic.
Kimball Shinkoskey
Woods Cross