notes of a freshman legislator

While my friends and I have certainly read the reports of the deep divide that exists between Democrats and Republican over COVID, it still came as a shock yesterday when confronted with so many real people who really found ways to dismiss health warnings that have been so much a part of our lives since the pandemic broke out ten months ago.  The shock didn’t lessen today when I remotely participated in my first Judiciary Committee meeting and witnessed my Republican colleagues maskless to a person in an airless committee room on the first floor of the capitol.  If Missoula and my friends and my Democratic colleagues live in a bubble where COVID is a recognized as an almost existential threat to our lives and good health, the Montana Legislature is an entirely different reality that I have more or less voluntarily chosen to join with those many other Montanans who reject or don’t believe that COVID poses an unacceptable risk or much of a risk at all.   What a surprising reality it is.