Social media used to be a digital porch swing. You’d drop by, wave at an old friend, share a photo, maybe argue about whether The Office peaked too early, and move on with your day. Now it’s more like a rotting carnival midway where everyone’s yelling, nobody’s listening, and the algorithm keeps shoving the loudest, angriest people to the front of the line like it’s a public service. We’ve managed to turn ourselves into hair-trigger primates with smartphones, and we’re acting surprised that the country feels like it’s one bad comment thread away from a fistfight. So yeah – thanks, Zuckerberg. Really nailed it.
For my part, I’m not on social media to “vibe.” I use it to communicate with constituents: what I’m working on, where I’m voting, and what I’m doing on their behalf. And I keep a pretty strict do-not-comment policy for a reason. I even post through a third-party app – Content Studio – so I don’t have to marinate in the feed like it’s some kind of civic duty. If someone actually wants to talk, my cell number and email are everywhere. Call me. Email me. Say it with your chest like a grown-up, not like a keyboard gladiator hunting for dopamine.
But today I broke my own rule – never do that, by the way – and I engaged. I posted about the Colorado Legislature’s SB26-097, a bill pushing to legalize prostitution. If you’re cheering that on, fine. You do you. I find it immoral, destructive, and exactly the kind of “progress” that looks great on a slogan and terrible in real life. I shared the image at the top of this post… and that’s when Andrew slid into my feed, fully warmed up and ready to explain why my opinions don’t count because I live in the wrong zip code.
I’m going to share the screenshots below and respond the way this deserves: longer, clearer, and with actual receipts – because that kind of response doesn’t work in the social-media sewer where the goal isn’t understanding, it’s scoring points. Here, we can do it like adults. Or at least like adults who are tired of being told to shut up and “it’s not your Colorado anymore” by people who think smug is a personality.
Your whole argument is basically: “You live here, therefore you endorse everything the legislature does.”
That’s not an argument – it’s a lazy attempt to dodge the actual issue: whether legalizing prostitution is moral or good for Colorado.
1) “You chose Colorado, so stop complaining.”
People move for jobs, family, military orders, schools, health, cost, proximity – not because they reviewed every future bill and said “yep, love it.”
Colorado’s legislature just introduced SB26-097, which would repeal criminal penalties for prostitution-related offenses statewide. I can oppose that and still live here. The idea that residency = moral endorsement is childish. (Colorado General Assembly, Colorado Sun, ScottKJames.com)
2) “Natives can’t explain why liberal transplants took over.”
They can, actually. It’s not mystical cultural superiority – it’s money + targeted infrastructure + demographic churn.
Even left-leaning donors openly built a system for it. The book The Blueprint documents how the “Gang of Four” (Jared Polis, Pat Stryker, Rutt Bridges, Tim Gill) and allies built a year-round political machine focused on flipping a handful of districts with concentrated funding and coordinated groups. (Barnes & Noble, Boulder Weekly) The Little Prince in me admires it – it was brutally effective.
But conservatives tend not to be so ruthless. We tend to play by traditional rules. In candor, it never dawned on us to play the game in such a structured and Machiavellian way. That was our bad.
So no, it’s not “because natives are dumb and lazy.” It’s because politics is downstream of organization and funding, and your side invested in that like a hedge fund. For the life of me, I still don’t understand why a self-made guy like Jared Polis would invest millions of his own fortune and sacrifice millions more in opportunity costs to take a $90K/year job. I guess he just loves Colorado that much.
3) “They paid more for houses… had the work ethic… earned running it.”
That’s a cute fairy tale, but it admits the real problem: the state got bid up and regular Coloradans got squeezed.
Colorado’s own demography tools show a huge share of the adult population was born out of state, and that out-of-state arrivals are more likely to have degrees (because Colorado imports talent for certain industries). That’s not a dunk on “natives” – that’s evidence Colorado became a magnet market where capital and credentials concentrate. (DOLA)
Meanwhile, housing affordability has been getting wrecked for years as population growth outpaced supply and prices surged – meaning “they paid more” often just means existing residents lost affordability. (Common Sense Institute, Axios)
So, if your brag is “we outbid you,” congrats: that’s not moral legitimacy, that’s a Zillow flex.
4) “Colorado is liberal now, cope.”
Colorado isn’t your cartoon. Unaffiliated voters are the biggest bloc – nearly half the electorate – so pretending it’s a monolithic progressive mandate is spin. (Colorado SOS, Independent Voter Project)
5) Back to the actual topic: prostitution bill
If we’re going to talk about Colorado “sliding,” let’s use facts:
SB26-097 would remove criminal penalties for prostitution-related offenses (with some limits still in place), making Colorado potentially the first state to fully remove those criminal penalties in this way. That’s not “no big deal,” it’s a major cultural/legal shift.
You can argue policy outcomes all day, but pretending moral objections are invalid because someone lives in the state is just you trying to win by sneer instead of substance.
If your best defense of legalizing prostitution is ‘shut up, you live here,’ you’re not defending the bill – you’re admitting you can’t.
Andrew’s comment is doing that classic internet thing where someone wraps a threat in civics vocabulary and calls it “principle.”
I’m not outraged. Just disappointed that conservative areas don’t have leadership that understands that helping their constituents means getting liberals to like them.
Translation: “If you were doing your job, you’d be trying to impress me.”
No. “Helping constituents” isn’t a high school cafeteria popularity contest where the measure of leadership is whether the loudest liberal in the comment section feels validated.
You have to define “help.” In local government, “help” is: roads, permitting, public safety coordination, land use, human services, constituent casework, and getting people answers instead of sending them through a bureaucratic corn maze. That’s real service, with real outcomes. I love doing it.
What Andrew is describing is a totally different religion: the idea that government “helps” by building bigger programs, expanding the system, and then demanding gratitude for the privilege of being managed. Conservatives generally reject that premise. The best local government is the kind that works well, costs less, and stays out of your way as much as possible.
I’ll be here speaking to your constituents since blocking me on your official page would represent a removal of my 1A rights as per O’Connor-Ratcliff v. Garnier.
This is the part where he tries to intimidate you with a case name he half-read in a meme.
Here’s what the Supreme Court actually did in O’Connor-Ratcliff v. Garnier (2024): it said a public official’s social-media activity can be “state action” (meaning the First Amendment applies) only when (1) the official has actual authority to speak for the government on that topic, and (2) the official purports to exercise that authority on social media. (Supreme Court, Fire)
In other words: it’s not “you can never block anyone.” It’s: if you’re using an account/page as an official government channel, you don’t get to run viewpoint-based censorship.
Also, quick adult reminder for Andrew: nobody has a First Amendment right to access your privately-owned social media page. The doctrine is about government actors and state action, not “I’m entitled to camp in your replies forever because I said ‘1A’ three times.” Bottom line: Andrew, it didn’t even cross my mind to block you. Why would I?
I hope you continue to post and give me more opportunities to discuss conservative failure with your constituents.
This is where he overplays his hand. He’s not there to “discuss.” He’s there to perform – and he’s promising my constituents that he plans to hijack my channel to do it. That’s not civic engagement; that’s comment-section colonization.
So, let’s talk about his centerpiece claim: “conservative failure.” In Colorado, the numbers make that a tough story to sell with a straight face.
Colorado reality check: people move toward opportunity
Colorado’s own State Demography Office reported that from July 1, 2023, to July 1, 2024, the largest population gains were:
- Weld County: +9,529 (+2.6%)
- Douglas County: +8,854 (+2.3%)
- El Paso County: +5,838 (+0.8%) (GovDelivery)
That’s not “conservative failure.” That’s people voting with their feet toward conservative-led counties widely known for being more growth-friendly and more skeptical of Denver/Boulder/Larimer-style governance.
And Weld specifically has been repeatedly identified as one of the state’s growth leaders. Larimer’s transformation into “Noulder” is basically complete: the county has adopted the same smug “we know better” governing style that loves to regulate, restrict, and moralize – then acts shocked when regular families start quietly heading for the exits. The recent Common Sense Institute analysis on the Fort Collins/Larimer MSA flags that net migration is materially weaker than pre-2020 levels (with in-migration notably down and net migration lagging), and it projects that Weld/Greeley is on track to surpass Larimer/Fort Collins in population – a pretty blunt signal about where the momentum is. (KUNC)
Families and affordability aren’t just vibes – they show up in numbers
Weld’s demographic profile has stood out enough that analysts have called it an “outlier within Colorado,” including a rebound in births and family formation indicators. (Common Sense Institute, USA Facts) Is this the “conservative failure” of which Andrew speaks?
And on housing: even with the entire state getting punched in the face by rates and prices, Weld remains materially more affordable than places like Boulder, which is exactly why working families look there when the “luxury beliefs” counties become luxury-priced counties.
- Weld County median sale price (Jan 2026): about $480,000 (Redfin)
- Boulder area average sales price (12 months ending Apr 2024): about $844,500 (HUD User)
That affordability gap doesn’t happen by accident. It reflects the cumulative effect of decisions around land use, permitting, infrastructure, energy/jobs, and overall hostility (or friendliness) to growth.
So if Andrew wants to talk about “failure,” he should probably start by explaining why the places run by the politics he admires keep pricing out the very people he claims to care about.
“Most areas have improved” is the kind of sentence you can only type if you never leave a gated HOA, never try to buy a house, and treat the smell of weed + the sight of homeless encampments as “local flavor.”
Here are the receipts, Andrew – and no, they’re not from your vibes:
Affordability: objectively worse. Colorado housing affordability is in the basement. Common Sense Institute notes that affordability for buying a home is at its lowest point in more than 33 years, and that in just the last several years, the cost of purchasing a home has doubled. (Common Sense Institute) Colorado Realtors’ affordability index hit a record low (meaning a median-wage earner can’t afford a median home without major extra income). (Colorado Association of Realtors) And FHFA’s Colorado house price index shows long-run home-price escalation into 2025. (FRED)
Homelessness: worse – sharply. Colorado’s statewide 2024 Point-in-Time count logged 18,715 people experiencing homelessness, up from 14,439 in 2023 – a 30% jump in one year. (Colorado Coalition for Homeless) You don’t get to call that “improved” unless your definition of improved is “more human suffering per square mile.”
Crime: worse by Colorado’s own trend reporting. Colorado’s violent crime rate rose 61% from 2013 to 2022, and property crime rose 19% over the same period – while the U.S. property-crime rate fell over that decade. That’s Colorado moving in the wrong direction while the nation generally moved the other way. (Colorado DOJ)
Drugs: worse (and deadlier). CSI reports that in 2023, Colorado had 1,200+ fentanyl overdose deaths – roughly three deaths per day on average. (Common Sense Institute) “Most areas have improved” is a wild thing to say while your state is stacking bodies like that.
Traffic and congestion: worse. Denver commuters lost about 43–44 hours to congestion in 2024, and INRIX found Denver’s congestion jump was among the biggest year-over-year increases. (Axios, INRIX) That’s not “improved.” That’s paying a time-tax to sit on I-25 and contemplate your life choices.
Road quality: worse enough that CDOT admits the problem. CDOT notes Colorado ranks bottom five (47th) for pavement condition on rural interstates and 28th on urban interstates. (CDOT) A national transportation report found 24% of major Colorado roads are in poor condition (and bridges have issues too). (TRIP)
So no, Andrew – liberals didn’t “take it fair and square and most areas improved.” What they took (with their donors and activist infrastructure) was a state that used to be broadly affordable and functional, and they turned it into a place where housing is a luxury product, homelessness surged, crime trended up, fentanyl kills by the day, traffic eats your life, and roads rank near the bottom. All in just 15 years.
If that’s your idea of “improvement,” then congratulations: you’ve proven the point of this entire post.
And that’s where Andrew wandered in – smug as a cat in a birdcage – to deliver the usual script: conservatives can’t complain because they live here; “helping constituents” means getting liberals to like you; and if you don’t let him hijack your public-facing page, he’ll wave the First Amendment around like a hall pass. But smug collapses the moment it hits reality.
Colorado’s political shift didn’t happen because “natives” were lazy or dumb – it happened because money and infrastructure built a machine. And the “conservative failure” line doesn’t survive Colorado’s internal scoreboard: the momentum is in conservative places like Weld, Douglas, and El Paso – counties that still prioritize affordability, workable permitting, and government that functions without trying to run people’s lives. Meanwhile, Larimer’s drift into “Noulder” comes with the predictable symptom: people quietly heading for the exits.
Most importantly, the claim that “most areas have improved” only works if you treat your eyes – and the data – as optional. Affordability has cratered. Homelessness surged. Fentanyl deaths became routine. Congestion steals hours and sanity. Roads rank embarrassingly low. Those aren’t partisan moods; they’re measurable outcomes.
So here’s the point: you don’t get to call it “progress” while the basics – shelter, safety, mobility, public order – get worse, and then sneer at anyone who notices. Colorado can do better than this. And if that ruins the comment-section victory lap, tough. Reality doesn’t care who’s smuggest.
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