I've been biting my tongue

I've been biting my tongue for days, weeks, a few months now, as I listen to people talk about the political divide in this country. It's all the nonsense chatter that bothers me the most -- people talking and talking with nothing but a vague sense of a feeling to support their assertions -- so I figure I shouldn't add to it. Also, I don't think it matters much what I think on this particular subject.

Still, I have a few things I want to say, and so -- as I did with my little West Wing rant -- I've decided that this is the best place to say it. This might not be the best time to say it, however, as a new semester begins and my new students google my name. Who knows what they will think when they find this? Note to any new students reading this: Different rules apply to blogs than to other types of writing. In other words, lay off.

Anyway, we all might feel better if we stopped caring so much about what every impressionable individual everywhere might think about some words we might let slip from our mouth or typing fingers.

Here goes: People who voted for Bush are not stupid rednecks. It's ridiculous and counterproductive to lump 59 million people into the category of stupid and rednecks. Stop doing it. You sound like you're spinning your wheels in a dirty, rotten, slippery mound of snow and blaming the snow for being thoughtless to your concerns. While there may be some truth to it, it's not entirely accurate. In fact, I'd say the metaphor still works when I write "The snow is just being the snow."

People who voted for Bush voted for him because he's one of them. You may not like, or agree with, the way that he says and thinks that everything is simple, for example -- but they do. And, to them, life is simple. Or simpler. Or at least it appears and FEELS more simple.

Think about it. The majority of his support is in rural, or more sparsely populated areas. The concerns that develop in these areas are far different than the concerns that develop in cities, at least in part because in urban areas there are a zillion more choices for everything from what you have for breakfast to what you do on a Friday night. More choices, more diversity, more more more, makes things feel more more complicated. It's not that people who live in rural areas don't see reality. (Or can't handle complexity of a certain kind.) It's that they have a different reality. They actually agree with Bush. They think like him. It doesn't matter that he has more money then they will ever dream of; they still think like him. They may not think he's made the best choices all the time(and I've met Bush voters who've said that), but at least they recognize the world he describes is the one that they live in.

They voted for the person who they wanted to vote for -- they weren't trick or hoodwinked or manipulated. (Unless you consider all attempts at persuasion to be manipulation.) They are ASSHOLES for refusing to take the opportunitty to look outside their own interests and listen to the cacophony of people who were shouting "I don't want to live like you!. . . I don't need to tell you how to live, but NOT EVERYONE WANTS TO LIVE LIKE YOU!" But they aren't stupid. And they're not necessarily rednecks. It's hard for all of us to step outside the understanding of reality that we know from our experience of life.

I've got more to say and write -- like that I don't think the answer is to try to adopt what we think is the "language of the heartland" and, in that sense, pretend to understand what we don't really understand -- but I feel like once I start typing entire sentences in ALL CAPS, I should take a break before I sprain a typing finger. Since the political discussions in the places I live continue endlessly, I'm sure I'll be back with more soon.

Blog as catharsis. How did I do this time?