Fun:Arizona

Arizona is in the hot desert region of the Southwest.

Ain't it grand? Not really.

Arizona is one of the United States of America. It sports an arid climate and great natural beauty, much of which was formed millions of years ago.

The only reason AZ exists is because President Polk wanted an uninterrupted path to California, not realizing that said path went through the land of the undead (also known as Phoenix). Everyone who lives here is a Coen brothers character.

History

Welcome to Arizona. Now go home. Unless you're Mexican, in which case forget the first part.

The territory that became this state was won in a war with Mexico over the annexation of Texas. It started out as part of the Territory of New Mexico until they left to make their own state before the rest of New Mexico. They got in sooner because they weren't full of Spanish-speaking Mexicans. Actually, Arizona came about because the sparsely populated southern half of New Mexico Territory decided during the American Civil War they wanted to secede and join the Confederacy. Naming themselves Arizona Territory they were admitted to the Confederacy as a territory, then quickly pwned by federal troops who moved in to reclaim it for the Union. To put a stop to further such secessionist nonsense the U.S. government split New Mexico territory the other way from how the Confederate secessionists had, and the western half became Arizona, making Arizona the third state (after West Virginia and Nevada) that owed its existence to the Civil War.

After air conditioning was invented, Phoenix and Tucson turned almost overnight from tiny desert villages into megalopolises (megalopese?) when retirees fleeing the rust belt started moving there. The hippies went to Tucson and the Birchers went to Phoenix. Now the northern half of the state is the sparsely populated part.

In 2010, Governor Jan Brewer, a Republican, signed Senate Bill 1070, otherwise known as the Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act. It is America's toughest law against illegal immigration, with kne element, section B of Sec. 2. Title 11, chapter 7 has been criticized for letting way for possible racial profiling despite Brewer's assurances otherwise. That law allows police to verify one's immigration status "where reasonable suspicion exists that the person is an alien who is unlawfully present in the United States." Well, what else besides skin colour can be a "reasonable suspicion"?

Meanwhile, the ACLU has argued that states do not have jurisdiction over immigration, a purely federal issue.

Behavior patterns

Let’s talk more about the people of Arizona, because this is where Trump goes whenever he needs to recharge his racism batteries.

Despite Arizona's reputation for far-right crankery, you may meet an actual liberal there, especially in Sedona, which is synonymous with New Age battiness. There is also Tucson, Bisbee, Jerome, Flagstaff... basically, any part of Arizona that isn't Phoenix (and even Phoenix is fairly liberal, with a Democratic mayor). Unfortunately, Phoenix is far and away the largest urban area in the state, being home to nearly two-thirds of the population.

In the early part of the 2010s, Paul Eckerstrom, then the chairman of the Democratic Party in Pima County, proposed a new state named Baja Arizona, which would have inherited Arizona's population of sane people communistic liberals and would have been made from the enclave of rational people Pima County, obviously since Pima is clearly a name for a Native American group code word for pinko!

Fortunately, that seems a bit unlikely as of now, as for the first time in a generation, Arizona was won by Democrats in the 2020 presidential election and now has two Democratic Senators. If trends continue, Arizona will likely become more and more like neighboring New Mexico and Colorado.

Infamous residents

• Steven Anderson – deranged pastor of the Faithful Word Baptist Church who gained notoriety for praying for death on homosexuals, liberals, and Barack Obama.
• Barry Goldwater – born when Arizona was a mere US territory (don't start talking about citizenship, though). Ran for president in 1964; endorsed by Phyllis Schlafly; dubbed the father of the New Right.
• Representative Randy "Duke" Cunningham (R-California) – resided in the US penitentiary in Tucson from 2006 to 2013
• John McCain – US senator from 1987 to 2018, was the GOP presidential candidate in the 2008 election.
• Evan Mecham – racist governor and general media idiot who managed to turn every Republican in the state (including Goldwater and McCain) against him. Impeached one year into his term and later acquitted of corruption charges.
• Warren Jeffs
• Joe Arpaio – America's worst dresser Toughest Sheriff. The sheriff of Maricopa operated like the damned governor (minus a term limit). Finally outvoted in 2016 and ran for the Senate seat vacated by Jeff Flake but got crushed in the primaries.
• J. D. Hayworth – former Sports Anchor, Congressional Representative, Republican candidate against John McCain, right-wing radio host
• Jared Loughner – deranged lunatic and conspiracy theorist responsible for the January 8^th, 2011 assassination attempt on Democratic (8th District) Congresswoman Gabby Giffords. Currently held at a prison hospital in Springfield, Missouri.
• Jan Brewer – governor from 2009 to 2015.
• Doug Ducey – governor from 2015 to 2023.
• Kelli Ward – 5^th district state Senator from 2013 to 2015, a Tea Partier, thinks that Planned Parenthood sells body parts. Tried to primary McCain the 2016 Senate race by copying Mitt Romney's 2008 presidential campaign ad, but lost 39%-51%. After McCain was diagnosed with brain cancer in July 2017, she said she hoped that McCain would resign as quickly as possible, hoping that Governor Ducey would appoint her. After losing the primary to McCain, she instead decided to primary Jeff Flake, a prominent Trump critic, in the 2018 Senate race (Flake later announced he would retire). Steve Bannon and Robert Mercer supported her. However, after Arpaio entered the race in January 2018, there were two Trump favorites in the race.
• Martha McSally – 2^nd district Representative since 2015. At first she was a Trump critic, but by January 2018, when she announced she would also run for the Senate seat vacated by Flake, she had flip-flopped and became a vocal Trump supporter; she won the Republican nomination but ultimately lost the election to Kyrsten Sinema. She was subsequently appointed to the Senate seat vacated by John McCain when he suffered an acute case of death. McSally faced election in November 2020, and was defeated again by her Democratic opponent Mark Kelly, an astronaut and husband of Gabby Giffords, who was shot by the above-mentioned Jared Loughner.
• Paul Gosar – representative from Arizona's 4^th congressional district, a Freedom Caucus member who recently got censured for making a threatening video of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
• Jake Angeli – Q Shaman, Jan. 6 rioter
• Kari Lake - Far right wingnut, former gubernatorial candidate, current candidate for the senate, and high profile 2020 election denier.

Infamous non-residents

• Rick Renzi
• Timothy McVeigh lived in a motel in Kingman for a while, which doesn't really make him a resident.
• The extraterrestrials who supposedly caused the Phoenix Lights.

Tourist attractions

Holbrook, Arizona really does look like this

• I-40 through the northern part of the state follows most of the old Route 66 (except for a jaunts between Seligman/Kingman and Kingman/California border). Radiator Springs is nowhere to be found, however.
• Interstate 19, the only road in the US to use the metric system.
• The Canyon. If you have to ask which canyon, what are you doing still reading this article?
• Lee's Ferry - mostly a starting point for boat trips, but it has an interesting history tied in with Mormonism, the Mountain Meadows Massacre, and the Udall family of politicians.
• Jacob Lake - elevation 7925, population 0. Beware the lone Arizona Highway Patrolman in this area, for he is watchful and likes to write speeding tickets. There is a cafe, pay phone, gas station, fire tower, cabins, lots of ponderosa pines, and some bums living in the nearby woods who move every 2 weeks to avoid breaking the law about squatting on federal land. This time warp of a place looks just like a setting for any of those outlaw biker movies of the 1960s and 1970s.
• London Bridge is now in Lake Havasu City. No, really.
• Tucson is full of fun things: the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, Old Tucson, and whatnot. A true caving experience!
• Tombstone - a cheap fake tourist trap town, of which the only standing building from the original "wild west" days is the brothel
• The old copper-mining hippie towns of Bisbee and Jerome. Bisbee features a miniature version of itself as well.
• The old railroad biker town of Williams
• "Lake" Foul and Glen Canyon Damn
• That corner in Winslow where you can stand, it's such a fine sight to see.
• Firesign Theatre fans will find Holbrook instantly familiar.
• Seligman is another time warp, complete with Route 66 schlock and Burma Shave signs. Like Holbrook but without the concrete dinosaurs.
• Sedona is the alleged location of a number of "vortexes" (no, not vortices) of mystical woo powers and attracts New Agers like garbage attracts cockroaches. It is actually otherwise a really nice (and expensive) town.
• Sunsite and Quartzsite - population 300 in the summer, 1.5 million in the winter from permanent retirees on the vonu circuit living in campers, and visitors to the impromptu flea markets. Burning Man it ain't, though. It's more a case study in Americana on the same level as Breezewood, Pennsylvania.
• Biosphere 2 - Near Oracle City, the huge glass enclosure still stands. From 1991-3 eight loonies dedicated researchers were shut in, supposedly self-sufficient and growing all their own food. Except they didn't. To the amazement of the managers, the eight people paired off and started fucking to pass the time. Also to general amazement, the eight split into two factions of four that hated each other. The CEO of the management company used some of the funds to redecorate her house. Human beings really are a joke, let's face it. That CEO would later be replaced by, of all people, Steve Bannon, who had been previously investigated cost overruns and who would replace them with harassment.
• Phoenix... okay, forget Phoenix. The only thing of interest there for tourists is Sky Harbor Airport.
• For "fun," try finding where Edward Abbey is buried. Good luck. You can't find it nah nah nah nah.
• Sports teams include the NBA's Phoenix Suns, the MLB's Arizona Diamondbacks, the NHL's Phoenix Arizona Coyotes (Whoops! They’re now the Utah Hockey Team!), and the NFL's Phoenix Arizona Cardinals, as well as the local collegiate teams of various sports, the Arizona Wildcats and the Arizona State Sun Devils. In addition, Cactus League Spring Training (baseball) is hosted in the various cities in Maricopa County and in Tucson every March.
• Arizonans must settle for the Mexican resort town Puerto Peñasco as their beach.

Travel advisories

• The government of Mexico advises its citizens to avoid travel to Arizona. Ah, payback. What comes around goes around.

Gallery

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  Montezuma Castle, built by the Sinagua people 1,000 years ago.

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  A Saguaro cactus. Contrary to perceptions, cacti are mostly only native to Arizona and a few surrounding areas.

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  Square Butte, shown from Highway 98.

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  Tombstone, the inspiration for many Western movies.

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  Supai, a town located inside the Grand Canyon. It is so remote that mail still is delivered there by mule.

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  The Superstition Mountains, famous for their ghost stories and urban legends.

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  An aerial view of Phoenix, currently the fifth-largest city in the U.S.

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  Fencing along the Arizona-Mexico border.

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  Barringer Crater, the remnants of a meteor impact 50,000 years ago created during the Pleistocene epoch.