You know, I just realized how many errant Google hits that title is going to bring. Creepy.
This will just break Neil's heart, as he does see me as a champion of fighting regionalism, but this CNN piece (from over at Atrios) is the sort of thing that, Jesus H*. Christ on a crutch, gives me a headache. They send a reporter to literally Middle America, and surprise, discover that they don't much care for them Hollywood movies. Suuuurrr-prise!
But one chunk of this report, to me, is symptomatic of a larger issue that grinds my molars.
ANDERSON: We stopped by the Lebanon [Kansas -- ed.] hotspot, Ladow's Market, where one local told us Hollywood just can't relate to a farming way of life.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They've never been back in here to know what it's like to actually have to make a living doing this.
You know what, Unidentified Male? You're right. I don't know what it's like to have to make a living farming. NOBODY DOES.
For chrissake, only 17% of Americans live in rural settings anymore. Only 2 million of those people work on farms or ranches (USDA figures). Hell, only ten percent of the average farm family's income even comes from farming anymore (did you know that? I didn't. Funky). The median age of the United States is 37. I am more than willing to point out that the agriculture industry is a crucial, nay vital part of the American economic infrastructure generating a sizable amount of the GDP. But why in the name of John Deere's Blood-Soaked Wood-Chipper Gears, every time I hear a news report on what "real Americans" think do I wind up watching some farmer in their fifties and sixties bitch as they survey the blasted plains landscape behind them, and not only that, somehow their cultural observations are assumed to have more relevance than anyone else's?
This is only half-rant. The honest question is, what in the American character keeps us returning to this completely false self-image? Seriously, how did we get to a point where this report may as well have started: "Hi there, Carol, we're about to talk to people twenty years older than the average American living a lifestyle less than one in five average Americans live ... to find out what the average American thinks" and somehow nobody blinks an eye?
There are four times as many Americans living in urban than rural areas. There are four times as many people sucking back coffee in New York city alone than make a living farming. According to the Burea of Labor, there are just as many people employed in Architecture and Engineering as farming, hell, 3 million people working in Computer and Mathematical jobs. But when one of these "What does America think about culture" pieces comes on, do I ever see a mid-30's software engineer onscreen bitching about having to download BitTorrents of "The IT Crowd"? Fuck and no.
Four million people in the US play World of Warcraft. And yet, do I ever hear:
ANDERSON: We stopped by the gates of Ogrimmar in Durotar, on the east coast of Kalimdor, where one local told us Hollywood just can't relate to the level-grinding life.
UNIDENTIFIED ORC: They've never been back here, questing Razormane or Drygulch Ravine, y'know ... or farming for Peacebloom and Silverleaf. They're out of touch.
No. No I do not.
This is not Fuck the South, or for that matter a betrayal of issues I raise in "Ain't" -- that essay is about understanding crowd dynamics and communication in any context, not just rural (althogh many people mistake it for that). This is a cultural/economic issue, not a geographic one, athough there are geographic factors.
The rural life, specifically, the agricultural industry, is a massive, important part of our nation's economic well-being. And yes, yes, I've read Kunstler's Long Emergency, and I know that one catastrophic afternoon in the near future, I will rue the day my grandfather gave up the sod to become a cop in the New World. For some people the rural life is an incredibly rewarding way of life. They should be very proud of the fact they have held on to this great tradition of commerce and, one might argue service, in the face of corporate farming. But that life is not holy, it does not bless one with special insight into the intent of the Framers of the goddam Consitution or what America "should" be like. Have I lost some sort of sacred connection with the land? Maybe. But the last time I checked, the land was dirt, same dirt as the rest of the world, and several generations of my family went broke farming other people's dirt, interrupted only when easily annoyed Englishmenwould occassionally show up and burn all their shit down. Pardon me for enjoying my goddam latte.
Hell, I grew up in Massachusetts, and we didn't go around nodding and saying "This is the very birthplace of America both geographically and ideologically, those idiots in Kansas have no idea what being a real American is, like we Commonwealth bastards." One would be considered insane. Whatever connection people in rural America have to the "idea" of America is the exact same as mine -- the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. They are public documents, accessible by all (well, for now), and last time I checked the versions printed in textbooks in Kansas didn't have special magical ink and secret clauses not included in the versions handed out in the Northeast urban great city of Philadelphia where, if we remember, the damn things were actually written.
To be clear, I have not shied away from calling some of my fellow Americans "fuckwits". But that's because of what they say and do, not because of where they live. I believe in the democratic principles of idiocy. This is a nation of self-made people, where you know a man by his actions. Just, sometimes, those actions prove him a fuckwit. Sorry.
I am just, I guess, well and truly tired of being told what "Middle America" wants, when Middle America is my age and lives in a goddam city, just like I have for my entire life.
(* The H stands for "haploid", by the way)
85 comments:
Well struck, sir. Well struck.
Rob
Having lived out in the backwoods of Kentucky and Indiana for some time, I have to say, farmers' politics are about as radical as those at Burning Man, but in the opposite direction.
Never mind the abortion billboards.
Never mind the "Fags don't belong in the military" billboards.
What got me were the "Get the US out of the UN" billboards. In areas where you would have to drive for a solid hour to get to the nearest stop light.
I mean, if that's middle America, at least we're more globally conscious than the "ugly American" stereotype would have one believe.
Seems to me the "Middle America" meme is really just an American version of the romanticized rural and/or pastoral life that seems inevitably to plague urban societies generally. (Witness Horace's famous "In Rome you long for the country" quote from the Satires... though I suppose in some contexts in modern North America the second part of that quote would have to be changed to something like "in the country, you bitch about the distant city to the cameras.") Stands to reason, I suppose, that hyper-urbanized modern societies should be particularly susceptible to the "rural everyman" meme.
It manifests in different ways, of course. Canada, for instance, doesn't have as much of a journalistic or political tradition of using / abusing a "heartland" as a stand-in for the "real" nation, but the "rural everyman" is still very much present: the country has a whole battery of cultural institutions dedicated to churning out renditions of a romantic prairie homesteader past, or depictions of the rural Maritimes and outports in Newfoundland, in the apparent conviction that these things represent the true Canuck soul. (That's not to tar all representations of the Canadian rural with the same brush, mind you -- I was a big "North of 60" fan and am an equally big "Corner Gas" fan today -- but it's certainly there, and especially so in the publishing industry.)
There's an edge of bitterness to the whole exercise in today's circumstances, because a lot of rural people -- not without reason -- think of themselves as being forgotten and dismissed by the rest of society despite the scale and importance of their contribution to it. I know very few people who are really conversant with the depradations of agribusiness in rural North America or who would be able to construct a coherent picture of whether the decline of family farm is as inevitable as it's often imagined to be. And modern transportation networks make it possible for the urban to be disconnected from the hinterland to an amazing degree; I live in a region whose rural population suffered through three years of severe drought without the bulk of the people in a city a few klicks' distance away even really noticing, or caring.
And of course, the political exploitation of rural sentiment by gerrymandering demagogues creates, in its turn, an edge of resentment from the urban side of things. If there's something that distinguishes America, I'd say it's probably the scale and verve of this exploitation -- an environment in which the partisan mouthpieces of the organized right constantly stoke rural fear, discontentment and paranoia and serve up convenient scapegoats, while the media unwittingly reinforces that paranoia with the occasionally patronizing "rural everyman" exploitation of Flyover Country.
i always thought the "h" stood for horatio . . . but spot on again, i link to your "i wish hollywood was that organized" all the time when i see stupid shit out there about it. i live out in the country, but that's just me. i prefer my critters to most people and i wouldn't even dream of trying to make my little spot o' dirt do anything like pay the bills and stuff. waaaaaay too much work with too uncertain profit. i'm with you, out here in the sticks we don't think of ourselves as "middle america." that's where we go when we have to buy serious supplies like drinkable coffee and smuggled cigars. while media dufusses (or is the plural of dufus dufai?) are sweating over the oscars the real entertainment professionals are going to be checking the latest returns on medea's latest flick (which is killin')
p.s. most of the farmers i know out here make more money selling their water rights to l.a. and san diego than they do from actually planting stuff. when they do plant it's alfalfa for pretend ranchers like me.
I heart LA more than 99% of the people I know in the city. But I'll be the first to admit that this is not the real world in any way, shape, or form. This is Crazy Town with a captial CRAZY. Still, god bless it.
Extremely well-observed, well-put, and extremely goddamned funny.
very funny and spot on, and I grew up on farmland in Iowa.
OK, the WoW reference (and interview dialogue) actually made me laugh out loud.
Okay, fess up, John, that started as a rant about the difficulties of leveling up in Warcraft.
:)
The "H" stands for "Hallowed".
Remember the Lord's Prayer?
"Our Father, who art in heaven, Hallowed be thy middle name..."
I don't exactly see you as a fighter against regionalism, John. It's that I see you as someone who's entirely aware of how powerful it is. Much of the "Learn to Say Ain't" is about the necessity of appeasing your audience's regionalist prejudices.
One thing you've pointed out here is that there's a powerful image of the "real American" being someone not from a Northeastern city. It's someone from a small town, perhaps in the Midwest.
This is part of the reason why presidential candidates who can say ain't are better off. If you can convince the media that you're the kind of guy who small-town "Real Americans" will love, they'll pitch you as the candidate for Small Town Real Americans. And this is of great use in winning those folks' votes.
But you don't only win the votes of the folks in small towns. You also win the votes of the people who identify with Small Town Real Americans. The CNN piece you're describing is premised on a large number of people identifying in exactly this way, and I think this is probably right. (Only people as perceptive as John Rogers know this is bullshit, but there's not a whole lot of them, which is why this blog post is interesting.) Even those who have moved to the city, or who never had any real connection to small towns identify with the STRA's much more than the STRAs identify with them.
(I'm thinking that I might make an post for Ezra's site out of some of this material. In any case, you heard it here first.)
By the way, Dr. Slack -- nicely put.
Good lord. Nevermind your wife. Can I marry you next?
I don't get it. Isn't the most award-nominated movie of this year about farmhands? A love story set in rural America?
What do these guys want?
I think a few of things should be pointed out.
1) The statistics KFM referred to are very subjective. The 17% statistic is the result of redefining what "urban" means.
2) Cities are vastly over-represented in the media. Even if you accept the statistics KFM used, 49 million rural people is a heck of a lot of people who get next to zero media coverage except from what KFM is complaining about.
3) Quite a few city dwellers' parents and grandparents lived outside of urban areas.
4) If anything, older people are under-represented in the media and younger people are over-represented.
5) When dealing with cultural issues, asking older people is reasonable. In general, the longer something is shared part of a culture, the more important it becomes in cultural terms.
It's for just that reason that the Great Wall of China is a bigger part of cultural discussions than the 6 million square foot mall, Golden Resources, in Beijing is. Golden Resources is the biggest mall in the world. Far more people go there in a given day than the great wall. Does that mean it should be the more important "cultural" location to represent China? No. History and tradition are far more important to culture than sheer numbers are.
Well, all stats are subjective. I thought the US Census Bureau's definition of "rural" was a good benchmark, but even fogging this -- if you smear the definition of "rural", you're also smearing the cultural context with which these comparisons are usually made. As soon as you say that one also has to inclide, say, the lightly populated ex-urbs in "rural", you even more so take away the cultural relevance of the farmers/true rurals as benchmarks. Then they're a subset of a minority, not just a minority.
As for your definition of what's culturally relevant, I have to flat out disagree with you. The Great Wall of China is historically relevant, but it affects Chinese society, the lives of the average Chinese citizen, the evolution of Chinese society, not a wit. The confusion between history and culture is not uncommon, and I'd dare say fairly new. We're using "culture" in two different contexts, you're specifically using it in the adjectival sense, that is, linking "value" with "culture". It's semiotic-licious!
Again, there's a big difference between "representation in the media" and cultural significance. I don't think you'd argue that, say, gangster rappers, are highly over-represented in the media. But if we were to ask the average aAmerican what was more representative of the "real values" of America, they'd point to the cowboys, small town joys and mountains any day of the week. Volume is not equal to mass. What we're discussing, indeed is analagous to cultural density.
I don't want to turn this into an older-person/younger-person debate, as I more intended on pointing out the mistake of that cultural density. I would however note that although older people may be under-represented in the media (and even that's a bit tricky), they carry enormous weight in defining what our culture is, or at least how it's perceived. Our number one television network is CBS, built on the viewing habits of the older American. You can point to the "failure" of the WB and UPN as a sign of the futility of only marketing to the younger audience.
Indeed, there are many more markers to show that societally this particular rural cultural identity affects America in other ways than just puff pieces. Why the hell are the Presidential primaries still started with Iowa and New Hampshire -- in particular the caucases of Iowa, where the ability to rope lifelong party affiliates into the right corner of the high-school gym is somehow indicative of the worth of a national candidate. Why the hell have our last presidents been from the South -- because the South seems congenitally incapable of even considering a candidate not from that region, while the urban areas seem comfortable with ceding the point. NASCAR is the biggest sport in the nation. Great. I don't like it. I also don;t like basketball, preferring baseball over it. Yet my disdain for NASCAR would mark me as a culturalelitist among a fair chunk of this country's population, and certianly a majority of this country's media. There are about twenty million people who hunt in the US -- a pretty big number, but certainly way less than %10 of the population. Yet having at least one candidate who can heave a twelve guage around in your Presidential one-two seems to carry a decent amount of weight.
Because those values indicate (perceived) "real" American values. We call it the "Heartland" for a reason, not just geographic.
In short, I'm not commenting on the cultural relevance of that group, I'm complaining about the default assumption of higher value/approval associated with the cultural beliefs of that group. Why the cultural standards of a minority are somehow is more relevant than the cultural standards of the majority of the country by the merit of some sort of emotional baggage is something I think is actively destructive in society. Honoring the past and valued members of our society is one thing. Clinging to them is another.
I am so very sick of the whole idea that, somehow, farmers are cleaner, more pure of heart, than the rest of us.
This is part of how we are convinced that Farm Subsidies are a good thing.
I'm telling you, I'll get behind paying farmers not to farm the moment someone will pay me (an Oracle DBA) to no longer be a DBA.
Obviously, the farm subsidy topic is more complicated than this, given that the mega-farms seem to not enjoy following basic health guidelines, and other issues, but I seriously doubt we'd be approaching this problem so ass-backwards if we didn't revere these 'simple folk' so much. I frickin' hate these subsidies. They don't heal the wound, just keep putting band-aids on it. Worse, the wound is already infected.
(btw, I also grew up in massachusetts, and I don't recall an attitude of priviledge based on being one of the 13 colonies)
Though there is plenty to be said for the manipulative powers of corporations and governments, the agrarian mythos is one that is deep in the human soul/psyche/what-have-you. It is as much a neuroses as trying to find "true love" and goes back to our greatest poets writing pastorals in which unlearned shepherds elucidate on profound things in iambic pentameter.
What's important is to know what images are important to us (the cowboy is one undergoing a change) and how they are manipulated so as to manipulate us.
I recently learned that the official term for this is "pastoralism."
I think the fact that there is an official term for this doubles how troubling it all is
"We're using "culture" in two different contexts"
Yep. You nailed it on the head.
I've wondered this for a long time. The fetishization of Midwest farmers is very like the fetishization of Black Forest farmers in pre-war Germany. There are a number of advantages to fighting out the culture wars in Nebraska and Wyoming. One is that in these sparse places, with very few people, it's easier to make a splash, to sway a bunch of people, and make it look like a huge trend or political movement. Another is that if you demonize the working majority, you weaken their political presence.
I live in Santa Cruz County, in California. On the USDA map Mark references, we've been metropolitan for a long time. We have metropolitan costs of living, metropolitan congestion, and so on, however: according to Medicare, we're rural, which means that our doctors get paid a fraction of what doctors get paid in urban areas . . . this despite being one of the five least affordable communities in the nation. But: when it comes to politics, and the culture wars, we get the same treatment that California gets -- we're out there, we're not representative. We surely are not represented proportionately: in the House, we are represented at a fraction of the rate of less populous states.
It stinks, bacisally. The whole manipulative, toxic thing, in all its nasty facets.
This is a genius piece, and I'm going to link it and send it to all my friends (and former guildies). But I think you're wrong in one respect. I *do* think farming confers holiness (and I am an atheist) -- or perhaps, better put, wholiness.
I'm not going to argue that it's the kind of holiness which gives 4H members more rights in this country than others, or more important opinions, but I think it's the kind of thing everyone needs to be aware they're missing. The knowledge of how to prepare food has been made completely specialized and handed off to a tiny number of people -- agriculturalists, really, not "farmers" in the sense that people used to be farmers, so it's not really right to call them that -- and removed from the concerns of the rest of us. As a couple people here have said that's a serious problem. I spent a while saving seeds from heirloom tomatoes in college to prepare for next year's crop, and was reminded by my supervisor that most fruit and vegetables we eat (if we eat them at all!) are grown from sterile hybrid seeds, so we can't save them to grow our own food next year even if we did know how.
We really don't know how to support ourselves. We've lost that knowledge. Basically, we're cyborgs, dependent on the sorting and picking machines and the laboratory process of developing new strains of rice and wheat for our subsistence. At this point we're simply not individually sustainable beings without those machines and practices, and the engineering/genetics knowledge that built them.
This means a couple of things: first, we really DO need to acknowledge that what lies at the heart of our society is not the "simple farmers who provide us with nourishment," because they don't really impact most of our lives, but rather the over-educated, brainy, scientifically-trained engineers at Monsanto and John Deere. And we should start listening to them for "average opinions." (mostly.)
Second, as a few people said, we're fucked if everything falls into chaos, because most of us don't know how to feed ourselves. In such a scenario, suddenly even your grandma growing tomatoes in her back garden WILL become a centrally important figure in society, because she has at least part of this knowledge, and probably you don't.
They are public documents, accessible by all (well, for now), and last time I checked the versions printed in textbooks in Kansas didn't have special magical ink and secret clauses not included in the versions handed out in the Northeast urban great city of Philadelphia where, if we remember, the damn things were actually written.
Well as all readers of Warren Ellis' Crooked little vein know there is an Other Constitution:
“This is a secret document privately authored by several of the Founders. It details the real intent of their design of American society, and twenty-three Invisible Amendments to be read and adhered to only by the presidents, vice-presidents and chiefs of staff.
“It is a small, handwritten volume reputedly bound in the skin of the extraterrestrial entity that plagued Benjamin Franklin...On the seventh night he got right up and killed the little bastard with one punch.”
...
“The book binding is weighted with meteor fragments. The design is such that the sound of the book being opened onto a table has infrasonic content, too low for human hearing. The book briefly vibrates at eighteen hertz, which is the resonant frequency of the human eyeball.”
... “Do you understand, son? Do you see? It’s a book that forces you to read it. It prepares your eye for input.”
Although it ain't on Kansas anymore!
Does gold farming count as farming?
It's the same in Australia. Our national persona is of the bronzed Aussie bushman -yet we're one of the most urbanized countries in the world and have an obesity epidemic.
Go figure.
While I appreciate the observation expressed in the article, the rest strikes me as pretty stupid. Why does World of Warcraft come into this comparison at all? Do you realize the difference between the role that farming has to a region where farmers have traditionally been (and often still are) the defining group of an area's community and the role that World of Warcraft has to most people who play it?
There are probably more people drinking beer and watching football at home regularly than there are farmers, yet they are rarely depicted as a typical American in popular political shows. So what? Many people watch {your favourite soap opera here}; so what? Mere popularity does not make something important. You make a valid and important point when you point out how many people work in, say, Engineering or Architecture, but your article veers off any serious track once you start comparing this to the number of World of Warcraft players (it reminds me very much of people grabbing media attention by throwing around Second Life user-base estimates, as if playing Second Life were a political act as opposed to a pastime). Why should the particular computer games people play be a defining aspect of their life, even the _politics of an entire country_? Is problems we have with BitTorrent really what we want our heads of state to be concerned about when creating the policies that direct our nation?
(No, I'm not saying that the interests of farmers should be our top interest either, and I very much disapprove of the ways the current subsidies subvert a healthy market. But just because they aren't right, randomly choosing some other group of people (or rather, choosing one that is sure to garner you all the attention you could want within the Blogosphere) doesn't make you right either. I believe your posts would have a larger impact if you dropped the tangential hyperbole, amusing as it is, and stuck to the meaningful and important comparisons.)
An average 37 years old New Yorker, presumbaly a prefessional, has, somehow, less political influence than "an average" american described - there are better things in life to spend your time than participate in staw polls.
I read the enlightened comments of the author. I also happened to notice the comments of "An Oracle DBA". Funny, I'm a DBA too. One who grew up on a farm.
The author is, IMHO, clueless. NYC and LA don't define America just because they've got them there theaters and transmitters. What defines America is what has been handed down person to person from generation to generation. Hollywood may wish to re-define it, and to a great extent, they've been successful. (See http://boards.askmen.com/viewtopic.php?p=475735 ) But redefinition doesn't and cannot change the truth of who and what we really are. What's right and natural will stubbornly persist, no matter how inconvenient for you NYC/LA types. Sorry.
One other little detail: Them backwoodsy hick farmers; they can sure-enough live without you. But how long can you make it without them?
Just a thought.
Lovely, lovely screed. This is the sort of rant that redeems the pablum I encounter daily in the blogosphere. I'm a screamer too, to the extent that after a particularly vitriolic attack on the "boobocracy" my friends often crack "But tell us what you REALLY think". Doesn't take much to wind me up...and I'm pleased to find someone who disapproves of stupidity and vacuousness even more than I do.
Keep up the good work and critical thinking...
While I agree with the comments concerning pastoralism that have been made by several before me, I think this kind of piece is at least partially the result that the fact that the media has failed to recognize the massive migration of Americans to cities.
There was a time when the majority of Americans lived in rural areas and were engaged in agrarian lifestyles. Or at least those around them were. The media was often chastised as being overly-centered on cities - NY and LA in particular. This was probably true. Even today, many events that occur in those cities become much bigger stories as a result of the fact that the news bureaus are centered there. This has also become true of Atlanta, due to its rising importance and the presence of CNN.
To combat the impression of urban bias, journalists were sent to talk to the "Real America" to find out what they thought about the issues. This not only provided a sense of objectivity, but snaggle-toothed farmers in overalls and John Deer hats also appealed to the pastoral idealism of the urbanites.
However, over the last generation or so, Americans have migrated to cities. Now we have the situation you so cleverly described in your essay. The media, it seems, have failed to acknowledge the fact that the face of America has changed.
Thank you for this lengthy and informative diatribe on what you think of things you see on the television.
Your post and subsequent comments on "pastoralism" are certainly thought provoking. Here are the three that leap to my mind.
First, it puts into context how I might describe my mind set, which might be called "frontierism."
I come from Alaska, and identify with the archtype of the wild settler, tamer of lands, homesteader, and mountain man.
The reality is I am a mediocre outdoorsman at best, a professional geek, who likes gourmet coffee and my lattes at 140 degrees.
I think this is important because how an individual perceives themselves is much more important in many cases then the actual reality.
*Correction* How an individual or a culture perceives is much more influential then the actual facts. As the potentially apocryphal quote says "Don't try confuse me with the facts, my mind is made up."
If people associate with a "rural" archetype, whichever one it may be, it has more weight to them then the actuality of residing in an urban environment.
Secondly, therms "rural" and "urban" seem to me somewhat of moving targets. As one poster described where he lived as being both depending on who you asked.
Third, I don't see the migration over the last 100 years from rural to urban at all surprising or even necessarily a bad thing. It started in the industrial revolution and continues today in our more and more information based society.
Primarily because farming and associated jobs are hard work. In comparison industrial, commercial, and technical jobs are generally far less rigorous on the body with greater opportunities for reward and long term advancement.
It takes a special person to look at his farm and think "I'm going to spend the next 50 years plowing that field without a pay raise, accolades, or increasing reward."
Most people, myself included, are not cut out for that life and because we have growing cities we have opportunities for them to be productive in other ways... rather then stuck on the farm.
There is also the convenience factor of goods and services found in a city. The greater the concentrations of people the greater likelihood that you can drive 5 miles (or 5 blocks) to get your latte/milk/diapers instead of 50 miles. That's mighty attractive for many people, and us urbanites don't even realize it until you don't have it any more. (Now that I am out Alaska for school I have to drive almost 20 miles to Costco! The AGONY!)
There is more political power to be gained in Middle America. Low population density, but equal votes in the all powerful senate. It's so much easier to mis-inform the majority when the actual number (of people) is much lower. (take, for example, Alaska) The amount of money it takes to get a midwest senator elected (using corrupt media and corrupt church leaders, etc.) is MUCH less than a NY or California one.
There is a vested interest in pandering to Middle America and keeping them ill-informed.
THEY are the bread and butter of the worlds most powerful scum.
wooo massachusetts! ya know what? since we are the birthplace of the revolution and the reason everyone else in this country doesn't have one of those annoying accents, i think we should petition cnn to exclusively interview US from now on. we started it, we get to comment on it.
obviously i'm kidding, but you're dead on that they have no right to maintain a holier than thou mantra when reveling knee deep in pig shit.
wooo massachusetts! ya know what? since we are the birthplace of the revolution and the reason everyone else in this country doesn't have one of those annoying accents, i think we should petition cnn to exclusively interview US from now on. we started it, we get to comment on it.
obviously i'm kidding, but you're dead on that they have no right to maintain a holier than thou mantra when reveling knee deep in pig shit.
If it weren't for farmers actually producing something of intrinsic value for society(or, more appropriately in the US, if it weren't for agribusiness), NO ONE WOULD BE ABLE TO PLAY WoW or any other game for that matter. If there were no farmers or crop surpluses, we'd all be spending much of our time growing enough to live.
Study some history. Specialized, non-agriculturally related careers and free time in every civilization didn't come along until food producers made a surplus for others to live off of.
And, last I checked, "WoW player" was not a career.
the versions printed in textbooks in Kansas didn't have special magical ink and secret clauses I dunno 'bout Kansas, but ours here in Wisconsin do.
Very enjoyable rant. Moves towards the continuing argument regarding population densities in, say, states like New York, California, and Illinois as compared to states like Kansas, Iowa, and Montana--yet all states get the same number of senators, and Iowa gets an early primary every election cycle.
Should the small-population (aka rural) states be penalized in the Senate? Yes, they should. I understand the perceived logic behind the Senate structure at the time it was created, but we aren't the same country any longer; we're a capitalist society playing in a global market. The farmers who want us out of the UN not only don't want us playing in that market, they would like us to ban it entirely.
To people like homespun geek, who ask, "Them backwoodsy hick farmers; they can sure-enough live without you. But how long can you make it without them?" my reply is that we can live quite well without them, thank you, sir. We'll just import all our produce (more affordably) from abroad, stop paying farm subsidies, and eat less beef (and, resultingly, live healthier, pay less taxes, and stop poisoning our ground water supply with hormones and high-yield fertilizer) (that last point being the most important, actually, given how scarce clean water is going to be in a very short amount of time).
The same goes for you Oracle DBA's out there too. There are many extremely talented Oracle DBA's in India, China, and Hong Kong who'd be happy to do your job for a lot less (and likely spend far less of their time blogging and getting coffee). Call it outsourcing if you want, but it's global commerce, and US companies know a good deal when they see one. How long before Oracle DBA's get their own subsidies? I'm serious. If it's good for the farmer, why not for the techie?
All of that said, John's point about what an average American really is in this day and age, is 100% valid (though I also don't get the relevancy (aside from comedic) of the WoW comparison either--WoW is a hobby; farming is a livelihood). What American farmers think shouldn't matter to Hollywood (if they want to keep making money, anyway), and it shouldn't matter to most any of the rest of us, for that matter. Of course these farmers want the US out of the UN--the less we engage in the global marketplace, the better for them. And that is 100% backwards thinking. But as long as the media and politicians continue to regard that kind of thinking with any seriousness, we're going to continue, as a country, to lag behind globally.
Reminds of the "energy independence" myth. It's impossible, and it's less and less possible the more isolationist we become (unless we pull a Logan's Run on society and start severely decreasing population growth in the US) (which is also impossible, given our current constitution--I note it only to show the extent to which we'd have to go to in order to have even a remote shot at energy independence).
Now I am ranting. I apologize.
Keep up the good work, John.
The idea that people in the "Heartland" somehow are more valuable than the rest of the country has been bothering me for a while.
Aside from meth, meat and military recruits - what is the 'heartland' contributing anyway that's so valuable?
Personally, I can't think of anything, and would prefer to have a lot less of the first three anyhow. Ok, sure there's a lot of corn for hogs, and a few vegetables for human consumption. But it's such a small part of the overall effort that we could easily just ship it in from Chili.
And lets admit this right up front - most people living in the
'heartland' aren't farmers. They're working at the local hairdresser, truck stop, waffle house or meth lab.
And just as working at a waffle house or meth lab fails to qualify for "putting you more in touch with nature", nor does working at a corporate pig farm put you in touch with your food supply. I hope.
So, with all of the above in mind I move to upgrade our representative subculture to one that has a little more going for it, like urban texas etheopian/italian restaurateurs. Or korean sushi/donut store owners. Or blind, dwarf jugglers. Ok, at this point I think the list of potential upgrades is really quite open.
Buck
Um, I agree with most of your analysis...
But who's going to feed our asses?
The agribusinesses that forced all the rest off their farms in the first place.
So: wordswordswords: If our corporate masters offshore everything to people more willing to slave cheaply for them, how exactly are we going to pay for all the imports you so blithely suggest will be our salvation?
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the versions printed in textbooks in Kansas didn't have special magical ink and secret clauses
Having lived in Kansas all my life, considering the evolution shitstorm and the abortion wars, I would have to say yes, the textbooks must have those.
This fetishism of the farmer isn't new. Jefferson was a big buyer into it. Louis the Sun King's court would have pastoral affairs where courtiers dressed up as folksy shepherdesses, etc. I do have to disagree, though, with your statement about it not being a holy relationship--it is. Being able to grow something and to feed others--Dude, that's like being God. Or a woman.
Fuck Monsanto anyway.
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Banjo Patterson, a city based lawyer, wrote many of Australia's defining bush (rural) stories about a century ago. His famous "Clancy of the Overflow" was even set as the imaginings of a city clerk.
One reason traditional-style farmers tend to get idealised is that a stereotypical farm is a "society in miniature". It is a simple, self-sufficient unit whose participants know the basics of everything. We tend to look for such generalist understanding in leaders.
Life on the farm is also often seen as being tougher than life in town. The resilience required to live there also improves the authority of the farmer.
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