In the days after the November election, I sent out a raft of emails to friends and family and readers across the country. It was my way of making sense of what had just happened and trying to sort out HCN’s role in the coming year. Some of my thoughts appeared in this column in December.
And responses have poured in — from places like Grove, California; Monticello, Utah; Eugene, Oregon; Austin, Colorado; Pocatello, Idaho; Albuquerque, New Mexico and Jackson, Wyoming, to Seattle, Los Angeles, New York City and many points in between.
To be sure, many shared my lack of surprise over the election results. One friend quipped, “The whole country just became Wyoming.” Many also expressed their anxiety about the months and years ahead. “You know (President-elect Trump) wants to sell it all (the public lands) off to the highest bidders,” a reader from Colorado wrote. “It’s going to be a long 4 years of chaos and upheaval.”
The concerns ran deeper than just politics. A retired archaeologist reflected on his youth in rural Texas and a career spent in remote parts of the Western U.S. “I know how to communicate with good old boys or even potentially dangerous strangers, but at this point … I simply don’t want to fool with meeting strangers and going through orienting theirs vs my political perspective.”
A conservationist friend in Wyoming, dismayed by the rightward political shift, wrote to say that he was registering for a concealed carry permit, adding, “And I am fine with that.”
So what do readers want from HCN right now? “I know the new government will start building their walls between the U.S. and Mexico again,” wrote an Idaho reader whose father carried her across the Rio Grande into the U.S. when she was a child. “I would like HCN to focus on getting the message out about the damage that their walls will do to wildlife migrations.”
Several readers commented that HCN could do more to shine a light on working-class communities in the rural West. “Enough people who live on the silent edges of our collective USA society are freaked out sufficiently by the ‘culture war’ that it contributed significantly to Trump’s victory,” wrote a friend in New Mexico. “Maybe HCN could begin to talk with the people that are seen by many of our ilk as ‘the enemy.’”
And while some readers thought I was being a little Pollyanna-ish, my call for us all to start “seeing each other again” seemed to strike a chord with many. “That’s exactly it,” replied a friend in New York. “There may … always be a need to call out the 10% who, regardless of political affiliation, may ‘see’ but still choose to act with cruelty. Yet it’s hard to be cruel to a neighbor — and at the core, we’re really all neighbors.
“Keep up the great work of helping us all see each other, even when (especially when) we think we disagree.”
Where have you landed, after a couple of months to contemplate the results of the election? And what are you hoping to see in HCN in the coming year? Send your thoughts to dearfriends@hcn.org.
Meet the Influencers
More and more, people are getting their information from social media “influencers” rather than traditional news outlets. What does this trend mean for journalism and public discourse? How are organizations like High Country News adapting to the changing media ecosystem? And who are these people, anyway?
Find out on Feb. 5 at an event co-hosted by HCN and the Journalism and Public Interest Communication program at the University of Washington. HCN board member and UW teaching professor Andrea Otáñez will facilitate a conversation with Birdie Sam (@showme_YourMask), Kelsey Russell (@Kelscruss) and Teal Lehto (@WesternWaterGirl).
Folks in the Seattle area can participate in person at 5 p.m. in the Walker Ames Room, in Kane Hall at the University of Washington. Everyone else can tune in via livestream. Find out the details at hcn.org/news-influencers-uw
We welcome reader letters. Email High Country News at editor@hcn.org or submit a letter to the editor. See our letters to the editor policy.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
