I've been on dailykos for four years now, and this is the second time people've been interested in (or may I say, given a flying @#$% about) Alaska. It's pretty much like the first time. A lot of folks seem to be laborin' under the misapprehension that there are only 49 states and then there's this sort of, I dunno, MISTAKE up there in the north country comprising one-sixth of the nation's land, half its national parks system and more than half of its coastline.
Oh, I tell ya, you don't know the half of it. Mistake! Disaster! Lemme tell ya.
Of course, not all Alaskans are rednecks. In fact, despite what I've read on dailykos to the contrary in the last coupla months, not all Alaskans are even caucasian-- fewer than in the rest of the U.S., proportionately. There's been a certain tendency to confuse Alaska with Wasilla, a difference that was pointed out on last night's Daily Show by the lady who remarked that Mat-Su (or maybe she said Wasilla) is the Meth Capital of Alaska. Note that-- Alaska, in and of itself, has a Meth Capital. It has different regions, different microcultures if you will. You can't learn all about Alaska by watching newsbites on tv. Not even on The Daily Show.
Like most Alaskans (or in my case former Alaskan), I know the exact date on which I moved to Alaska. It was the culmination of a childhood dream. It was a dream that began on SRA reading cards and children's books... things that I now realize were written more or less deliberately to increase the population of Alaska. A Cold War dream sold, I think, to increase the number of people living outside the DEWS line, eyeball to eyeball with the Russian Bear. The U.S. needed people up there and it was willing to pay for 'em.
I taught for several years in a Yup'ik school on the Bering Sea Coast, 500 air miles due west of Anchorage. Sometimes a gigantic U.S. Army helicopter would drop people in my front yard for survival training. I would be standing there in my socks, a cup of coffee in my hands, looking out across the concrete-hard snow at them, but there was no point in offering them a cup. We were in different worlds. They were on survival training. I was home.
From the village where I lived, it's a 45-minute flight by single-engine or double-engine prop plane to the city (you'll humor me on that word I trust) of Bethel. From Bethel it's a one-hour jet flight to Anchorage. Most people in Anchorage (at least most people I met) aren't able to correctly identify the Yup'ik or Inupiaq peoples-- they've heard of "Eskimos". Anchorage news anchors mispronounce the two words. Between Anchorage and Bethel there is a great cultural gap. The gap between Bethel and the Yup'ik villages is equally great.
Alaska is 2 1/2 times the size of Texas. Fourteen percent (14%) of its communities are accessible by road. The state's population is estimated at about 675,000. Over such vast distances, you can imagine that such a small population has evolved into numerous microcultures that don't really resemble each other at all. My Alaska is the Alaska of the tundra, of the great vast expanses of ponds and hills and lakes that go on for hundreds and hundreds of miles with barely a sign of human habitation. In my Alaska the first language is Central Yup'ik, and the average inhabitant is descended from folks who immigrated to this country 15,000 years or so ago.
Her Alaska is the Mat-Su Valley. The Mat-Su Valley is a geographically vast municipality that contains Wasilla, Willow, Palmer, and a few other towns. It probably draws more characters than the rest of Alaska. I guess you could say the rest of Alaska looks at the Mat-Su Valley sort of the way people on dKos have been looking at Alaska lately. Maybe it's not very nice, but there it is.
And yet I can see how Palin got elected governor. The same way most people get elected in Alaska. There are basically three steps:
- Promise not to institute any state taxes.
- Promise to raise the Permanent Fund Dividend and
- Do so.
The last Alaskan election I voted in was the one where Frank Murkowksi was elected governor. He said he couldn't decide who he was going to appoint to the senate in his place-- come to find out it was his own daughter. The day before the election there were guys on streetcorners in Anchorage with signs saying VOTE MURKOWSKI--PROTECT YOUR WALLET. I knew when I saw those signs that it was all over. I know how my Alaska votes.
It protects its wallet.
I remember making a call to the child abuse hotline once. The woman on the other end told me it would be a week before an investigator could get out to the house, maybe two. When I asked why she explained that they only had one investigator covering a roadless area roughly the size of Ohio. Can't remember if it was her or another one who told me I'd never be able to get a neglect investigation on an Alaskan child that owned a winter coat.
Protecting your wallet has a high price. People on here have been saying that that high price is paid by people in the Lower 48. But lord, no, that price is paid by Alaskans.
Of course that's not all Alaskans. Some Alaskans know we need to protect our children, protect our environment, protect our infrastructure, protect our schools. Not just our wallets.
In fact, quite a few Alaskans are on dKos. Hi.
I suppose in a way my Alaska deserves all the crap it's been getting on dailyKos, because Alaska elected Sarah Palin governor for all the usual reasons. If only Alaska could learn to vote without protecting its wallet.
But it would kind of help if y'all could see a state that has some growing to do instead of a state that needs to be trashed regularly on dKos.
God help my Alaska.