Why is it whenever I leave my comfy neighborhood, or any major metropolitan area for that matter, that it only takes a matter of miles before I can find the every day American that is lauded on CMT: the NASCAR watching, Budlight swilling, deer-season happy, thinks Jeff Foxworthy is a comic genius, average Joe(Dirt). Observing this trend (which is really a realization, not some developing change in our culture) I kept an eye out for it regardless of what state I passed through.
THE WHITE BETWEEN RED AND BLUE
I live in a very blue state, or so I thought. I began to see this trend in my own wealthy border state on the east coast, prime real estate (not that you can sell it), the richest state in the Union, third best schools in the nation, yadda yadda. Now Maryland is a very historically democratic state, way back when being a Democrat meant being a white southern male; it is one of the few states technically in the South that didn’t make the change over to the Regan era family value republicans with bible thumping conserveative grassroots support. No, Maryland is blue—sort of. Blue around the DC suburbs of Montgomery County (among the wealthiest in the nation), Prince George’s County (wealthiest Black majority population county in the nation), Baltimore County which hovers over Baltimore City (as blue as blue gets) happy for the financial promise of a large metropolis but terrified by the gentrification and violence a free market can breed. You have a few other counties where people who work around DC or Baltimore live, like Howard County (light blue). But when you look at the last gubernatorial election or last presidential election, it is very easy to see that the solid blue counties are surrounded by lighter blue neighbors, some of which border on white, then fade to pink, finally a light red on the fringes of the state (interesting how the fringes are red...).
What is my point? Obviously there is something about being literally more connected to people and urban life that makes people vote with more democratic sympathies and values. This does not mean the reverse is not possible: you have conservative persons living in Washington, DC, and blue collar democrats working mines in West Virginia; however, the trend is true. Now, I don’t care about party affiliation or politics, my curiosity lies in patterns of behavior in regard to populatino distribution, voting, etc. It seems the further we are from our fellow citizens, the less we care what happens to them, politically. This is not an attack on the Republican Party or conservative values (that would be too easy these days), but the simple truth of the matter is Democrats have been labeled “bleeding hearts” for decades, as though having empathy for the suffering of your fellow man and woman is a bad thing.
GEOPOLITICS
It is no surprise that geography plays such a role in politics. Why, every four years on Election Day, what do they display? a map of all the states in their primary colors. The same trend I see in the counties of my home state I see in nations: the more isolated an individual, group or people, the more xenophobic. Thusly, we are, after all, products of geography. This is something we forget in our globalizing rootless (and wireless) age of technology. We are products of the oceans, forests, plains, and mountains that gave rise to all the different species of life and races of humans out there.
It takes ten thousand years to make a race of people. All that is required is that the people not move from their geographic area for one hundred centuries, or five hundred generations. Now, of course, we forget that the reason white people are pale is they came from the north where the sun shines less and cold weather requires heavy clothes. We forget the reason black people have wider nostrils and curly hair is to protect their bodies from the intense heat of the inner African continent. We forget that Asian persons are all descended from peoples who roamed the open steppes of Asia for millennia, treeless wind bearing down on their faces. Why else can you exchange someone from Italy, Greece, Libya, Jordan, Iran, or Morocco? They all live in the heat drifting off the Sahara, they all live within reach of a major salt sea, and we forget that is the reason they might look alike, if we drop the cultural context, drop the racial perspectives that have evolved up with centuries of conflict.
ITS ALL MUNDANE
So geography is everything. Or rather, the world shapes us, as much as we try or try not to shape it.
One curious thing to me is what sort of race will develop over the next ten thousand years? Will we all be pale skinned people who tan under fluorescent or LED lights? Will our night vision be depleted by computer monitors and tv screens and endless light pollution? Will our fingers elongate and narrow allowing us to type faster and manipulate tools of the digital age? Will we lose all body hair as we adjust to a climate controlled existence? Will our butts and stomachs get bigger as we acclimate to working all day from a chair? Will our brains swell, as they did in the past, to store new volumes of endless streams of information?
Or will we even get that far?
For all the country folk dwelling in this first world nation, we have exponential counter parts all over the world. Most of the world is country, or rural. Even the industrializing beast that is China is still mostly rural, most of its citizens living in conditions somewhat improved from their ancestors a hundred generations past. As globalization creates awareness beyond our own village or town, the infection of wealth and materialism spreads too. Chinese middle class workers want their own cars that guzzle petrol and emit CO2. Indian business men and women want their own SUV’s. Everybody wants to live our way of life. But our poor mother earth, our poor home, she is struggling to provide us with what we need. Perhaps global culture will arise soon enough to meet the crisis before Earth reaches a breaking point. I certainly hope so…
EPIPHANY
I was once working in an Italian restaurant with a bunch of Mexicans (really from Mexico, not a culturally ignorant mis-label). Another cook, Zefferino, he I would trade language in an attempt to better understand each other and communicate. One thing I found to be universal: humor. He told me some dirty joke in Spanish that sounded familiar. And suddenly it hit me, the same centuries-sun tanned stocky guy who sported a mustache working next to me, the same guy who watches futbol, drinks Corona and listens to ranchero (Mexican country music), was the same farm tan guy who cracks dirty jokes at his blue collar job, watches football, listens to country music, and drinks Budlight. You change the labels and language, it’s the same behavior, the same person. Like Zeffy, most people I run into while traveling the highways of this country are from the same place as my friend, the country.
BACKWATER
Should it come as a surprise to a suburb dwelling well educated intellectual like myself, that the universal culture is one of sparseness, dirt, simple humor, family (my closest Budlight swilling NASCAR friend is an amazing family man, and Zeffy left medical school to come here and help support his family after his father had a stroke), cheap beer, grilled meat and some starch (bread, potatoes, maize tortillas, pita bread, pasta, or rice)? Take England for example. Here is a nation roughly the size of Maine that retains one of the largest, ancient, and most sprawling cities on earth. It was once the seat of an empire upon which the very sun itself always shone. But, drive thirty minutes outside of the any major city, and you see green farmland and find down-home people who want to talk to you and offer you food and have a beer. They even like country music, our country music. Country, redneck, mountain folk, rural, even third world (as my Nigerian friend jokingly refers to the poorer man’s way of doing anything), these are the majority of our brothers and sisters.
It shouldn't come as a shock to other suburban bound registered Democrats like me? After all, we are a backwater planet. We reside on the outer edges of the Milky Way, the boondocks of our galaxy. Following the second planet in our solar system, should it surprise us that being Third World is the universal predilection on the third world?
The poverty is inexcusable, the family values are invaluable, folklore and traditional food cloting and music are cultural treasures; its merely the xenophobia that must be tamed.
Maybe we're just a backwoods planet trying to be cosmo-politan.
Maybe Virgin is right and our destiny isn't only written in the stars but lay in the stars.
Maybe one day my descendents will be dirt farmers on Mars--and they'll probably like the sound of fiddles, guitars, and have hover tractor pulls.
We can wash our hands and change our clothes; we can move to the city and buy a hybrid; but you can't get all the dirt from under your nails.
The earth is in our blood, literally.
The iron that builds sky scrapers and metropolis carries oxygen to our trillions of cells.
What's my point?
We're all connected. Everything is connected to everything. Call it Cultrual Chaos Theory.
If a butterfly in Brazil can cause a tsunami in Japan--maybe a vote in Maryland can cause peace in Iraq . . .
