Tag Archives: travel

The death of skiing may be the rebirth of Colorado

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Colorado is a much different place from when I grew up in Colorado Springs in the 60s. That was before the Eisenhower Tunnel on I-70 was drilled under 11,990’ Loveland Pass. It was before the gondola at Aspen and it was before Snowmass was founded. Vail Pass was a treacherous gravel road, and the town of Vail did not exist.

It was wonderful.

Our family had one of those pop-up tent trailers and we went camping several times a year. Getting there was half the fun.

Our family of six would pile into the station wagon with the trailer in tow. My father would floor it, seeking momentum and speed – maybe 60-65 mph – to get a run at Ute Pass which was the two-lane road serving as the gateway from Colorado Springs into the Rocky Mountains. He’d invariably get slowed by a truck in front, curse, and we’d struggle up the pass at about 35 mph.

But we got there. “There” would be one of hundreds of campgrounds with spots for tents, trailers and tent-trailers like us. There were only a few RVs back in those days. They literally looked down on us from their perches high above the ground, but we figuratively looked down on them for not being real campers.  

Only rich people stayed in motels. We weren’t rich.

I learned many years later that, unsurprisingly, my mother hated camping – for all the reasons that an 11-year-old boy loved it.

What’s not to love? Fishing with worms, walking and wandering, climbing trees, making forts, getting dirty, shooting imaginary Indians and, most importantly, camp fires!

It was wonderful.

This fun was limited to summertime, of course. Winter was too cold for even intrepid would-be mountaineers such as that 11-year-old boy.

Winter brought skiing, but it was an oddity. Skis were long and straight with “bear trap” cable contraptions for bindings. Boots were leather. Clothing, at least in my case, was an army surplus jacket, cotton jeans, a stocking cap and work gloves.

I once rode a two-person chairlift with a stranger. It moved excruciatingly slowly, as they all did in those days. As I shivered, the stranger scolded me, “Kid, you’re gonna shake us off the lift!”

Given the slowness of the lifts, you were lucky to get six or seven runs into a day. But the price of a daily lift ticket was commensurate – about six or seven dollars.

You had to be a good skier to get down the mountain in one piece. I wasn’t. I could guarantee a “yard sale” most days, where a wipeout would scatter over the slope my assorted apparel, skis, poles and boots (well, not the boots).

It was wonderful.

Things are different now. Skiing is big business, and lift tickets are upward of $250. Vail Resorts is a public company listed on the New York Stock Exchange. Slopes are finely groomed with both natural and man-made snow, and equipment is vastly improved, such that an ordinary Joe on his third day can ski easy slopes without falling down.

It’s terrible.

Traffic is horrendous. I-70 is jammed with stop-and-go traffic heading into the mountains on Friday afternoon and headed back to Denver on Sunday evening. A two-hour drive between Denver and Vail often takes four, and more if there’s an accident or snowstorm.

Which highlights the irony of skiing. For a real skier interested in challenging terrain, the snow is good only for a day or two after a storm. But that’s when the mountain roads are clogged with rental SUVs from Texas and California (don’t even get me started on the Australians) driven by so-called drivers who attempt to drive on snow only once a year when they come to ski Colorado.

When the snow is good, the driving is horrendous. And when the driving is good, the snow is horrendous.

Driving has been exceptionally good this winter. It’s no exaggeration to say that Colorado has had record-good driving this winter.

The only solution to this cruel paradox is to live at the ski resort. In Aspen, that’s perfectly doable for about $9 million for a three-bedroom condo. (It’s only about $6 million in Vail, but then you have to live in – ugh! – Vail.)

With that condo, you do get to live in Aspen (or – ugh! – Vail). That’s great if you like crowds (and, in the case of Vail, you like the interstate highway passing right through the center of town).

And it’s great if you like locals who despise you for having earned money as an investment banker in New York working 70-hour weeks while they were ski-bumming their youth away in Aspen (or dodging the interstate in – ugh! – Vail) while bitchin’ about the rich tourists who hire them for ski lessons at $1,500/day, plus tip.

This devolution of the State of Colorado has coincided with the state’s legalization of pot and the color shift from a red state to a blue state, but that’s a story for another day.

OK, enough snark. My point is, skiing brought boatloads, planeloads and shitloads (well, OK, maybe a little more snark) of people to the Colorado mountains. I miss the Colorado of my boyhood.

But there’s hope. Skiing may be dying. As I hinted, snow conditions this year are really terrible. The snowpack on top of Vail (ugh!) Pass when I drove over it last week was about 4 inches. As my hero Dave Barry might say, I’m not making that up. There’s less snow than I’ve ever seen for this time of year, and very little in the upcoming forecast.

And this isn’t just a one-year drought. I’m pleased to report that the stock price of Vail (ugh!) Resorts, Inc. is down 64% from its peak some four years ago as the recreational tastes of the baby boomer generation ages from downhill skiing at high altitude into flat ocean cruises at, as you might expect, sea level.

I’m praying that this season of good driving continues next winter, and the winter after that. With three consecutive good-driving winters and the continued aging of the Boomers, we just might reclaim Colorado for 11-year-old boys, of all ages.

Final Installment – The West will be subsumed by China or conquered by Islam

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Note to Readers: This is the final installment of a three-part series. Part One is HERE and Part Two is HERE. I call this final installment “Choose Your Destructor.”

Part One of this series discussed the rise of Western Civilization from the Greeks and Romans. Part Two concluded with the sad realization that this Western Civilization is falling. The question for this final Part Three is, what will replace it?

It won’t be Russia, “a gas station masquerading as a country,” as John McCain famously put it. McCain died before he could witness Russia proving him right by flailing and failing to conquer it’s eastern neighbor for nearly four years now, a conquering that any competent conqueror could have performed in four weeks.

Of course, by “eastern neighbor,” I’m not talking about the NATO alliance, or even Finland or Sweden. I’m talking about . . . drum roll . . . Ukraine. That’s right. Russia cannot even take over a country most people had never heard of before Russia made heroes of them, and still couldn’t place on a map even if the map were limited to Eastern Europe.

That leaves two powerful forces as candidates for the Destructor of Western Civilization – the nation of China and the imperialist religion of Islam.

China is an ancient civilization going back to the time of the pharaohs. They built their civilization the old-fashioned way — by hard work, merit and an inquisitive culture, much as the Greeks and Romans later built theirs.

The ancient Chinese differed from the Greeks and Romans in an important way, due to geography. The Chinese weren’t located on the friendly pond of the Mediterranean Sea, but rather on the shores of the vast and ferocious Pacific Ocean, and so they never developed an advanced seafaring technology. That limited their ability to expand, since the land to the immediate west of them was high and dry. Eventually, they traded with the West over the Silk Road, but that came late and entailed an arduous journey.

As a result, Chinese culture has always been insular. Until the 20th century, they didn’t give a fig about the West. They were quite sure their system and their people were superior to whatever the West had to offer.

They still often think that way, though now they see that the West – or at least America – does have some things to offer. Such as advanced AI microchips.

With or without the West, Chinese culture is successful by most measures, as one would expect of a bright and numerous people utilizing merit-based approaches to management.

To be sure, communism has corrupted Chinese culture, as it corrupts all cultures it infects. But Chinese communism is a little different. It’s not just an extreme form of socialism. They don’t practice “from each according to his ability and to each according to his needs.” Karl Marx was not Chinese.

The communism practiced by the Chinese is more like a state-regulated capitalism. Small businesses flourish independently in a free market economy. Large ones are often controlled or even owned by the government, but with the goal of maximizing wealth, not redistributing it. Foreign investment in China is encouraged. They emphasize manufacturing and exporting manufactured goods, something no communist country ever achieved during the Cold War.

The political system, too, is pragmatic in a way seldom seen in Marxist communism. People join the Party, they advance by showing ability and alliances, and the most-accomplished become part of an oligarchy or “politburo,” which chooses leaders.

The leaders they choose these days are not dictators in the sense of having absolute power. There’s always the oligarchy/politburo to deal with.

This should sound familiar. The Founders of the United States of America were an oligarchy. They were not elected. Rather, they knew and respected one another and built alliances among themselves to arrive at most decisions by consensus.

Oligarchies are not so bad. I sometimes wish we were now being ruled by the oligarchy of Madison, Jefferson, Hamilton, Monroe, Franklin, Adams and the other Founders, rather than by warring mobs, conspiracy theorists and a lying media.

Chinese culture is generally not imperial. That’s in part due to their geographical isolation and consequent wariness of outsiders and in part, relatedly, because they always thought their culture was too good to share. Whatever the reasons, they don’t have a tradition of subjugating and enslaving their neighbors. The Chinese could own most of Russia and all of Southeast Asia, at a minimum, but they don’t. (Yes, I know about their designs on Tibet and Taiwan.)

Nor are the Chinese a theocracy or regime of ideologues. They’re a pragmatic and patient people. The billion-plus of them will eventually dominate the world, but probably not by brute force. (Yes, I know about the brutality of Tiananmen Square.)

Their strategy in trade is an example. Their days of slave labor and child labor are largely over. With vast numbers of skilled workers, they manufacture huge quantities of goods at high efficiency and sell them at a small margin. The manufacturing skills and trading networks they’re developing will serve them over the long term.

It’s the long term they’re interested in. The Chinese were a civilization in the time of the Egyptians, and well before the Greeks and Romans.

Our assimilation by the Chinese will probably be gradual and not destructive. They’re not interested in killing their customers. They think of Americans the way we think of cattle – big and clumsy, but very useful once you domesticate them.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t think the Chinese are nice people. They will exploit us, and they already are. Like cattle, we will be milked.

But we won’t be slaughtered.

There are things China admires about us, such as our inventiveness, our technological sophistication, and even our entrepreneurialism (despite or perhaps because of the fact that they themselves are, putatively, anti-capitalist communists).

With any luck, the Greco-Roman-Western culture that still dominates the world but is falling fast will not be extinguished, but will instead live on and be subsumed by China. Who knows, they might even improve on it, just as the Romans improved on the Greeks in some ways and we improved on them both in some ways.

They might even boot the Muslims out of Europe – something that European leaders lack the backbone to do even as the European people demand it.

Which brings us to the other possible group that could be our Destructor. It’s that old nemesis of the Greeks – the Persians. Or, more broadly, the Muslims. Of course, the ancient Persians were not Muslims, since Muhammad was still a millennium in the future, but there’s a straight line between the culture of Persia and the culture of Islam.

I will state some hard truths about the Muslims. Rather than grappling with those hard truths, some will simply dismiss the message by labelling me as the messenger “Islamophobic.”

If “Islamophobic” means fearing people who glorify the beheading of babies, the torturing of hostages, the defenestration of gays, and the raping of women, then I plead guilty. I am indeed Islamophobic.

One of those hard truths about the Muslims is that they have a nasty habit of conquering and converting infidels at the point of the sword – the ones they don’t kill outright, that is. To that end, they’ve invaded Europe multiple times, the most recent being the “mostly peaceful” invasion of the last generation.

They’re like strangers who crashed a house party. The kind hosts reluctantly let them stay. Then they repaid the hosts’ kindness by trashing their house. Now, the hosts are afraid to ask them to leave. Next, they’ll be sleeping in the hosts’ bed, with his wife along with the young girls they brought.

It won’t continue to be mostly peaceful. The party crashers see the hosts as infidels. They contend the hosts have no rightful authority over this house. They must submit and convert and then submit some more, and some more, or be put to death.

In fairness to Muslims, two qualifications should be mentioned. First, violence can be found not only in Muslim writings but also in Judeo-Christian writings. But violence in old Judeo-Christian texts is mostly ignored or viewed as allegorical now. When’s the last time you heard a Christian talk about literal jihad? Or globalizing an intifada? No mainstream Christian theologian preaches that we should invade Saudi Arabia and kill or convert them.

Many mainstream Muslim theologians, on the other hand, do preach that they should invade Europe and America, kill or convert us, and steal our stuff. Their leaders publicly label us Satanic. The great cathedrals of Europe will be converted into Muslim mosques in the next 50 years. Bet on it.

The second qualification is, not all Muslims believe in violence. In fact, the great majority of them do not. But – and this is a big but – when someone commits an atrocity in the name of his religion, others of that religion are obligated to condemn the atrocity and disown the criminal who committed it. Muslims seldom do.

I realize I’m asking for more from good Muslims than I’ve ever asked of myself. I’m asking them to risk everything by standing against religious atrocities, while all I’ve ever risked is losing a few tribal readers by standing against stupid tweets.

But if you don’t stand up to wrongs committed in the name of your religion or tribe, then you forfeit that religion or tribe to the wrong. So far, most Muslims have elected not to bravely stand up to wrongs committed in the name of their religion. They’ve elected to risk their religion rather than risk themselves.

It’s ironic that, once you scratch the surface, this religion cloaked in machismo seems to be 10% barbarians and 90% chickens.

Back to those plodding Chinese. The difference between Chinese and Muslim culture can be seen in a microcosm in their respective immigrants to America. Which do you prefer?

I prefer the Chinese. Given the choice, I choose to be assimilated by pragmatic, exploitative, profit-seeking Chinese rather than being conquered and converted, or worse, by violent, macho, chicken-shit Muslims.

I wish I didn’t have to choose – I wish there were still reason for optimism about the West – but there’s not. Being assimilated into China is our only hope for some semblance of our culture to survive.

Minnesota Vikings are not changing their name to the Minnesota Somali Pirates – yet

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The Babylon Bee – America’s unofficial newspaper of record – said they are indeed, but it turns out to be satire.

I think.

The Bee’s piece was in the heavy wake of a story that Somalis in Minnesota bilked the government out of something like a billion dollars. I say “billion” not in the way I say “gazillion.” The figure is actually, literally – and by “literally” I don’t mean figuratively – something like . . . a billion dollars.

Their scheme was to send bills to the Minnesota state government for providing various forms of welfare relief to the public. It took off during Covid when the government all but legalized fraud because the best way to defeat a pandemic is to close the schools, print money, and drop it from helicopters.

Somali groups would set up phony organizations pretending to provide whatnot, from affordable housing to food for children, and send the government fake invoices for it.

Which the government happily paid.

There were lots of clues for a long time that the whole thing was a scam. The Wall Street Journal reports “The massive fraud was an open secret. Merrick Garland, who served as U.S. attorney general under Joe Biden, called it the largest pandemic-relief hustle in the nation” (emphasis added).

But this was Minnesota, full of “nice” Minnesotans and especially full of a governor who was very full of himself and fulsome aspirations. His name was Tim Walz, aka the 2024 Democratic Vice-Presidential candidate.

Rather than pursuing the abundant clues and whispers – nay, the smoking guns and shouts – of fraud, Walz waltzed on, out of deference to a key Democrat constituency – Somalis.  

Today’s Somalis in America, you see, are the descendants of Somalians who were enslaved in America three hundred years ago and discriminated against ever since and so they deserve special favors like legalized fraud.

Well, no, that’s not quite right. Today’s Somalis in America arrived in just the last decade or two. They fled a bloody war-torn Somalia to come to American in order to earn a piece of the American Dream.

Well, no, that’s not quite right either. They fled a bloody war-torn Somalia, alright, but they came to America to be beneficiaries of the modern American welfare state which flowers in nice Minnesota.

Well, no, even that’s not quite right. They fled a bloody war-torn Somalia and came to America to rip us off – while accusing us of racism all the while.

Two lessons can be learned from this. The obvious one is that the modern welfare state is out of control. It all but begs to be ripped off. The people paying for the rip-off are you and me, and it’s not pennies – it’s billions.

The second lesson is more controversial. Here’s a good summary of it:

[R]adical Islam has shown that their desire is not simply to occupy one part of the world and be happy with their own little caliphate; they want to expand.  It is a – it’s revolutionary in its nature.  It seeks to expand and control more territories and more people. 

And radical Islam has designs, openly, on the West – on the United States, on Europe.  We’ve seen that progress there as well.  And they are prepared to conduct acts of terrorism – in the case of Iran, nation-state actions, assassinations, murders, you name it.  Whatever it takes for them to gain their influence and ultimately their domination of different cultures and societies. 

That’s a clear and imminent threat to the world and to the broader West, but especially to the United States, who they identify as the chief source of evil on the planet.  

That statement was by Secretary of State Marco Rubio (whose parents were legal Cuban immigrants) in a recent interview.

Americans like to think that their diversity is a strength, and, up to a point, it is. But that strong diversity consists of groups such as Protestants from England, Catholics from Italy, Huguenots from France, Amish from Switzerland, and Jews from Poland. It even consists of Buddhists from China and Hindus from India.

Something that all those groups have in common is tolerance for other religions and, mostly, tolerance for other cultures. The concept of “infidel” is foreign to these groups.

Muslims are often different. The concept of “infidel” is alive and strong in Islam. They’ve sought to conquer Europe since the seventh century, and nearly succeeded several times. Even now – maybe especially now – many publicly name-call America “the Great Satan.”

Even Nazi Germany, imperial Japan, the Soviet Union and today’s communist China never called us “the Great Satan.” We Americans are semi-amused by that moniker, but the Muslims flinging it are dead serious.

They see the indigenous religions and culture of their adopted nation as evil. That’s a clever feat since, after all, their culture and religion failed in the place they fled, they came here voluntarily, and we welcomed them – complete with their religion and culture that looks down on us. But that’s how they see our cultures, our religions, and us.

Maybe part of the reason for their contempt for us is that they see us as suckers.

Muslims therefore tend not to seek assimilation into American culture, a culture they despise. They seek, more than the Irish, more than the Asians, more than the Jews, to maintain their particular identity and distinct culture.

And to impose it on us.

We’ve already seen what happens when Islam reaches a critical mass in a Western nation, as it has in France and is nearing in England. Within our lifetimes, it is likely that the Notre Dame and St. Paul’s will be converted into mosques.

You think that’s ridiculous? Bear in mind that the first great Christian cathedral was in Constantinople – the incredible Hagia Sophia. When Constantinople fell to the Muslims, they eventually changed the name of the city to Istanbul but they immediately mutilated the Hagia Sophia into a mosque by ripping out the altar and burning the Christian crosses and all other Christian symbols and art. The Hagia Sophia remains a mosque to this day. (BTW, where’s the Pope on this?)

Muslims conquer and they convert, at the point of a sword if necessary, and sometimes even if not.

Like most Americans, it goes against my grain to think we should discriminate against a particular religion and particular regions of the world in deciding who can immigrate into our nation. But this is an exception, and a very important one.

Rubio is right. We ignore him at our peril.

Ohh noooo, den-mark is mad at us!

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Nuuk, the capital of Greenland

Turns out, this is an actual country, not the name of a Cub Scout troop. And it’s not den-mark. It’s Denmark. And they don’t call themselves “Denmarkians. They call themselves “Danes.”

Anyway, the Danes are mad as hell. Or at least heck.

You see, back when the Spanish were looting the locals in South and Central America, and the Portuguese were lucratively, if inhumanely, trading slaves in what’s now Brazil, and the English were accidentally planting the seeds of a great republic in North America, the Danes were . . . [drum roll] . . .

. . . stealing ice from the Eskimos. Here’s the story.

But first, change “Eskimo” to “Inuit.” The word “Eskimo” went extinct in favor of “Inuit” about the time the predecessor word to “Black” went extinct in favor of “Black.” You see, “Eskimo” is the Inuit’s own word for “eater-of-raw-meat.” Which they were. (Have you ever tried to start and build a campfire on a glacier?) But they don’t like to be reminded of that fact.

To, um, engage with the Inuit people, the Danes (back when they were called Vikings – a demographic not known for being kind and gentle – and later the “Norse”) stole the home of the Inuit. They took what’s now Greenland.

The Danes got many of square kilometers that nobody but the Inuit wanted. After all, Greenland is roughly 50 times the size of Denmark. But the land is not exactly the Fertile Crescent. It’s not even the potato farms of Ireland. It’s mostly covered with ice year-round. (See, “eater-of-raw-meat,” above.)

Choosing the name “Greenland” for this icebox-in-need-of-defrosting was a nasty joke. The Danes named it that to encourage their fellow countrymen to colonize the place. Imagine their disappointment after a month at sea in the North Atlantic when their “green” new farms turned out to be glaciers.

Even so, the Danes’ colonies in Greenland survived, due in part to a climate that was warmer than today’s. Like most of the world, Greenland did better back when the climate was warmer, not colder, than today.

All this happened well after the greatest Dane in history, Laurence Olivier, also known as Hamlet, gave the answer, “to be.” (And then, he was. For a little while.)

“To be,” however, was not the fate of Greenland. They were never meant to be, even for a little while. There was no gold rush, no taming of the West or even the North, no railroads, no cattle ranches, no saloons, no nothin’. They didn’t even have slaves.

The icebox cruelly called Greenland still has a population of fewer than 57,000 people. That’s roughly the population of Bothell, Washington. There’s a reason you’ve never heard of Bothell, Washington.

Spread over a landmass, or rather ice mass, that is four times the size of Texas, this place called Greenland is one of the least-inhabited places on earth – second only to Antarctica, which the Danes would also have stolen from the Inuit except there were no Inuit there.

In WWII, Denmark declared itself neutral in an obvious attempt at appeasing Hitler. In a matter of days, Hitler’s armies marched through zero resistance in Denmark on their way to Paris. History tells us more about Danish pastry and Danish collaborators than Danish resistance.

After Denmark was overrun, Greenland was rescued by the Americans from the Nazis and their U-boat submarines. The Americans went on to rescue Europe and the world, then gifted Greenland back to Denmark. The Americans further gifted to Denmark – and the rest of western Europe – a massive rebuilding from the ruins of the war.  

Apart from those few years under the umbrella of America’s protection, it’s fair to say Greenland’s fortunes have been like her winters – endless darkness.

But in Greenland’s latitude above the Arctic Circle, the summer brings endless sun. Greenland may now be embarking on her summer, or at least her spring.

You see, the North Atlantic Ocean was unappealing to yesteryear’s conquistadors, but it is strategically important to today’s would-be conquistadors such as Vladimir Putin. Also, the ice sheets of Greenland show signs of shrinking due to Global whatever-they’re-now-calling-it. Greenland could wind up almost as warm as, oh, northern Alaska, in which case you could do all the things in Greenland that you now do in northern Alaska.

Like eat raw meat.

This literal and metaphorical turning of the seasons in Greenland has not gone unnoticed by the Americans. We have a National Weather Service, you know, which is on the lookout for such things when they’re not asleep at the flood-warning switch.

And so, our Troller-In-Chief told the Greenlanders that maybe he’ll just, you know . . . invade.

President Trump is not afraid to think and talk outside the box. Sometimes it seems like he lives there.

Greenland is still technically part of Denmark, sort of. They’re something like a colony, but without the success of one. So, the Danes took offense to this suggestion that America might liberate and protect the Greenlanders, as we did 84 years ago while Denmark was appeasing the Nazis.

That suggestion sent the popularity of America among the Danes south faster than a thermometer in Nuuk in November. The Wall Street Journal announced that this has “ended Denmark’s love affair with the U.S.”

Sheesh, can we still be good friends?

Building on the media’s typical everyone-hates-America story, the Journal interviewed some Danes who indeed do. They all had names that are unpronounceable and often unspellable. Suffice to say they’re real sad and kinda mad about their unrequited and now undone love for us.

But, they warned, if we make good on our threat to take over Greenland, they’ll . . . they’ll . . . they won’t talk to us anymore.

I admit I’m exaggerating their feebleness, but it’s for the noble purpose of mockery. The Danes’ real warning was more threatening, but just barely. Here’s the actual quote from a Danish military analyst (though I’m a little surprised such a job exists):

“I guess the rules of engagement would be, hand over the keys and take the next plane home, because there is very little we could actually do about it, and it would be sort of pointless to fight it because we have four dog sleds and some civilian police there, that’s it.”

In Greenland itself, they see this as more comedy than tragedy. Many of them have wanted to separate from Denmark for years, much as the Basque want to separate from Spain, the Welsh from Great Britain, and the Californicators from Earth.

In fact, I suspect the Greenlanders are pleased with the inordinate and unusual attention they’re receiving. On a per-person basis, Greenland’s icy escapade is more attention than Americans received when our 1980 hockey team performed the Miracle on Ice.

Maybe now we should troll the Greenlanders with a tweet and a smirk that we’ve found some other country, a younger and warmer one – maybe Fiji – to invade. But we can still be friends.

Aspen newspapers bury Aspen Skiing Company’s hateful diatribe against Trump

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Democracy dies when it gets buried

Right after the election, the CEO of Aspen Skiing Company, which runs Aspen and Snowmass resorts (known as “SkiCo” locally), was grieving. And he wanted everyone to know.

He sent a memo to all 1,500-some employees instructing them on “the gravity of what just occurred.” (This is all he knows about gravity, believe me – I’ve seen this guy ski.)

The memo CEO-splained that the election decision made by over half the nation was “openly at odds” with SkiCo’s values of:

“Equality, democracy, civility, compassion, tolerance, sustainability, open-mindedness, gratitude, freedom, integrity, and justice.”

When the biggest company in Aspen and the surrounding area, serving the public on public lands under favorable Forest Service leases, condemns over half of America – including many of its own employees and customers – for their purportedly undemocratic, uncivil, intolerant, unsustainable, close-minded, ungrateful, tyrannical and unjust election decision, that seems like news.

But the local newspapers didn’t report it. So I wrote a piece about it. My piece received significant attention.

I also sent a letter to the editor of one of those local newspapers that allegedly reports the news (in those few pages that are not devoted to real estate ads). It’s called the Aspen Daily News. My letter strictly observed their word limit and other rules.

They’ve been brimming with Trump-is-Hitler letters ever since the election, and before then too. I figured they might strike a bit of balance by publishing my letter calling out SkiCo for condemning as fascists half of America along with many of its own employees and customers.

I was wrong. The Aspen Daily News utterly ignored my letter.

 In their defense, their refusal might have been for reasons of money – it might have been because they’re whores to SkiCo as one if their biggest advertisers (apart from the ubiquitous real estate ads).

But it’s more likely that they’re just whores to the political left. Pitkin County went 71% for the Democrat, which is approximately 28% less than the political composition of the Aspen Daily News.

If it’s any consolation to me, and it is, the circulation of my piece far exceeded the circulation of the Aspen Daily News. But still, it rubs me wrong that a so-called newspaper is so blatantly biased in burying news.

And so, I’ll publish my letter here, where it will get substantially more readers than in the Aspen Daily News. (Now if I can just figure out how to accept real estate ads.) Here it is: 

In the wake of last week’s election, the CEO of the SkiCo companies circulated a “For Internal Distribution Only” memo to all 1,500-some of its employees bemoaning “the gravity of what just occurred.” He went on to complain that the election result was “openly at odds with some of the values [SkiCo] stands for.”

Those SkiCo values with which last week’s free and democratic election is at odds, the CEO said, are “equality, democracy, civility, compassion, tolerance, sustainability, open-mindedness, gratitude, freedom, integrity, and justice.”

SkiCo easily employs the largest number of people in the Roaring Fork Valley, its payroll is the largest in the Valley, and its customers are the Valley’s biggest source of revenue. Moreover, SkiCo enjoys leases of public lands at very favorable rates for the purpose of serving the public – all of them, regardless of race, color, sex, religion, or political beliefs.

Like anyone else, the CEO is entitled to his opinion that a majority of the country does not share his vaunted “values.” But foisting that opinion onto 1,500 employees that he has the power to fire, and onto hundreds of thousands of customers to whom he can deny lift tickets, is a tad heavy-handed. To use his own terminology, it’s not particularly tolerant.

I should mention that an esteemed friend who is prominent in the Aspen area also sent in a letter to the editor – to the other Aspen newspaper, the Aspen Times – objecting to the CEO’s coercive memo to his employees. (No, there’s not enough news in Aspen to support two daily newspapers, but there’s certainly enough real estate to advertise.) Her letter was similarly civil, and similarly unpublished.

Next time you drop $20k for a week in Aspen, consider where that money is going.

Aspen Skiing Company joins “The Resistance”

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Your correspondent has reviewed a memo labelled “For Internal Distribution Only” from the CEO of the company that owns and operates the skiing operations at Aspen and Snowmass (referred to locally as “SkiCo”).  

It’s a doozy.

Everyone knows that Aspen is rich and liberal. The billionaires crowded out the millionaires decades ago. What passes for “thinking” by think-tanks like the Aspen Institute is the notion that “balance” means hard-leftists like Madeline Albright and Jonathan Capehart on one side and soft-leftists like David Brooks and Liz Cheney on the other.

Years ago, SkiCo decried Donald Trump’s enforcement of America’s immigration laws. Enforcement of those duly enacted American laws, they declared, was un-American. (Coincidentally, enforcement of the immigration laws also impacted SkiCo’s supply of low-paid workers.)

So maybe it shouldn’t be a surprise to see SkiCo’s reaction to the election. Still, it’s worth noting, especially if you happen to be one of their customers.

The memo from the CEO to employees begins by bemoaning “the gravity of what just occurred.” A majority of voters, he said, chose “a vision that can be viewed as openly at odds with some of the values [SkiCo] stands for.”

In case you don’t get the drift, the CEO helpfully spells it out. SkiCo’s self-declared “values” with which he contends over half of America is “openly at odds” are:

“Equality, democracy, civility, compassion, tolerance, sustainability, open-mindedness, gratitude, freedom, integrity, and justice.”

In short, in the public opinion of the CEO of SkiCo, the election represents a triumph of the opposite of all that. It represents a triumph of inequality, anti-democracy, incivility, unsustainability, close-mindedness, ingratitude, tyranny, and injustice.

He fails to explain how an open election, in which a candidate won a majority of both the people and the Electoral College, is anti-democratic. Perhaps he meant anti-Democrat.

Oh, and intolerance. With no sense of irony or self-awareness, the CEO of SkiCo – the leader of a prominent company offering services to the public with the power to fire employees – declares to those employees that half the country with whose votes he disagrees are intolerant.

In closing, he muses, “Clearly, the approach of trying to model, speak aggressively, and ‘teach’ others is not sufficient.” (The scare quotes around “teach” are his.)

That sounds slightly threatening. After failing in his effort to “teach” the deplorable, unteachable garbage that constitute half of America, is he perhaps considering limiting access to the gondolas to card-carrying Democrats?

I can see the gondola operators to the line of skiers:

“Papers? Papers? No, I don’t care about your lift ticket, I want your voter registration papers!”

The First Amendment probably does not protect the employees of SkiCo who happen to be Republicans (yes, there are some) and have received the CEO’s coercive political memo, since SkiCo is not an arm of the government. On the other hand, SkiCo does enjoy numerous leases of Forest Service lands owned by the government. Also, its gondola and chair-lift operations could make it a “common carrier.”

And some states offer state law protections that could be implicated. If SkiCo has any employees in California, for example, the memo could be in violation of California state law. (Talk about irony.)

But the legalisms are a column for another day. Today’s point is that the operator of Aspen and Snowmass considers you persona non grata if you’re in the half+ of the country that voted for Donald Trump. Maybe you should consider them resorta non grata.