For this piece, I will go into high pundit mode and extract meaningful insights about the state of the union from anecdotal evidence obtained from drive-by interactions with real people. In case you haven’t read between the lines of my recent posts, I have been on a trip to the nation's heartland.
One of the great things about high punditry is that I don’t have to be structurally original, or even interesting, and I can say what I really think. None of that chuckling shit. No rambling intro. No obscure meaning. No car chases or explosions. No paragraphs with 500 commas. Just straight talk from the commanding heights of punditry.
Since I have the freedom to be unoriginal, I’ll use the old “glance at the headlines” structure to make my insightful observations concerning the beliefs of millions of people based on a few persoal anecdotes. This is not entirely a cheap literary trick. Although I am revising this writing, I really did start by glancing at the headlines and realizing that they were representative of what people were talking about out in the heartland. We east coast journalists in our brownstones and lofts tend to forget that there are real people leading nuanced lives somewhere inside those headlines. Most of the real caricatures are either politicians or journalists, not just angry losers who obsessively listen to hate radio and watch Fox News.
Gas prices about to take spring jump
I had to laugh like hell when I read that. In the coming paragraphs I will discuss a number of headlines and how they relate to any number of individuals, but every single person I interviewed on my travels bitched about the price of gas.
Everyone in the heartland drives. People drive three blocks to the grocery for a pack of cigarettes. They drive to their neighbor's. Quite a few of them drive 50 miles, or even twice that, a day to their jobs and back. And most of them drive gas guzzling pickup trucks or SUV's.
The one extreme was this: I was interviewing a bunch of blue collar types over a six pack or two of lite beer. They were, like everybody else, bitching about the price of gas. Then someone made a snide comment about how we went to all that trouble to invade Iraq and didn’t even get the cheap gas we were promised. How’s that war working out otherwise, I asked. They just snorted in their beer.
On the other extreme, during a long series of interviews with a Republican party activist, he volunteered the explanation that gas would be under $1 a gallon if they’d only let us drill in the national parks. I had to laugh like hell again and snorted in my beer to boot. If that’s all they got for the party line these days, the party’s in a hell of a lot of trouble.
But those are just the extremes. Everybody else just bitched. Price a gas went up 5 cents overnight. Yep. Fucking shit. Yep.
From my high pundit perch, I pronounce that the Republicans are in deep shit over the price of gas.
163rd alerted for new tour
Eight U.S., four British soldiers killed
Honor guards now meet the slain
In an about-face by the U.S. government four years into the war in Iraq, America’s fallen troops are being brought back to their families about charter jets instead of ordinary commercial flights, and the caskets are being met by honor guards in white gloves instead of baggage handlers with forklifts. That, according to the newspaper.
One of my family's friends joined the Marines and is going to Iraq. He had a little time off after boot camp. He's a nice kid, much nicer than me. He saw that my mom's tv was getting old and he bought her a new one. I interviewed many of his family and friends and pparently everyone who knows him loves him. And they are a flag waving bunch, not a college degree among them. And they don't drink lattes. They prefer their coffee weak, with lots of sugar. And no wine, red or white. Lite beer or a Jack and Coke on special occasions. Yet to a person they were furious that he had joined the military. They thought he was an idiot. How could he be so fucking stupid? That's the question I heard again and again as people sadly shook their heads. If a Democrat went on tv and talked like those people, he or she would be apologizing profusely for several news cycles. But these people of the heartland aren't going to be apologizing to anyone.
Why did they think it was so stupid for a nice young kid to go to Iraq? Two reasons.
One, the obvious, that he could get himself killed or fucked up for life in a stupid war that wasn't doing any good for anybody. You can fool them for awhile, but they don't stay fooled indefinitely, and when they realize they were fooled, they don't look kindly on th e assholes that fooled them. Nobody believes a word the government or tv tells them about Iraq anymore.
Two, they felt the boy was stupid for believing the recruiter's lies. Those are their words, not mine. These people generally aren't very good at getting their facts straight, so this isn't about facts. I don't know whether the recruiter lied to the boy or not. They are, however, sincere in their beliefs, and for the most part, it's their beliefs they act on. Facts be damned.
The boy, they said, was promised an education and career in electronics. He's getting four weeks training as a radio operator and will be radio operating on convoys in Iraq. I guess it's like Vietnam where they put the fresh meat on the most dangerous missions. The theory being that if you are going to die in hell, it's better to get it over with quickly. You really have to shake your head and admire those boys. What a world it might be if their best instincts were used for good instead of murder. Unfortunately, this isn't that world.
Anyway, from my high pundit perch, I seriously intone that everyone knows that Iraq is fucking fucked and anyone who says otherwise is considered an idiot and a tool. Not by us high pundits in New York City, mind you, but by the lite beer drinkers out there on the highway in their pickup trucks. The beating muscles of the heatland. You know, real people. And women too. White.
More factory layoffs coming
Whirlpool says slump may be temporary
Hancock Fabrics closing local store
One of the first things I'm always struck by when I spend time in the heartland is the abundance of mansions. A three thousand square foot house with a two car garage on an acre of land is not at all unusual. The countryside is, in fact, scattered with them. Even in the bad neighborhoods in towns people live in sizable houses and all of these places have boats, jet skis, treadmill's, tanning beds, whirlpools, swimming pools, playgrounds, or any number of other luxuries littering their yards and garages. Of course there are plenty of apartment dwellers and trailer park residents, but for the most part you don't see too much of them. You really have to look hard.
But people I interviewed are very concerned about their ability to maintain their lifestyles. Every day there are stories in the newspaper about factories and stores closing down. Shuttered strip malls are common sights on the edge of towns. What was historically the largest employer in the area is up for sale. A Saudi-owned conglomerate is reportedly interested. Other factories have been sold to foreign companies. Many people have been laid off over the last five years. Many more have had to change jobs and take a radical pay cut in the process. The local Republican activist complained about the influx of illegal immigrants to the area and hinted that they were the cause of people's unease, but the issue never came up among working people bitching about the economy. The day may come when pickup driving Americans start fighting for those farm jobs and nursing home work, but we aren't there yet.
From the heights of high punditry, I declare that ordinary Americans are not yet there on "free" trade but are ripe for understanding. They are beginning to make some hazy connection among factors such as the price of gas, jobs moving overseas, foreign ownership, their deteriorating standard of living, and the war in Iraq, but as yet there has been no cataclysmic event that has caused them to see what's going on. They haven't quite connected the dots between the purported need for America to become more competitive and the fact that that means lower wages, fewer benefits, and environmental degradation. I think they will, but unfortunatley, since there is no political party that represents their interests, I fear they will be ripe targes for demagoguery on these issues and things will get really ugly.
Education official linked to loan probe.
Girl locked in truck bed: Mother faces neglect charge
Schools lose funds
Meth lab busted near school
Patient had rat in mouth: lawsuit
Staffing was so inadequate at a California senior center that a rat crawled into an Alzheimer’s patient’s mouth and diesd there before staff noticed, a lawsuit claims. Says the morning paper.
Health, education, government corruption, drugs, social ills – those are all common topics of conversation. Most everyone is suffering through the drawn out death of a relative or two, wondering when to put grandma in the nursing home, scheming to protect the assets. A lot of women work in crappy jobs just for the health insurance. The price of medicine is insane. Some people actually understand why the doctor prescribes them Nexium when they didn't even complain about heartburn. More will learn. High punditry suggests that people's continuing gullibility concerning the idiotic lies of the drug lobby and their political lackeys will go the way of their gullibility about our string of glorious victories in Iraq. Unfortunately, high punditry must lament the fact that people who may someday become ill are a constituency without a party, so nothing positive will come of it.
Regarding edcuation and child rearing, almost everyone has or knows teenagers who are miserable or doing poorly in school. One rural school had two kids hang themselves in one year. A lot of young girls are cutting themselves. Just about everybody drinks and takes drugs. If not, the doctors prescribe them some.
The common explanation I hear for the sorry state of our youth was that kids these days grew up without ever having heard the word "no." I think there's some truth to that. People I've interviewed out in the heartland over the years really are clueless when it comes to properly raising their children. They plead with them to do right rather than make them, then they overreact and hit or verbally abuse them when their pleading doesn't work. I was there for a week and never saw a single kid eat a single vegetable. And they really do try to give them everything they want, from candy all day long to a car when they turn sixteen. And contrary to popular belief among children, giving a kid everything he or she wants will not make them happy. Quite the contrary.
But even though these problems are the result of stupidity, or more accurately poor education, it's still sad, heartbreakingly so, to see how they suffer, both the parents and the children. And I can't help but contrast that with my own situation. I live in and around one of the most liberal environs on earth. My kids go to one of the most progressive schools on the planet and I spend a lot of time around the children of very wealthy. liberal individuals and know their parents, too. The first thing anyone would note about these children is how happy they are. Yet although their parents have the means, they do not give the kids every plaything they want and they say no to them all of the time. And needless to say, they never hit them and rarely slip into any kind of verbal abuse. They do, however, give themm all the educational opportunities they can afford. They buy them classes, travel, educational camps, after school activities and the like. And if the kid doesn't like it, too bad. But they like it.
The high pundit solemnly intones that the coming generation of severely fucked up kids from the heartland who will have little or no economic opportunity better than joining the marines will not be a happy lot as they age. Problems will ensue, particularly as they note the gap, but fail to understand its cause, between themselves and their liberal breathren in the cities.
Climate report offers bleak outlook
I walked into a supermarket with a local environmentalist I was interviewing. She writes a weekly column for the local newspaper and is subjected to a constant stream of put-downs, eye rolls and verbal abuse. A Republican city councilman was there and called out to her, "how ya gonna save the world in here?" I just had to laugh like hell.
Over lunch, she talked about how the bees were mysteriously disappearing and encouraged me to see An Inconvenient Truth. I hope Bob Somersby isn't reading this because I fear it would give him a hemmorage. She said that she could make no headway with the locals because they all had an intense hatred of Al Gore. Why, I asked. She didn't know.
She had moved there recently and was just getting the group organized. They hadn't even named it yet. She said she was leaning towards something with Gaia in the title and asked my opinion. I said that under no circumstances should any group in these parts have the name Gaia in the title. Sounds like Olde English for gay, if you asked me. I emphasized that, to have any hope of success, they would need to get the concepts of religion, patirotism and militarism in their name. I suggested Patriotic Environmentalist Warriors for Christ and Country (acronym pronounced "puke"), She was not enthused, and was not sure whether or not to be amused.
I was serious though. The problem with people like her is that they don't really want regular people to come to their meetings. They want a nice social event with like-minded friends. They will never make any political headway like that. Change will have to come from elsewhere.
And it might. The lite beer swilling masses made a few comments about climate change. They hadn't seen the movie, and didn't really know squat, but they're pretty much to the point where they'll believe anything that is the opposite of what George Bush says. And the weather has been getting weird...
As pundit on high, I profess that it's nice that some people at least try, though fat log of good it will do them. Unless someone comes up with a full sized pickup that gets 100 miles a gallon, it will be impossible to marshall the hillbillies to support an environmental crusade. An oil crusade, however, is a real possibility. They're not bothered by their belief that we invaded Iraq for cheap gas. They're bothered by the fact that gas is not cheap.
‘Living Last Supper’ adds interpretation of Bible story
Larger venues let churches reach out to masses
It’s sunday morning at Zion Evnagelical United Church of Christ, and the Rev. Bob Walker is preaching about love and devotion, or so we're told in a front page "news" story.
With all the economic problems, social ills, stupid wars, and rotten children, along with the fact that most of the "moral majority" political types have been exposed as sex fiends, drug addicts, or just pathetic excuses for human beings in general, it's not surprising that a lot of people would be searching for a way out of the mess and that preachers with collection plates would be there with some easy answers. I did find it a bit surprising, however, to see how much the newspapers have gotten on the bandwagon. There is a religion section of the paper that pretty much functions as free advertising for various churches and it seems at least one pro-Christian article is on the front page every day. The new license plate prominently features "In God we Trust and an American Flag. Most of the kids that cut themselves, I'm told, are Christians.
Kurt Vonnegut Dies
I haven't said anything The editorial pages because they have no influence whatsoever. Still, it's interesting to see what kind of momentous issues the journalistic elite and the ten or twelve people who read them are using to stroke their mighty brains and weighty consciences. On this particular day, they are concerned about the gagging of David Hicks. Hicks is the Australian gentleman who was the first terrorist to be convicted by an American military tribunal. For his terrible crimes against humanity, he was sentenced to nine months in prison, plus time served, in Australia. The only caveat was that he would be imprisoned for much longer if he accused the U.S. of torturing him during the five years we tortured him at Guantanamo.
Although no one reads that kind of shit, it is still instructive, because if they did, they would see that it was shit. How do we know that he was tortured? Easy, because the United States made him sign an affadavid agreeing not to accuse us of torturing him. Who do they think they fool with that nonsense? How stupid do they think we are? Pretty damn stupid, that's how.
So there you have it. A detailed rendering of the souls of the little people of the heartland, the people behind the headlines by the punditry on high. The Republicans are fucked. Now that you know, please go on about your business. Nothing to see here. Nothing you can do about it.
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