South Dakota has suffered fewer than a quarter of the coronavirus deaths per capita of Washington, D.C., about a ninth of New York’s rate, and roughly one-tenth that of New Jersey. And thanks to Gov. Kristi Noem’s commonsense policies, South Dakota’s unemployment rate has continued to plummet since the initial supply shock caused by nationwide lockdowns.
Whereas the nation’s overall unemployment rate is still in the double digits, South Dakota’s unemployment rate as of July was down to 6.3%, just 3 points above the nationwide half-century low achieved in the country’s generational economic apex of February.
So Noem came out on the third night of the Republican National Convention swinging. Scattered throughout Noem’s handmade history lesson of the nation’s founding and development was the simple and radical explication that our nation is not divided between right and left but rather those who can either afford these riots and shutdowns or profit off of them and those who cannot.
“When he was just 28 years old, Honest Abe saw wild and furious passions, ‘worse than savage mobs,’ he said, taking the place of reasoned judgment,” Noem relayed in her speech. “He was alarmed by the increasing disregard for the rule of law throughout the country. He was concerned for the people who had seen their property destroyed, their families attacked, and their lives threatened or even taken away. These good people were becoming tired of, and disgusted with, a government that offered them no protection. Sound familiar?”
As Noem then noted, those in the Upper West Side and seaside Seattle manors can “afford to flee.” Left fending for businesses they’ve invested their entire life savings into or homes or schools or even simple mainstays of their society are the plebians with no class points to score among the unemployed liberal arts set. And those looking to riot and protest their way into the new ideological bourgeoisie are those looking to distinguish themselves from the poor folks who have to care about material things instead of raised fists and perfect pronouns.
And Noem is a practical woman, one who considers herself an executive accountable to her electorate first, which is why it’s easy for her to call a spade a spade and offer a dire warning that less stratified societies like hers could not survive a new bonfire of the vanities.
