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Edited on Tue Dec-04-07 11:52 PM by malakai2
I live in South Dakota, and I consider it to be the most depressing state I've ever had the misfortune of inhabiting. Who wants to live in a flat, treeless (minus the Black Hills...I'll get to them shortly) feedlot/wheat field that offers little or no economic future for younger generations, a wasteland where you can spend all summer baking in 110 degree heat under a cloudless sky and all winter shivering in subzero temperatures, huddled behind something, anything, to break the constant 40 mile per hour wind? A place where local and state politics are driven by very vocal, very uncompromising, very socially conservative blocs? A place where the only real economic opportunities for young people are in boom and bust mining, military service, or a highly subsidized ranching lifestyle? A place where two of the major tourist attractions are a drug store and a corn palace?
An aging, anti-social group of hicks and hacks, a small percentage of reasonable people, and an underclass of Lakota who would like their land back, that's who. I've talked to some older people who live here and like it. As a group, these individuals are socially conservative, deeply religious, very much against the idea of effective government on principle, and happy with a very rural lifestyle. South Dakota offers them almost everything they want...they have personal access to politicians like John Thune, Mike Rounds, Bill Napoli, and Roger Hunt, the kind of guys who are the antithesis of liberal...church is a big community thing here, not so much like other places I've lived...and of course, the population density is so low (less than 4 per square mile in several counties) that the only contact many of them have with government is getting subsidy money for their farm and ranch operations whenever weather and market conditions aren't perfect. The reasonable people generally like it because they were born there, or work carried them there, or they don't like it and can't wait to leave (most of the kids under 18). Of course the depression rates on the reservations are pretty high, and the suicide rates therein are astronomical as suicide rates go, but I suppose that might have something to do with Uncle Sam guaranteeing their homeland to them in the Fort Laramie Treaty and then changing his mind as it suited him, forcing those people onto reservations and into social governance systems designed to fail (Pine Ridge...very few in America have been raped like those people).
And then there are the Black Hills. Sacred to several tribes, and once boasting abundant water, game, and fish, these mountains have become a rich white persons' playground. The grizzlies and wolves have been gone for a while. The elk, sheep, and lions hang on in relict populations. Much of the water is no good or gone altogether, with watersheds poisoned or destroyed by extensive mining operations...the leachate continues to contaminate the Missouri River, 150 miles away, as you read this. Retirees and rich people seeking second homes build out in the forest, over time making fire an increasingly less viable way to manage an ecosystem adapted to frequent ground fires, leading to huge overgrowth of small trees, leading to huge insect outbreaks, leading to frequent catastrophic fires. Lead and Deadwood, of course, try to do the Vegas thing with their casinos, and Rapid City lobbies mightily every year to prevent the closure of the big local economic driver, Ellsworth AFB. The Forest Service lands are generally packed with developed inholdings, and ATV use is such that there is no sense of wilderness. Of course, if you'd like to kick a little more dirt on that broken treaty, you can visit and tour Wind Cave (the cave proper), or the four leering faces carved into the granite near Harney Peak-European faces, because it wouldn't do to have Red Cloud's face up there, or better yet, no faces at all. Continuing the broken treaty tour, you can visit the Sturgis Rally and beer bash, with fake bikers hauling their Harleys to within sight of the place before hopping on the bike and riding it into town, and real bikers shooting and stabbing and punching each other in area bars, sometimes at the base of Bear Butte, a place still used (when the roar of engines and drunken partiers isn't too loud) for spiritual purposes by area tribes. I suppose if you like a very Disney version of the Wild West, and can suspend critical thought, you might be able to enjoy what the Hills have to offer, though I suspect that at some point whatever it is that makes you a liberal will kick in and a portion of the experience will nauseate you.
If you hate you some Indians, hate native wildlife and go to great lengths to eradicate it, favor draconian social political positions, dislike the very word "government," and want to be around like-minded people, and you live in South Dakota, you are probably as happy as a pig in shit.
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