The dystopia called Aspen

I moved to the valley in August 2019, after experiencing it through many years of snowboard vacations. As an outdoorsman, I literally thought I’d died and went to heaven. We quickly made friends up and down the valley and life couldn’t have been better.

When the first cases of COVID-19 were found in Pitkin County things certainly changed, but one would expect that if you were going through a deadly pandemic. I still felt grateful every day to be in this valley with our tremendous access to outdoor activities and low population density.

Fast forward to today. Why do I consider Aspen a dystopia? I feel like Aspen is the perfect test kitchen for the World Economic Forum’s “The Great Reset” in so many ways. “You’ll own nothing and you’ll be happy” has been the reality for many residents for decades. Not by choice, but because it’s too expensive for 99% of the population to buy a home.

Think about it, Aspen is a perfect example of the elite’s dream society where you have “them” living by one standard, with 10,000-square-foot-plus homes, flying in on private jets, burning up insane amounts of jet fuel, and “us,” the serfs, living in a perpetual welfare state with no chance to ever get ahead. Hell, at this point, most people are so used to this system, so entitled to these benefits, they are literally experiencing Stockholm Syndrome and have zero desire to change anything.

This is how Aspen went from a freethinker’s paradise to a town mired in group think, completely homogeneous in its views, a serfdom entrenched in a mass psychosis by their masters. If this makes you upset, you might be a serf.

Frank Routhier

Carbondale