This man wants to start his own state.
 
As I hail from a rural agricultural town, I completely understand the political disaffection of country life, and I think a lot of it is merited. Almost no one can make a living on a family farm, and the regions are frequently economically depressed, their problems largely ignored by urbanites. Moreover, that fresh, clean, country air is not always so fresh, since the “not in my backyard” environmental policies in this country meant I grew up around factories. These steel mills intended to bring jobs, though they paid poorly.

That being said, some disaffected country folk are just super-insular, unsophisticated batshit crazy crackpot nutjobs, with no concept of their political or economic relationship to the world around them.

Take, for example, Weld County Commissioner Sean Conway. In early May, Conway attempted to evade state gun control laws, arguing that Weld County law holds more water. Weld County is actually a “home rule” county, meaning they can pass local laws and establish their own internal government structure, but only within the limits of state laws, obviously.

Before that, Conway made a stir pushing for hydrofracking, a gas-drilling technique associated with earthquakes that has left quite a few folks with flammable tap water.  He also argued against emissions standards during an undignified appearance on The Scooter McGee Show (whose tagline is “Paranoia IS patriotic,” and show summary is “Is there a New World Order agenda? Can we stop Globalism? Anything goes and all bets are off when it comes to the TRUTH behind the stories of the headlines of the day!”).

More recent attempts to curb oil and gas drilling with green energy programs as substitutes appear to have been the last straw for this great leader of men and his fellow pioneers.

Between environmental regulation and gun control (in addition to what I’m sure is some weird internalized nostalgia for the American “frontier” and/or libertarian isolation fetish) Conway and other CO county commissioners (and including pols from Nebraska) think they have a case to push for secession, not from America, but from Colorado and Nebraska because they don’t believe in the laws. These people want to make their own state. According to Detroit Free Press, “North Colorado” (I can’t believe I just typed that), would take about 7% of Colorado’s overall population, making it the least populous state in the country. The second least populous, Wyoming, would still have 40% more people. It would be, as you might be expect, overwhelmingly white, Republican and have an incredibly low gross domestic product.

What could possibly go wrong?

Below, a local news report on the proposed new state of “North Colorado”—that’s sure some nutty hairpiece Sean Conway’s got, isn’t it?