Emily Articulated: Dystopian

By Emily Erickson
Reader Columnist

Call me glib, but I’ve been thinking about a dystopian future in which the most extreme members of the Idaho GOP achieve everything they’ve set out to accomplish. They kick their feet up knowing that the decades-long crusade to push their agendas — to push politics so far to the right that we had to come up with a new scale to understand their positions on a political spectrum — finally succeeded. 

Long gone are concepts of “left and right” or “progressives and conservatives,” and further gone are “moderates” and “across the aisle” political practices. Now, thankfully, there’s just the Leadership (and perhaps a small group of people still hanging around Boise calling themselves “The Resistance,” but I suppose that’s just what happens when you reach absolute Unity). 

In the crumbling remains of what used to be North Idaho College is now a militia training and preparation center. Once we collectively moved past our need for “higher education” (more like liberal brainwashing, amirite?), we decided to put the space to better use. 

Emily Erickson.

New recruits filter in every year — to the credit of widely successful and targeted YouTube radicalization campaigns — each receiving a personal assault rifle and a Prepper’s Guide to Surviving the mid-2000s upon admission. Classes include “Canning for Beginners,” “The Federal Government and Other Conspiracies,” and “How to Find Natural Resources after You’ve Destroyed Them All.” 

In a few years, with a bit of luck (and more funding from out-of-state interest groups), our forces might be strong enough to finally achieve secession from the United States altogether. 

Traveling north, there’s a route we like to call the former “Birthing Corridor” — because, back when births still happened in Idaho hospitals, women had to travel from Sandpoint and beyond to Coeur d’Alene to receive care while in labor. This made the pullouts along Highway 95 very popular spots for welcoming new life into the world. 

But now that we’ve done away with the ridiculous notion that births need to be so clinical (it’s the most natural thing a woman can do — perhaps even her purpose on Earth?), we’ve established community birthing tents. These tents include designated fire pits for midwives to boil their rags, racks of 19th-century labor and delivery tools (because they just don’t make them like they used to), and extra space for prayer circles for when things get… complicated.

On the subject of young life, a few years back we formally addressed the problem of our aging population — which, alarmingly, peaked at a median age of 65. Now, after the introduction of our program, “No Migration Without Representation,” in which new high school graduates need state-sanctioned sponsorships to be able to move across state lines (for their own protection, of course), we’ve successfully managed to keep them from immediately leaving at the first chance they get. 

With this initiative, alongside our efforts to eradicate sex education and the evils of contraception, we are proud to say we have a booming next generation of Idahoans.

Regarding contraceptives, they and other illicit materials are now confiscated at our state-of-the-art border facilities — impressive surveillance blockades spanning each of Idaho’s state lines. It is now our policy to collect and destroy contraband (birth control pills, condoms and God-forbid emergency methods like Plan B), replacing them with the customary Bible and complementary package of diapers. 

Other banned materials include (but are not limited to): drugs and alcohol; secular books, and especially those that accurately recount history or what we’d formerly called “progressive” points of view; any media by or about Freddie Mercury or anything referencing the old TV series Schitt’s Creek; and certainly any materials explicitly advocating for the safety, acceptance or care of people within the LGBTQ community.

After long days at the office, members of the all-male, all-white Idaho Legislature return to their homes, loosen their ties and take in the faces of their obedient — I mean, loving — wives and broods of children. They smell the familiar smell of a hot meal, always ready and waiting on the table for them when they get home, and sigh with contentment. All is well.

Emily Erickson is a writer and business owner with an affinity for black coffee and playing in the mountains. Connect with her online at www.bigbluehat.studio.