Election of Boebert an outcome of ’chronic fear’

I am recent retired professor emeritus currently living in Arizona. I read an article in the Hill regarding 3rd Congressional District representative, Lauren Boebert. I am going to plead with local media to do what reporters should do: Tell the truth.

What I will offer is insight both as an anthropologist and as a social psychologist. Conspiracy theories are always rampant in social environments where isolation, disenfranchisement and economic pressures prevail. There are the fringe elements which invariably will take advantage of social and cultural vulnerabilities. I suspect that Ms. Boebert was elected as a function of both ignorance and special interests. But also a tragic outcome of chronic fear. A disservice to us all, but not the less; a real clear and present danger to the democracy we cherish in a still young and fragile America.

I could ascribe a distant diagnosis. A multitude of them. Let it suffice to say that the woman is obviously “bat shit crazy”! Saner voices will proclaim that the election was decidedly not stolen, the Second Amendment is based on the Founders’ ownership of muskets and not AK4’s, that Ms. Boebert’s Twitter-based rants are all too reminiscent of the words of Hitler in pre Nazi Germany. Of course, the duplicitous militia and Q Anon folks will exalt into an even “crazier version of crazy.”

We all are the victims of Ms. Boebert’s psychopathology. This is not just about Aspen and nearby communities. This is about all of us in the United States of America and in the world. I am pleading with the editor to covey a message to the folks of the 3rd Congressional District: Please. Never ever allow this level of malevolence to enter into our collective governance again.

Vincent Huffman

Mesa, Arizona