Mysterious cocaine hippos overrun Kansas political landscape

No one asked for hippos to overrun Colombian rivers.

But hippos frolic in the South American country anyway, thanks to the extravagant ego of drug kingpin Pablo Escobar. He imported four of the beasts for a private menagerie. After his death, they escaped and multiplied, turning into an invasive species bedeviling officials. The government has sought to sterilize and deport the beasts, but cocaine hippos keep on thriving.

And so it is with bad ideas in the Kansas Legislature. Each year lawmakers wade through scads of proposals introduced by out-of-state think tanks or touted by conservative influencers, none of them with the slightest connection to actual Kansans’ problems or concerns.

Such ideas are the cocaine hippos of Kansas politics, taking up residence in the credulous heads of GOP lawmakers and driving out all hope of sensible policymaking.

Once you spot these cocaine hippos (I must give credit to classical music critic David Hurwitz for introducing me to the term), you can’t ignore them. Their bulky yet slippery bodies have twisted and distorted the state’s political landscape. Eradicating the creatures, in whatever ways possible, will only strengthen government.

Here are five hippos spotted in the past few months.

“The Legislature adopted a spending plan Thursday that fully funds public schools, provides pay raises for state employees, eliminates DEI initiatives, polices pronouns in emails, and puts the state on a course to blow through billions in reserves and face a budget shortfall within three years.” (March 27)

You might support or oppose diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives or people sharing their pronouns in email messages. But what do they have to do with any problems in Kansas? Who has been actually, provably harmed by any of this? Kansans have been swept along by a nationwide panic over innocuous attempts to create a more caring and accepting society.

House Republicans refused to consider a plea from Democratic Rep. Valdenia Winn to send a message that there is no place for racism in the state of Kansas.

Winn, a Kansas City Democrat, proposed an amendment to House Bill 2299, which declares that antisemitism is against the public policy of the state. She wanted to expand the language to condemn all forms of racism and discrimination. (March 26)

Racism and antisemitism are both bad. Very bad. Yet why were legislators taking up or debating this bill in the first place? Discrimination on the basis of both is already illegal. Hate crimes are illegal, too. Have we seen any recent examples of such or related public unrest in Kansas? (And no, muted protests against Israel in its war against Hamas don’t count.)

The House and Senate on Tuesday overrode Gov. Laura Kelly’s veto of legislation that could result in thousands of advance ballots being disqualified. (March 25)

You know who has administered elections in Kansas for years? Republicans. You know who has repeatedly reassured Kansans that our elections are safe and secure? Republican Secretary of State Scott Schwab. There is no evidence that allowing three days for mail-in ballots to arrive will cause any problems. But Rep. Pat Proctor, R-Leavenworth, has swallowed the propaganda of President Donald Trump hook, line and sinker. U.S. elections are free and fair, and there have been no issues in Kansas.

Still, the cocaine hippos overturn boats.

Kansas House Republicans have repeatedly met in closed caucus meetings this legislative session, doing state business in secret and upending longstanding tradition. (March 24)

Republicans enjoy preposterous supermajorities in the House and Senate. They have no reason to fear sunlight or transparency. Their leaders have more options and flexibility than they have enjoyed in years. And yet, they hide. They have somehow come to believe that letting people see what they do — even if it’s as simple as persuading members to vote one way or another — simply can’t be shared. But why? What harm have they suffered?

The House still approved Senate Concurrent Resolution 1602, a nonbinding statement that urges the governor to help secure the U.S. border with Mexico and work with federal authorities to enforce immigration laws. (March 20)

As has been pointed out repeatedly, and as can be seen by merely glancing at a map, Kansas doesn’t share a border with Mexico. We have to deal with Oklahoma and Missouri, which are bad enough. Immigration fearmongering has no connection with anything actually witnessed in Kansas. As a matter of fact, whole sectors of our economy would shut down without migrant labor.

And I could go on, but cocaine hippos have a way of crowding out all rational thought.

While those of us watching from afar can see the way in which these malignant ideas have infiltrated our government, they have found surprisingly receptive hosts in lawmakers. Indeed, the mental landscape of many in Topeka would appear entirely unrecognizable to many of us. They have welcomed the hippos, praised them as saintly creatures and called on them to reproduce even more freely.

As far back as 2012, literary critic Harold Bloom raised alarms about this tendency.

In a lecture about poet Walt Whitman, he told a crowd: “We are far along on a route away from democracy into the morass of plutocracy, … oligarchy and theocracy, because many millions among us live a reality completely separate from that of those in this room, for instance. The function of literary criticism at the present time cannot be the struggle with this Moby Dick of the American spirit, yet awareness of it should be part of our common ordeal of consciousness.”

Kansas and its residents confront real obstacles. We experience real needs. Schools and special education require investment. The tax system demands rebalancing, making sure those who profit the most help everyone else. Petty hatreds and discrimination deserve to rot in the ash heap of history.

Instead, we fight nonexistent problems with phantom weapons.

And those cocaine hippos keep breeding.

Clay Wirestone is Kansas Reflector opinion editor. Through its opinion section, Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.

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