About 2,500 years ago, the Greek philosopher Heraclitus noted that the only constant in life is change. In all the time which has passed since that observation, some people still haven’t gotten the message – something which was proven again last week when the conservatives at Advance Colorado took a break from being the sole remaining political threat faced by Colorado Democrats and indulged one of American conservatism’s least serious impulses: kneejerk rage at a minor change.
For those who do not know, Advance Colorado is effectively the shadow Colorado GOP. As the state Republican Party descended into madness and complete electoral annihilation over the last decade, conservative mega-donors and a handful of competent consultants set out to create a vehicle for their ideology unencumbered by liabilities like former state party chair Dave Williams. The result was Advance Colorado.
Run by conservative operative Michael Fields with some borrowed political heft from former Republican Governor Bill Owens, Advance Colorado steers millions of dollars to conservative causes and organizations in Colorado every year, and has succeeded in wielding influence more effectively than the actual party. As the torchbearers for Serious Conservatism™ in Colorado, Advance has typically steered clear of the mouth-frothing culture war lunacy which sank the state party.
Until last week, that is, when Fields filed a petition with the Trump administration, whining about the 2023 change of ‘Mount Evans’ to ‘Mount Blue Sky’ – and making me suspect he might not be that serious after all.
If you have ever been to Denver, you have seen Mount Blue Sky: the 12th highest peak in Colorado and 27th highest in the United States, Blue Sky looms clear over the city when the smog, clouds, and occasional wildfire smoke cooperate. The mountain’s name, Blue Sky, is meant to honor the Southern Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes who have lived in Colorado for centuries. Until 2023, when the United States Board on Geographic Names made the change to Blue Sky, the mountain was named for the second governor of the Colorado Territory, John Evans, a man closely associated with the slaughter of as many as 500 Arapaho and Cheyenne women and children in the Sand Creek Massacre of 1864. Before that, the mountain was named Mount Rosalie.
When I, a normal person, first heard of the name change, my reaction was something like, “Oh, huh. That’s probably good.” Then I went on with my day.
Michael Fields appears to have had a different reaction, and now – in classic small-government conservative fashion – wants to bring the full force of the federal government to bear on protecting Coloradans from the name change.
In his petition to the Trump administration, Fields said that the name change was driven by “false claims” made by “progressive special interest groups” and begged Trump to “correct this wrong by restoring the name Mount Evans.” Oddly, Fields also referred to Blue Sky as “a 128-year-old Colorado mountain.” Geologists suspect it’s closer to 68 million years old, but there’s nothing new about the conservative struggle with history.
The source of Fields’ ire seems to be the indignity done to territorial governor John Evans, which he contends was based on false claims that Evans was responsible for the Sand Creek Massacre. Evans did not plan or participate in the massacre, but he was in charge during it, and it did not take woke liberals to turn his peripheral involvement in the slaughter into a problem for him: famously un-woke Confederate-sympathizing President Andrew Johnson demanded his resignation over it. Evans was investigated by Congress. It ended his career. Does Fields contend that the contemporary reaction was also based on false claims by progressive special interest groups?
Honestly, I doubt he has given it that much thought: the kneejerk conservative impulse to rail against change is not based in the brain, it’s based in the gut. It is not a considered ideological stance which gets conservatives up in arms every time someone wants to change a name or a statue, it’s simply the same reactionary impulse which drives the rest of their politics.
In the conservative imagination – and in Fields’ petition to the Trump administration – the very concept of changing something’s name is conceived of as a liberal plot. In reality, changing names with changing times is a millennia old human tradition. Conservative opposition to that human tradition is not noble and principled, it’s silly and impotent, full of sound and fury, signifying…well, something, but nothing good.
One way you can tell that the conservative impulse to freak out over name changes is not based in considered ideological positioning is how irregularly it’s applied. What’s the cutoff year after which something’s name should not be changed? Does it depend on how long the thing has been around, or is the cutoff based on when the thing was made?
Does Michael Fields stubbornly refer to the capital of China as Peking? Does he call Iran Persia? Hell, why stop at Persia? Does he call Iranians Achaemenids? Sasanids? Was it woke when the Khmer Republic became Democratic Kampuchea?
Does Michael Fields believe that the State of Colorado should be named the State of Jefferson on account of having been the Jefferson Territory before becoming the Colorado Territory?
Or does the scattershot conservative hatred of name changes exclude some geography? Does it only apply when the change, in any small way, takes other people – or other people groups – into consideration?
For instance, was it woke of then-Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall in 1962 to order the United States Geological Survey to remove the N-word from the surprisingly large number of United States place names which included it? Was it an attempt to erase history? Is 1962 before the cut off?
If the mountain had already been named Blue Sky, would Fields oppose changing it to Evans? Is the kneejerk reaction not just about change, but about the direction of those changes? Would that explain why, for example, so many conservatives suffered apoplexy about the Washington Redskins changing its name, but celebrated the capricious change of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America? Is it just a coincidence that most of the name changes American conservatives have opposed have to do with respecting the rights, dignity, or wishes of people of color?
I don’t think that it is.
The fact is, Michael Fields does not care about John Evans – he just doesn’t like the idea that time and society are constantly moving forward. If that means becoming the chief advocate for restoring the legacy of a man so bad at his job that Andrew Johnson effectively fired him, a man who presided over one of the darkest chapters in our state’s history, so be it.
Or maybe there’s another option; maybe Fields has other reasons for wanting to make it seem like he’s a reactionary. Because, here’s the thing: Michael Fields isn’t that guy.
Having orbited his work for years, having investigated Advance Colorado more extensively than anyone else I am aware of, one of the few things I can say for sure is that Michael Fields is no idiot. It’s true that Michael Fields probably doesn’t care about John Evans – but I doubt he cares about the name of Mount Evans being changed, either, and that casts his efforts in a different light. A worse light.
If Michael Fields does not actually believe what he’s saying, if he does not actually care about the dignity of territorial governor John Evans’ legacy, then he’s just chumming the water, throwing bait to the Republican base to keep them engaged so that they don’t become complacent now that Trump is back in office. Which means that, even if Fields doesn’t share the reactionary, contradictory, scattershot emotional response to change described above, he believes that most conservatives do, and he is consciously using it to manipulate them. Not a true believer but a Pied Piper.
I don’t believe that Michael Fields is particularly afraid of change, but I do believe that he thinks he’s clever enough to thread this needle, to feed the base just the right amount of red meat to keep them showing up and voting for his bosses’ interests. He doesn’t respect rank and file Republican voters, he just thinks he can trick them.
In that light, maybe I was wrong to doubt him. Maybe Michael really is the serious conservative professional we’ve been led to believe. Fields has never been the kind of conservative operative to scream about stolen elections or wallow in transphobia or hurl slurs. From his time at the Koch-backed Americans for Prosperity, all the way through his time at Advance Colorado, he has been laser-focused on one mission: the upward redistribution of wealth to the wealthy. All other issues are simply tools to be used in pursuit of that end.
He just hopes the yokels he’s trying to trick won’t notice.
