Opinion

President Richard Nixon demonstrated that the GOP could win with a message of White grievance. That dubious achievement somehow got lodged in Donald Trump’s brain as a political ideal. But this time it will lead his party toward eventual and deserved failure.

“Bad Land: An American Romance” depicts homesteader’s original fixation with Eastern Montana as truly such a romance. For all the early 1900’s homesteaders who dropped everything and moved here, that romance was one part the land which was described as the “Great American Desert” and the somewhat mythical properties that came along with it. The other part was an image at the center of the romance, one that was displayed on the front of pamphlets distributed worldwide making Eastern Montana and the badlands the place where riches are in the ground. The image was of a man in boots and shirtsleeves guiding a lightweight pulled by a horse. The great promise of homesteading was made behind the man with not wheat being harrowed, but instead hundreds of gold coins.

As COVID-19 burns its path across the United States, we have seen how a high level of infection in a city or region can overwhelm hospitals, swamp testing services, strain supply chains for protective equipment, crowd out surgeries and generally cause havoc with health infrastructure.