Since moving to Arizona, I’ve noticed that state legislators follow the ethos of their geography quite faithfully. Like the Sonoran desert that eliminates species that are unable to adapt to the extreme climate, Arizona's legislators rid the state of cultural invaders through a similar climate — one of extreme politics.
Arizonans do so because they believe in the power of a culturally self-sufficient state. They have yet to see beyond the Wild West mythology. Arizona neither wants nor needs culture from anybody. The proud Arizonan is a cultural cowboy living in an urban desert, doing just fine without the intellectual contribution of someone else.
What’s interesting, then, is how a 2010 survey by the U.S. Census Bureau reported that only 37 percent of residents were born in Arizona, leaving 63 percent originating elsewhere. I believe that people move to the desert to be alone and to prove that they can be self-reliant. It’s the cowboy in them. These people turn into voters and vote to ensure they stay alone. For a state with more than half of its residents coming from other places, Arizonans frequently vote to keep what they consider cultural invaders out.
Moreover, they believe the culture they have is superior, and they view other cultures as threatening to the reign of the self-sufficient cowboy. Thus, they react by voting to shut culture out of Tucson’s School District by terminating Mexican-American programs — Arizona’s version of American history is sufficiently cultured. Arizona isn’t shy about decrying the military incompetence of the federal government, either. Sen. Sylvia Allen’s (R-Snowflake) SB1083 “volunteer militia law” implies that the untrained volunteers of Arizona will be more effective than the armed forces of the federal government — Arizona’s infantry of lone cowboys will keep us safe.
Furthermore, Arizona’s gun control controversy plays out as a Second Amendment debate when in fact it has always been motivated by the conviction that there are imminent cultural (and territorial) invaders to defend from.
Sheriff Joe Arpaio said in 2010 that big guns “send a message” to anybody passing through Maricopa County, but especially anybody from Mexico: Arizona has enough “firepower to react.” Arizona’s fixation on gun possession has less to do with fundamental rights and more about the state’s compulsion to cleanse itself from perceived invaders.
I received a response to my open letter to Sen. John Kavanagh that spoke to me. The respondent wrote that Arizona’s legislature is “bankrupting the state intellectually” and that he was “very frightened about the future.” Arizona’s intellectual bankruptcy will be inevitable if we continue to reject and disregard different modes of thinking. The Arizonan engrossed in the myth of the cowboy is doing himself a disservice. Arizona’s self-sufficient cowboy chooses to be alone, thus willfully alienating others for the frivolity of self-reliance. If Arizona continues to seclude itself with the myth of self-sufficiency, she will strip her citizens of all cultural and intellectual power. I believe, like Edward Abbey in “Desert Solitaire,” that the desert is capable of holding a balance between “lifelessness and living vibrancy.” Rather than choosing cultural lifelessness, Arizonans can choose to see the intellectual vibrancy inherent in the diversity of the state’s cityscape. I guarantee that a life learning with others and living with people of unfamiliar ways of thinking will be just as meaningful, if not more so, than living life as the lone cowboy.
Share your culture with the columnist at ctruong1@asu.edu
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