Very Funny

My state's senior senator was named Utahn of the Year by our local, non-church owned, newspaper. I describe it as non-church owned because the current owners of the Salt Lake Tribune are seriously Mormon businessmen, the Huntsman family. So even if it isn't a church vehicle, as the other local paper is, there is no doubt that since the Huntsman family took over, the editorial stance and the letters to the editor changed dramatically.

In any case, Orrin Hatch was named Utahn of the Year in a very odd encomium cum disparaging pair of pieces. Hatch was praised for his cheerleading for the new tax reform but castigated for not only his other votes but castigated in such a way that accused him of venality and sycophancy, a curious double smack after a French kiss that flummoxed many people.

This is why I and my husband are leaving Utah. There is a moral vacuum here. I ran into a fellow whom I had taught how to swim, he had been bishop of his local ward and he and his wife both voted for Trump. When my husband and I told him that we were planning to leave Utah, he asked why and I told him that with Trump as president I could no longer put up with the obeisance to authority, and the patriarchal structure, especially after most of my 26 years here I have been scorned as everything from a "liberal" to a socialist but especially targeted as a non-believer.  I cannot even count all the times I was told that I would be better off moving by those "so nice" people. Well, all those good Christian people, including the man I had taught to swim, don't like Trump but they would vote for him again.

I don't pretend to be Christian but I certainly understand Christianity and faith. Besides my own upbringing, I studied early Christianity in college. So I don't even begin to understand how these people, who profess to be good Christians, can support Trump and his brigade. Utah is a peculiar place and these are peculiar people. We have lived here for nearly 27 years and enough is enough.