On September 18, Time’s Money Magazine published an article of the top 100 best places to live in America, and Dickinson, North Dakota was ranked the 6th best.  This is hard to believe, and far from being true.

Yesterday, I asked a homeowner neighbor who is in his early fifties what he thought about this, and he replied, “I have lived here my whole life, and I hate it here in Dickinson.  I would like to get out of here.”

Today, I unintentionally got into a discussion with two other homeowner neighbors in their fifties, and I mentioned the Money Magazine article about Dickinson being the 6th best place to live, and one of the men replied, “I have lived in Dickinson my whole life, and I hate it here, I am trying to get out of here.”

Yesterday, I asked a politician who used to live in Dickinson what he thought about Dickinson being the 6th best place to live, and he said, “I don’t even know where to begin about that.”

I myself, would rank Dickinson as high as 80th, because of my own peculiar point of view and preferences.  My personal preferences are, that I don’t like there to be a lot going on, I don’t like traffic, and I don’t like too much diversity.  I will explain what I mean about there not being too much diversity.

As much as I complain about Dickinson, (and there is a need for change and improvement), most of the people in Dickinson are not too different in their thinking and what they want, which happens to coincide with what I want.  Just about everyone in Dickinson would like to own a home, a four wheel drive vehicle, a few toys like a motorcycle or boat, be able to pay for everything, and be left alone.

The people in Dickinson mostly believe in the individual ownership of land, vehicles, motorcycles, boats, travel trailers, animals, firearms, and big screen televisions.  And, if someone wants something, they should get a job and go buy what they want for themselves.

You could probably already tell that I was going write that Dickinson is not liberal, socialist, or communist.  The people in western North Dakota are land greedy to a fault.  And besides their excessive land greediness, they want absolutely no interference with what they do on their own land, none.

Liberals, socialists, and communists, talk about and seek the “sharing” of resources, supposedly for the overall good of everyone.  The people in Dickinson and western North Dakota don’t believe and have not ever believed in this.

In the large urban cities like New York City, San Francisco, Washington D.C., and Philadelphia, people are constantly crowded together where they live, where they work, and on their way to work.  Residences are just cubby holes stacked on top of each other,  work places are just tiny cubicles, people are shoulder to shoulder on sidewalks, public transportation, and in traffic jams.

The people in the large urban cities have given up their freedom, privacy, identity, and security, whether they know it or not.  They are living like a liberal, socialist, or communist whether they know it or not.  They don’t really own their property, even if they “own” an apartment or condominium.  They have to share the hallways, stairs, and elevators with everyone else, and they typically have no way to deny, block, or prevent access to their front door.  They have to share office space with hundreds of other people.  They have to share their transportation with hundreds of other people.  In many ways, maybe even just about every way, they have to go along with what everybody else wants, whether they agree with it or not.

Even though I complain about Dickinson, the people in Dickinson generally want the same things, except for the drug people who came to Dickinson from Seattle, Portland, and Coeur D’Alene.