The state we’re in

How Oklahoma lost its soul in the 54th Congressional Session

Stand inside the Capitol in Oklahoma City and you’ll see it: the structural defects and the cracks in the foundation. You’ll smell the odor, part neglect, part sewage. To be there is to be embarrassed, sickened. 

I’m not talking about the building.  

Our representatives—snarling at government, hating compromise, and extolling democracy only when they win—are the reason for the decay, ensuring Oklahoma’s place on the nightly blooper real. The events of April 29 just underscored the notion that the state is a banana republic with a musical named after it. 

“The state of Oklahoma,” Dahlia Lithwick of Slate wrote, “killed a man in the middle of trying to execute him.” The facts are known: the untested drug cocktail, the court rulings Governor Fallin promised to ignore, the state legislator who threatened to impeach the justices, the justices who caved, the lack of a back-up medical protocol in case of an emergency. Even if you believe Clayton Lockett should have been dropped head first into a vat of boiling WD-40 (and so don’t care how he died) you should insist the state first knows how to first boil the oil—otherwise you’re applauding incompetence.

The governor called Lockett “evil” and she’s right. He was amoral, an aberration. He would have killed—the way we killed him. 

We’re supposed to be better. Then again¹ there was Oklahoma Representative Mike Christian, saying he didn’t mind if criminals were fed to the lions. 

The people who didn’t like Fallin before the execution are now apoplectic; those who supported her aren’t sure what the fuss has been about and, in fact, are now long longing for “Old Sparky” to be taken out of mothballs for the execution of Charles Warner, the man for whom the botched execution of Lockett bought six more months. 

It’s the state we’re in. 

But it wasn’t just the execution that was botched, it was the entire legislative session. Our reps, more often than not, embodied an odd mix of arrogance, ignorance, and sanctimony. They punched down and enjoyed doing so. 

It was a Republican candidate for Senate, former House Speaker T.W. Shannon, advocating term limits and partisan elections for judges because he was tired of them handing him his constitutional hat every time they overturned another piece of detritus he supported.  

It was legislators extending horizontal drilling credits but taxing solar panels; passing a tax cut when the state’s running a deficit (that will net the average Oklahoma family about $27); insisting on a contraception/abortion bill so onerous and prejudicial to women that Doug Cox—a Republican—concluded, “That’s what we do in the Republican Party these days”; championing a mandatory and toothless Pledge of Allegiance bill; entertaining measures from State Representative Mike Ritze that would imprison² federal employees who try to enforce federal law; refusing to allow same-sex couples to marry; turning away millions of dollars to insure the poor; beating up on arts funding; delegitimizing the President; barring Oklahoma municipalities from establishing mandatory minimum wage, vacation and sick-day requirements; and, from Sally Kern, protecting kids from punishment for chewing weapons out of pop tarts. 

There is still a bright, golden haze on the meadow, but the meadow quivers with earthquakes and smells of fracking fluid. Sanctimony and stupidity have replaced sanity. The Mustang Public School board approved a bible curriculum³ written by Hobby Lobby’s Steve Green and the City of Tulsa banned slingshots from city parks but not guns. 

Evolution and common sense are out; Jesus and Glocks are in.

Crazy is always around—every state exudes its own kind—but we’re handing out business cards. Christina Fallin donned a headdress, she said, to “honor” Native Americans (F-Troop did a better job), and said to the resulting uproar, “Please forgive us if we innocently adorn ourselves in your beautiful things.” She later told the Washington Post, in a story entitled “The Most Interesting Governor’s Daughter in the Country” (and how low was that bar?), “I try to be well-rounded and somewhat of a modern-day renaissance person.”

And modern-day renaissance people everywhere wept. 

Thirty percent of us said, “Check, please.”⁴

What swept down the plain this last legislative session was, to quote Bob Dylan, an idiot wind, and it blew through our legislators and buildings, intellect and tolerance, DNA and reputation.

We’re not doing fine, Oklahoma. We’re not OK. 

1 huffpost.com: “GOP Lawmaker Doesn’t Care If The Death Penalty Involves ‘Being Fed To The Lions’”
2 conservativefocus.com “If Feds Force Obamacare on States: Oklahoma Considers Bill To Imprison or Fine Federal Officials”
3 rawstory.com: “Oklahoma school district OKs ‘Bible curriculum’ created by Hobby Lobby president”
4 tulsaworld.com:“Gallup poll: 30 percent of Oklahomans would like to leave state.”