Seeing politics clearly: a rural perspective

Those of us who spend our lives immersed in the outdoors eventually learn a simple truth: A lack of awareness puts an animal’s continued existence at risk. In the most basic of equations, awareness equals life.

It’s true for the hunted — the deer invariably relies on its keen senses to stay safe, as do the rabbit and the trout — and it’s also true for predators. Including humans. To be successful with wild game or fish, we have to be aware of our surroundings. Ignorance afield almost always begets failure with rod or gun … and sometimes worse.

Lack of awareness can place our lives at risk. The wildfire that crests the nearest ridge, or the Arctic front that blows in unnoticed, can be deadly. So can a raging torrent or an icy mountain trail. And once you’ve been stalked by a mountain lion or encountered a grizzly bear, awareness becomes far less theoretical and much more a prerequisite for survival.

Awareness is fundamental to surviving — and enjoying — the natural world. It’s both the foundation for our time outdoors and the key to returning home safely at the end of the day.

Unfortunately, far too many Americans seem inclined to hang their awareness in the hall closet when they’re not outside enjoying nature. It’s almost as if the cacophony of modern politics has drowned out an alarm we all should heed.

The upcoming 2022 elections are critical. While the economy, inflation and interest rates are still grabbing headlines, and while our litany of serious problems — health care, affordable housing, climate change, etc. — is as germane as ever, millions of voters appear unaware that our democracy itself is at risk.

When Richard Nixon lost an extremely narrow election to John F. Kennedy in 1960, he conceded without challenging the results. Al Gore did the same when he came up just short of George W. Bush in 2000. But in the wake of the 2020 election, with Donald Trump denying that he lost to Joe Biden, and with members of the GOP leadership embracing Trump’s falsehoods, America fractured along a fault line defined almost exclusively by our willingness to understand and embrace reality.

On one side of the divide are people who, whether or not they support President Biden, recognize that he won a free and fair election. On the other side are election deniers willing to ignore the most basic of American precepts and dismiss political results that run counter to their personal desires.

Former President Trump started this attack on our constitutional republic when he told voters prior to the 2020 election that “the Democrats are trying to rig this election because that’s the only way they’re going to win.” He continued to echo the same false narrative in 2022, claiming that “it was a rigged and stolen election.”

Trump’s acolytes — politicians like Doug Mastriano in Pennsylvania, Blake Masters and Kari Lake in Arizona, and Rep. Lauren Boebert in Colorado — have adopted the former president’s authoritarian tactics, refusing to accept that a peaceful transfer of power, based on the will of the people, is sacrosanct under our Constitution. 

Awareness, of course, is as important in the political realm as it is in the natural world.  Democracies that ignore authoritarian attacks are much more likely to succumb — to surrender both their freedoms and their national identity — than democracies that remain vigilant and aware.

Our continued existence as a representative democracy is predicated on our understanding of this particular threat. If we embrace ignorance, willful or otherwise, it’s hard to see how our Constitution and our unique form of self-governance survive through the next decade.

Which means we’re in an unenviable situation as we head for the polls. Too many of us are either unaware that democracy is on the ballot or unconcerned about the existential threat we face. Unless we commit to voting for candidates willing to uphold the basic tenets of our democracy, and repudiate those seeking to overthrow our electoral process, we may well lose both our constitutional republic and our most important freedoms.

At the end of the day, awareness is everything — and that’s as true when we wade into politics as it is when we walk out into nature.

Todd Tanner is a lifelong hunter and angler, an outdoor writer, the founder of the School of Trout, and the president of Conservation Hawks, a group of sportsmen and sportswomen focused on combatting climate change. He lives in rural Montana. The views expressed here are his own.