My Real America
There was quite a bit of talk in the recent election about "real America." How some places in this county were the "real America" while other parts, presumably, were not. Of course, if I wanted to be a real bitch, I could point out that, in fact, Canada is part of "real America", as is Mexico, since we're all part of North America and, in fact, our country is actually known as the United States. But that might be considered splitting hairs.
I know to what the speakers referred when talking about "real America." Real America is small towns surrounded by acres of farmland. Huge high school football fields flooded with lights in the middle of pitch-black prarie. Real America is mom-and-pop grocery stores and going to the post office to pick up your mail instead of having it delivered to your doorstep like they do in the city. Real America is where people stop and help you change your tire when you're stranded on the side of the road. Or where they will give you directions when you're lost.
When politicians talk to crowds about "real America," what they're really trying to do is create fear. Fear of the "other." They know that country mice from small towns across the flyover don't know what goes on in the coastal cities. In many cases, they don't care. Their children may move there, along with the slightly swishy music teacher from the high school, but they themselves don't need to. Or want to.
And when they do visit, go someplace like New York? It might as well be another country. It might as well be Paris, without the weird tower and the Mona Lisa. The people are all in a hurry and don't talk to you and no one will give you directions and just what is the hurry, anyway!? The food's expensive and the people are rude and it is too noisy and smelly. And that woman at the restaurant where you had lunch made fun of my midwestern tourist tennis shoes loud enough for you to hear.
And people from the cities feel the same when going into the flyover. The great cultural wasteland. Where people still wear fanny packs and shop at Wal-Mart and will ask the most personal questions. And they keep saying hello, which freaks you out to no end. There's no Bravo on cable, only the Big Ten network. Everything closes at 9, except the country bar at the county line, and no one serves booze on Sunday. How do people live like this?!
When politicians try to tell us that they're happy to be amoung "real Americans, what they're really trying to do is to turn us against each other. They want to divide and conquer. They want us to forget that we're all in this together. They want us to hate and fear each other, even though we use the same forms to pay taxes, carry the same passports, watch the same television shows, read the same books, fly the same airlines, have the same rights to vote and check out library books and all drive on the same side of the road.
We're all a part of this. "From sea to shining sea" is how the song goes, and it isn't wrong. New York City and Los Angeles is just as much a part of all of us as Paducah, Kentucky. We're all invested in this great American experience, for better and for worse. Nothing is more illustrative of this now than the mortgage crisis, which begat the credit crisis, which begat the failure of the Big Three, which could begat the loss of three million jobs in this country. Three million? Can you imagine?
And when I read a story in a book about how, after 9/11, when people in a certain neighborhood in New York found out that rescue workers really kinda needed toothpaste because they weren't getting to go home very much? That people in that neighborhood bought out toothpaste from every corner shop and bodega around? Until the only toothpaste left was Sensodyne? And then someone bought that out? That they were buying that toothpaste for workers from all over the country?
Even though I live in the flyover, those rescuers and the people who bought them toothpaste are just as much real Americans as I can ever hope to be.
I know to what the speakers referred when talking about "real America." Real America is small towns surrounded by acres of farmland. Huge high school football fields flooded with lights in the middle of pitch-black prarie. Real America is mom-and-pop grocery stores and going to the post office to pick up your mail instead of having it delivered to your doorstep like they do in the city. Real America is where people stop and help you change your tire when you're stranded on the side of the road. Or where they will give you directions when you're lost.
When politicians talk to crowds about "real America," what they're really trying to do is create fear. Fear of the "other." They know that country mice from small towns across the flyover don't know what goes on in the coastal cities. In many cases, they don't care. Their children may move there, along with the slightly swishy music teacher from the high school, but they themselves don't need to. Or want to.
And when they do visit, go someplace like New York? It might as well be another country. It might as well be Paris, without the weird tower and the Mona Lisa. The people are all in a hurry and don't talk to you and no one will give you directions and just what is the hurry, anyway!? The food's expensive and the people are rude and it is too noisy and smelly. And that woman at the restaurant where you had lunch made fun of my midwestern tourist tennis shoes loud enough for you to hear.
And people from the cities feel the same when going into the flyover. The great cultural wasteland. Where people still wear fanny packs and shop at Wal-Mart and will ask the most personal questions. And they keep saying hello, which freaks you out to no end. There's no Bravo on cable, only the Big Ten network. Everything closes at 9, except the country bar at the county line, and no one serves booze on Sunday. How do people live like this?!
When politicians try to tell us that they're happy to be amoung "real Americans, what they're really trying to do is to turn us against each other. They want to divide and conquer. They want us to forget that we're all in this together. They want us to hate and fear each other, even though we use the same forms to pay taxes, carry the same passports, watch the same television shows, read the same books, fly the same airlines, have the same rights to vote and check out library books and all drive on the same side of the road.
We're all a part of this. "From sea to shining sea" is how the song goes, and it isn't wrong. New York City and Los Angeles is just as much a part of all of us as Paducah, Kentucky. We're all invested in this great American experience, for better and for worse. Nothing is more illustrative of this now than the mortgage crisis, which begat the credit crisis, which begat the failure of the Big Three, which could begat the loss of three million jobs in this country. Three million? Can you imagine?
And when I read a story in a book about how, after 9/11, when people in a certain neighborhood in New York found out that rescue workers really kinda needed toothpaste because they weren't getting to go home very much? That people in that neighborhood bought out toothpaste from every corner shop and bodega around? Until the only toothpaste left was Sensodyne? And then someone bought that out? That they were buying that toothpaste for workers from all over the country?
Even though I live in the flyover, those rescuers and the people who bought them toothpaste are just as much real Americans as I can ever hope to be.
posted by Miss Head at
9:20 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home