Anger in Flyover Country
This is a heartbreaking and terrifying article. I hope you'll read the whole thing. The essayist writes very well, about things that are foreign to many of us. He is a retired social worker now living in the rural south and working on a PhD.
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2017/01/james-f-on-hatred-in-our-divided-...
I, too, am worried by our descent into prewar hatred. I had a friend from Dubrovnik in the’80s. She was a typical Yugoslav – half Croatian, quarter Serbian, and a quarter Russian. She was full of hope, smart, pretty, and heartbreakingly naïve. If she survived the war, I’m pretty sure my friend lost what made her a beautiful human being. She haunts me. Civil wars seem implausible until they start and then they follow the devil’s logic. People like my friend tend to die in them or turn into something less than they were in order to survive.
I’m an old man now working on my doctorate through a senior citizens’ scholarship. I grew on the North-East Coast. I live in the rural South now. I know people from everywhere because I’ve been around a long time. Comfortable people from the cities, Democrat or Republican, want to hit someone, hard… but they have by and large never worn a uniform or had a gun pointed at their heads. They’re frustrated which makes sense but they don’t know when a bloody fight is coming. You can smell it coming like folks down here can smell a tornado or like mothers smell death on its way and snatch their children off the front porch. Here in Flyover Country things are bad, really bad. I recently visited family in Northern California. Things were pretty nice. Not opulent by any means but the shelves were stocked. Security guards in Target let the kids play around. Around here – not so much. Not so much as a Target. We have long lines, empty shelves, and the kids, black and white, always seem aware that they’re not safe. Comfortable people in cities worry about reproductive health care. We worry about getting a four-dollar antibiotic for pneumonia at Wal-Mart without having to spend several hundred bucks for the prescription (real life experience with insurance). Our mean income is about a quarter of Northern California’s. Housing is cheaper but it’s not cheap and it’s a lot worse housing. Food and utilities are a lot more expensive. Everything including food and medicine is taxed. We’re dying here, slowly perhaps but we’re dying none the less.
Hatred can so easily and unexpectedly explode out of control.
Comments
Good article.
The people who are buying into the propaganda about Russia interfering with the election and hacking the voting machines have real consequences that people aren't thinking of.
Remember when Hillary lost the election she blamed Comey for letting congress know that he had found huma Abedin's emails on her husband's laptop.
All he did was to inform congress about that.
It was a member of congress who leaked the information.
But now she is also blaming Russia, especially Putin.
There are a lot of diaries on DK and articles everywhere that is saying that Russia messed with the election but no proof has been shown to the American people who should be asking for it.
Many of those same people didn't believe that Saddam had WMDs so why are they believing the CIA now?
The republicans didn't hamstring his administration, he went along with what they wanted just like Clinton did when he passed legislation that the republicans couldn't.
And now we're seeing the democrats roll over and play dead by confirming people who shouldn't even be confirmed as dog catchers.
The doomsday clock has moved and we are closer to nuclear mutually assured distraction then we ever had.
And even before the election was settled, this country and NATO have been putting troops into countries that surround Russia.
Now they are getting people to get behind them in case they do start that war.
Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.
Obama's failure to support Wisconsin's unions
It's minor, compared to what the essayist is talking about, but I was one of those people standing out in the snow that cold winter, lunch hours, evenings, and weekends, singing We Shall Overcome at least once. But we didn't. Getting donated coffee and pizza slices sometimes (some from Egypt's Arab Spring before it was crushed, too). Jesse Jackson came several times, and some of the big unions were always there. Some police unions joined us. A lovely feeling among us all. We still had hope then. We were peaceful and polite. Silly us.
No Obama. Not even a word, though I heard him in person, on Labor Day before his election, promise to put on his walking shoes and join us. We worked so hard to get him elected. I consider him responsible for the Republican sweep in 2010 that brought us Walker and the census/redistricting, too - his first two years were so disastrous, and his contempt for other Democrats was so clear. Inadequate as they were. Steadily downhill since then.
laughible, the child's tantrum
Impeachment Party is what the United States needs to make a reality show of drumming poticians out of office, for fun and for goodness sakes.
Fighting for democratic principles,... well, since forever