Utahns aren’t paying attention

It is not just the Great Salt Lake that is slipping away from the Utah landscape. The power of the people, the prospect of a happy and prosperous family life, and the health of our citizens are also slipping away. 

From their governor Utahns hear the constant refrain, “Build baby build,” just like America hears from our current president, “Drill baby drill.” We are like ostriches with our heads buried deep in the ever-expanding sandy shore of the Great Salt Lake. We believe whatever our leaders tell us, without applying critical thinking.

Here are some recent and long-term indicators of Utah’s decline as an exemplary socio-economic culture in the United States.

Utah has joined the anti-science revolution in America and has soft-shoed public health to such an extent that measles is infecting Utah’s children at an alarming rate while other states take strong measures against this childhood grim reaper. 

Our irresponsible neglect of the first 25 years of the Great Utah Drought puts Utah in the sightlines of Jesus’ parable about the man who built his home without a sturdy foundation on a flood plain and saw it swept away. Utah has the opposite problem of too much water, but the parable regarding ignorant management still applies. Will there be enough snow for the 2034 Winter Olympics in Utah? Will there be enough water to drink? Utah doesn’t worry. However, without proper consumer, agricultural, and industrial water conservation, Utah will be seriously dehydrated.     

Utah’s current affordable housing and homelessness problem bespeaks this “not my problem” view Utahns have about their neighbors and Utah institutions. It is people’s fault they can’t afford luxury housing, or any housing at all.

Utah’s excessive devotion to a level of professional sports development that soaks up family income and time is intended to steer the people away from participating in democratic efforts in government, workplaces, and cultural institutions like churches. Just have fun, people. Nothing else matters. Leaders will take care of you from cradle to grave.

Utah’s current outrageous Republican gerrymandering crusade is as embarrassing as it is illegal. Utah’s political monopoly mindset has engendered other national embarrassments as well, like the Charlie Kirk murder and the Taylor Frankie Paul fiasco. Utah has little concern for preventing gun violence or for placing restraints on family violence or predatory sexual behavior by folks in positions of power. 

Utah’s decadeslong neglect of other pressing socio-economic problems has come home to roost in the 21st century as well.

Civics instruction in schools and constitutional education of adults have both tanked for decades in Utah. Those lackluster efforts show up in statistics like the University of Utah’s student-body coming in essentially as dead last in political engagement (“least politically active”) among university student bodies in America.

This lack of education in history, political science, and civics ensures that Utahns participate in knee-jerk support of politicians, which amounts to blind followship of MAGA sheepfold leadership in Utah. It also ensures that free speech and free press protections are poorly championed by Utah’s media agencies like newspapers.

Utah has long led the nation in interest rate exploitation of the poor through such means as payday loan depredations and other deregulated banking initiatives.

Utah’s lowest in the nation per capita public-school funding comes home to roost in the intellectual malnourishment of adult citizens who rarely ever turn the page of a serious book not written by a church authority. 

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ long-running promotion of early and easy marriage has left all too many members going through six, eight, 10 marriages and subsequent divorces because they have not ever taken the necessary time during dating to find a truly compatible long-term partner.

The LDS church has demonstrated once again its 19th century disdain for government authority by hiding away tithing revenues in accounts kept secret from the federal government, and suffering fines for doing so. The church fancies itself as the only vector of God’s authority on earth and therefore it feels it need not hold itself accountable to government. 

The solution to Utah’s lack of attention to important issues include citizens returning to reading newspapers for in-depth coverage of issues rather than reliance on social media; undertaking adult constitutional education by participating in programs offered by places like UVU’s Center for Constitutional Studies; participating in nonprofit organizations devoted to solving individual issues; shunning the radical libertarian philosophy of government (“everyone is an island”) and embracing instead the communitarian philosophy (“one for all, all for one”) of the nation’s founders; focusing on sports as a physical health pursuit for all rather than as an economic goldmine for the few; regulating interest rates like Judeo-Christian society did in the 3,000 years before the 1980s in America; and focusing on laws enforcing stable family formation, like divorce reform.