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Lecture number ten was entitled “Fire on the Ice”. It covered the role that politics have played on the Great Plains, such things as voting patterns, different parties that have gained and lost popularity and even some unique forms of protest. There were a couple of things that I found interesting about the lecture, the first one is how people from North Dakota change their preferred party depending on the level of government. When you start to question why you can really see how it is to the benefit of the people in the state. With the mixing of the different parties on the different levels it allows the people to pay less taxes overall, but at the same time get more national funding. The thing that I found the most interesting though is the thought of there being an measurable amount of support for the socialist party on the Great Plains. I find this interesting because now days people seem to instantly attach that label in a negative way to any politician that strays to far to the left wing side of politics. It's weird thinking about it because it wasn't all that long ago that the Socialist party had more support than current alternative parties have. I guess the last thing that I will touch on in this response is the story of Gordon Kahl. I find it interesting that many times when a famous or notable person dies there always seems to be some people jumping into the news claiming the whole thing is a conspiracy theory, like Jimmy Hoffa is buried at the Meadowlands or the Grassy Knoll. You have to figure odds are at least a couple of them are true no matter how far fetched some of them seem and it doesn't matter if you believe any of them or not. You have to at least respect the staying power of many of them.