Ellen Murphy: Speaking up for ourselves in Whoville

Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback was publicly booed at a KU-KSU game, and citizens were scolded for being rude. The governor is absurdly steering his sinking state directly into the murky right-wing fog, so were they rude, or are Kansans finally doing their version of “voting?”

It’s free speech, and we need a lot more of it in Kansas, punching bag of late-night comedians.

Brownback’s tax cuts for the rich are coming back to haunt him, so he’s Scrooging the poor, who spend a larger percentage of their income on basic necessities than the 1 percent does.

He overturned former Gov. Kathleen Sebelius’ decree that defined Kansas state employees free of discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. Without any reason or provocation, Brownback simply overturned her decision because he could. Rude.

What about listing specific foods and activities poor people can’t buy with relief money? How about undercutting crucial school funding? Slashing life-sustaining social programs for Kansans falling through economic cracks?

Rude, rude, rude.

Anyone knows it’s supremely bad form to ban low-income people from buying tuna fish, while top earners enjoy “experimental” tax cuts. They’re also not to book cruises…you know, ones for poor people. Not surprisingly, they are allowed to buy guns.

Gun manufacturers who don’t want to pay corporate taxes are getting waived into the state, and Brownback is eliminating gun safety/handling training in order to attract them. Couldn’t we use revenue from that?

Would it be rude to ask constitutionalists to learn gun safety before they possibly endanger the rest of us? What about expecting businesses to earn an invitation to make money here, instead of being courted by freebies we can’t afford to offer?

Brownback didn’t stop at fiscal damage. He chased the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender community back into the workplace closet and is further targeting a woman’s right to choose, making an already difficult, though completely legal, decision unnecessarily more emotional.

He’s eliminated middle ground by catering to the dregs of the tea party because this deep-red state pressures and punishes anyone who comes across as moderate.

It’s rude to browbeat legislators into becoming alarmists for allegedly disappearing gun rights, or else suffer the threat of recall. What about the National Rifle Association’s strong-arming them to sign oaths and commit to the gun culture’s misguided interpretation of gun possession as a God-given/constitutional right?

Some people think that because Brownback has been elected twice, he is a popular governor. But popular people don’t get lustily booed in public.

He was re-elected because liberals and moderates are outshouted by the ultra-right, which supports a fear-based agenda and votes in large numbers.

The middle tends to vote defensively, trying to tamp down the reactionary agenda. They don’t feel their vote will matter, so they stay home and complain instead.

People live elsewhere because, apparently, they like their vote to count, and they actually entertain the possibility of change and progress. The truth to the Kansas stereotype is that we are passive to the diminishment of our rights to choice, to security, and to the reality and promise of a better future.

Booing is a start, but it’s not nearly enough.

In my large family, it was important to be polite. A lot of people needed to share very few things. But at times, no matter how well you’re raised, when this happens to fellow citizens, you have to boo. My parents would certainly have understood why this outburst was not rudeness but an overdue righteous ovation.

Remember Dr. Seuss’ seemingly invisible dust speck town, Whoville? Horton the elephant happened upon a barely audible voice rising from it while he was minding his own business. Once he verified their existence, though, Horton stood up for them because they still mattered, no matter how few they were.

In the Kansas miles-wide clover field, we moderates are Jo-Jo, the tiniest Who. When pushed so far, our single voice occasionally breaks through, proving we are here. We don’t want to be rude, but sometimes speaking up looks like that.

If your response is to urge me to move somewhere else: right back at you, neighbor. I have as much right to complain about Kansas as you would if you were the dust-speck citizen trying to pursue your happiness in Brownbackwards-ville.

This story was originally published April 28, 2015 at 1:21 PM with the headline "Ellen Murphy: Speaking up for ourselves in Whoville."