Don’t leave — Oklahoma is worth saving

Last Updated on August 6, 2023, 9:24 PM | Published: June 27, 2022

A lot of Oklahomans said something along these lines as they assessed the U.S. Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade: “We could leave this place before it becomes too dangerous.” People were not being overly dramatic when they considered relocation: when a governor like Kevin Stitt verbally dehumanizes progressives and Democrats like the Hutus did the Tutsis before the Rwandan genocide, you pay attention. 

Stitt says “liberal” the way autocrats spit out the names of their enemies or scapegoats. Last month, on “Fox News Sunday,” he leveraged his hatred of liberals and progressives to attack the Native American tribes currently asserting their sovereignty.  

“You know, the tribes in Oklahoma are super liberal,” Stitt said on Fox News Sunday in May. “They go to Washington, D.C. They talk to President [Joe] Biden at the White House; they kind of adopt those strategies. So yeah, we think that there’s a possibility that some tribes may try to set up abortion on demand. They think that you can be 1/1,000th tribal member and not have to follow the state law. And so that’s something that we’re watching.”

Stitt was lying, of course. 

Having worked with one of the largest tribal nations in Oklahoma, I can assure you that governments that worry about the type of shoes women wear at meetings are not “super liberal.” But when his lies have the sting of “othering” people, you pay attention to that guy and work hard to ensure he does not control an army someday. 

When the language takes that turn, or the U.S. Supreme Court gives states the right to withhold essential health services for women, or residents learn that one of their senators, James Lankford, testified in a deposition that he believes 13-year-old girls can give consent to sex,

people with their heads on straight start looking at Zillow listings in politically enlightened locations. They update their passports and pack “go bags.” They have discussions about the average temperature in certain parts of Canada. 

I understand why people want to leave Oklahoma or feel that they must get out for their own health, safety or overall wellbeing. But I also think Stitt is a dimwit cro-mag who is trying to run the state like a conservative colony when that strategy is a dead end for Oklahoma. He is overestimating his power. 

The old rules still apply: Oklahoma needs outside businesses to settle in the state.

However, businesses prioritize culture and education before moving executives to a new location, and if you run all the progressives out of Oklahoma, there go the last remnants of public education and artistic life. Oklahoma City, in particular, is short on billionaires that will donate to the arts. Make this place inhospitable for people who do not consider gun culture to be actual culture, and no one will stop for concert tours in Oklahoma except guys named Luke. 

But it goes deeper than just whether Oklahoma is a pleasant or even tolerable place to live. If an executive has to worry about whether his child will be forced to carry a child to term if they live here, or if they have to constantly worry about active shooters in a state that tacitly approves their mayhem, they will not come here. No company will choose to locate here if they must first conduct risk assessments concerning that prospect. 

For a Republican, Stitt is unpopular in Oklahoma. The Roe v. Wade ruling is activating people against a fascist court and the forces in government and jurisprudence that support rolling back rights. As a result, I believe Stitt is more beatable today than he was before June 24. 

If smart people who care about this state’s future vote in massive numbers to push back against an aspiring autocrat like Stitt, they can win. Stitt might hate Oklahomans for how they think, feel and love. We must vote in numbers that overwhelm his hate for us.

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