Commissioners hash it out – 2/27/2024
The Commissioners’ congeniality and attention to the issue at hand during the Board of County Commissioners meeting on February 27, 2024, was notable and appreciated. The sentiments they expressed about Park County’s unsuitability to become a sanctuary for undocumented migrants were, for the most part, devoid of political posturing and expressive of what most Park County taxpayers believe. The county has no infrastructure resources to accept migrants, no money to provide for their welfare, and the elevation and weather ipso facto preclude Park County from being considered a reasonable environment for migrant placement.
However, the meeting provided a foray into the evolution of conspiracy. An insight into the MAGA ala QAnon rabbit hole where hair-on-fire “truths” are born of evidence gleaned from knee-jerk assumptions, ignorance, and a lack of due diligence research to discover the validity of those assumptions.
Commission Chair Amy Mitchell started the meeting by telling us she’d received “quite a few” phone calls and emails accusing her and Commission Dave Wissel of working to make Park County a Sanctuary County.
Like Commissioner Elsner and Wissel, I, too, giggled when I heard that absurd accusation. The Constitutional Conservative majority of the board, Mitchell and Wissel, reflect the essence of Christopher Hitchens’s take on Libertarians: “I have always found it quaint and rather touching that there is a movement [Libertarians] in the US that thinks Americans are not yet selfish enough.”
You know. That small government, live within our means stuff? Well, nine times out of ten, that translates to, No, there is no room at the inn, and I don’t care who you are.
It’s hard to tell if Mitchell was smiling, much less giggling when she gave airtime to the harebrained accusations of “quite a few” who were probably rabidly red constituents emerging from the rabbit hole.
It might be suggested Mitchell takes herself a wee bit too seriously. Exposing such nonsense in a public meeting only highlights that personality quirk. Some of us may have responded to the playground taunt, “Your mother wears combat boots,” with a head shake as we turned away from the inanity. Others, the more seriously self-absorbed of us, probably climbed to the fourth step of the slide, turned toward the crowd, placed our hands on our hearts, looked to the sky, and screamed our mother does not wear combat boots, pointing a finger at the accuser with a “You lie! You lie!”
One of my admitted faults in this blog space is that I often assume those who take the time to view the site are as informed about issues and personalities as I am, especially the historical context in which I usually place those issues.
I’ll assume for a moment a pretentious claim that my post of February 26, 2024, “Migration angst,” probably had something to do with Mitchell’s phone calls and emails. In that post, I asked a question: “Will they (the two Constitutional Conservative members of the Commission) strut their disdain for so-called Sanctuary Cities despite the fact that Amy Mitchell tried in vain to have the county designated a Sanctuary County for the Protection of Life in April 2022.”
If I had only a smidgen of knowledge about the nature of Park County politics and politicians, I would have immediately sat up after reading those words, “Amy Mitchell tried in vain…” and said no way, no how. She’s a selfish Constitution Conservative, for God’s sake. There’s no way she’s fighting for the migrants. I would have keyed on April 5, 2022, the date noted in the post, and researched what Mitchell was up to at that time. From that research, I would have concluded for myself the validity of Mitchell’s devotion to sanctuary for rag-tag migrating Venezuelans. I wouldn’t have just picked up the phone and called her because she is, after all, a politician. For politicians, truth is negotiable.
If I was red-hatted MAGA, QAnon subscribing, BIG LIE believing Mitchell-compatriot, I would have done what they did and dialed that phone or danced my fingers across the keyboard to ask WTF! No research for me. No need to discover for myself the truth of such a thing. No, I would have set my hair afire and gone straight to the source, believing that whatever Mitchell told me was the absolute truth, just like the “truths” I’ve accepted without question from the Pillow Guy, Tucker, Hannity, Trump, Boebert, etc.
On April 5, 2022, the Park County Board of County Commissioners took up a proposed proclamation declaring Park County a Sanctuary County for the Protection of Life. It proclaimed, among other things, that each and every innocent life is unique and precious to God, that life begins at inception, and that protecting all human life is essential to the citizens of Park County.
It was an anti-abortion proclamation (Pro-life is a specious term. C’mon, y’all, admit it.) intended as a counter to Colorado’s passage of the Reproductive Health Equity Act of 2022.
Commissioner Amy Mitchell championed this proclamation, apparently prepared by the Christian Domionist sect of the Park County Republican Party, citing the American College of Pediatricians, a group of Christian ideologues who, in 2002, splintered from the American Academy of Pediatrics (established in 1930) when the AAP supported second-parent adoptions by lesbian and gay folk, a culture war hot button for sure.
When Commissioners Ray Douglas and Dick Elsner opposed this proclamation, rightly suggesting county proclamations should reflect the whole of Park County citizens, not just the rabidly red, Christian Dominionist dogmatically righteous segment of the county, it failed with inevitable consequences. The South Park Outsiders, righteous Christians, and red-hatted MAGAites would have their vengeance. Ray Douglas would be in their crosshairs. As early as August 2021, Dave Wissel would become their champion, their poster-boy candidate for District 3 Commissioner in 2022.
This recounted history is something I wrongly assumed everybody would know provided the context for stating in my February 26, 2024, “Migration angst” post that “Amy Mitchell tried in vain to have the county designated a Sanctuary County for the Protection of Life in April 2022.”
I didn’t think the unthinking MAGA crowd would take it—a knee-jerk response—to mean Mitchell and Wissel were cheerleading the charge for migrant sanctuary in Park County in February 2024.
Should we conflate the two sanctuary issues now that it has come up?
In 2022, didn’t Mitchell say it is incumbent on the county and her as a commissioner to protect the health, safety, and welfare of all life in Park County? Would a few Venezuelan migrants count as lives in that statement? Sure, her agenda comported with that of the Christian Dominionists, but does the inherent duty of the county to protect life only apply to the unborn who may someday start taking breaths on their own and eventually dig into Taco Bell enchiritos or Big Macs?
Yeah, I know. Apple and oranges. In 2022, Mitchell thought it had something to do with protecting all human life in the county. Yesterday, she and the other two commissioners, and most of us concluded no, not ALL life in Park County, regardless of how it gets here will be protected.
Okay. I’ll say it. My bad. I presumptuously assume I had something to do with Mitchell’s hair on fire, telephone, and email correspondence. Let me make a suggestion. The hard-right MAGAites need to chill. They need to take a moment’s reflection when they read something that makes their head hurt and their hands tremble. They need to do their research before they jerk their knees and light their hair on fire.
As I’ve said previously, Park County does not have the resources to take on migrants from anywhere. We barely have enough resources to take care of ourselves. In some notable areas, we’re not doing a very good job, even at that.
Kudos to the entire Commission, including the Constitutional Conservative majority, who, on February 27, 2024, did not excessively huff and puff, spew, and sputter ideological claptrap that would not have advanced the issue at all. But, yes, we don’t yet know what whereases will appear in the actual resolution. If they’re anything like those that appeared on the prior Sanctuary County resolution in April 2022, we’ll probably be revisiting this topic.
