OPINION: Don Young did the right thing. I’m flummoxed.

I expect it from Sen. Lisa Murkowski. But Rep. Don Young? C’mon, Don. How am I supposed to react to you finally doing something I admire and respect? It just seems wrong, so very, very wrong, for me to think of you with any degree of admiration. Yet that’s exactly what I find myself doing.

Here we are, watching the Republican National Party calling the Jan. 6, 2021, uprising “legitimate political discourse,” and it’s our very own Don Young who, along with Lisa, is calling that idea dog doo-doo. Given that legitimate political discourse rarely involves police deaths and pooping in the halls of Congress, I tend to agree with them.

For as long as she has been a senator, I have found Lisa to be the kind of conundrum that makes me a little crazy when I get in the voting booth. I don’t agree with her politics, but I so agree with her sense of honor and dignity that I want to vote for her. She has the courage to call out what she sees for what it is. In fact, this time she had the courage to call out what we all saw with our own eyes was definitely an attempt to overthrow a legitimate election and create a dictatorship. Her party seems to think this was a good idea. She stands almost alone, with just a few other courageous Republicans, in saying that what happened that day was a seditious assault on our government. Seriously, folks, these supposedly legitimate protesters were trying to find the vice president so they could hang him. That sounds more violent than legitimate to me.

And so Lisa once again shows herself to have integrity and the strength of character to stand up for what is right.

Which brings me back to Don. I have to now admit, and I am choking on these words as I type them, but I must now admit that given his stand on the Jan. 6 insurrection, I forgive him for everything he has or hasn’t done over the past decades. He’s an old Alaskan, with an old Alaskan’s ability to spot nonsense when he sees it and to call it out for what it is. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but Don Young has now made me proud that he represents us. Those are words I never thought I’d ever think or write.

If you add the numbers up, and even I can do this, two out of three members of our national delegation have stood up and said that what we saw with our own eyes was what we saw with our own eyes. I can only assume Sen. Dan Sullivan was busy in whatever state he actually calls home and didn’t notice what was going on in his party. Or maybe he did notice and he agrees with their redefinition of reality. Interestingly, he ran for cover with the rest of Congress when these “legitimate political discoursers” rampaged through Congress. If they were just honest political dissenters, why was he so afraid of them? Why didn’t he hang around to find out what their gripe was?

The Republican Party once railed against the protests of the 1960s. Fifty years later, they have learned how to redefine those protests into legitimate political discourse. Well shucks, that’s all we trying to do in the ‘60s too.

Thanks, Lisa, for always putting Alaska first and for always putting America first. Thanks (choke) Don, for making America your priority, too.

As for the Republican Party, its picture should now appear next to the word “shame” in every dictionary in the English language.

Elise Patkotak is an Alaska columnist and author. Her book “Coming Into the City” is available at AlaskaBooksandCalendars.com and at local bookstores.

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