What am I, chopped liver?

[pecunium]

I keep hearing the McCain campaign, in the voice of Sarah Palin, and her sympathisers and supporters, saying that she has some secret insight to, "real America" by virtue of being from someplace not contaminated by urbanity.

I, it seems (and those like me), somehow don't count as a real american. Never mind the summer I spent digging ditches, and stripping paint and shingling roofs. Nope, manual labor doesn't cut it.

Ignore sixteen years in the National Guard (and a tour in Iraq, and duty overseas in Germany, Korea and Ukraine). Ignore my father the Marine (1964-68 active, and another eight years in the reserves). Forget my grandfather who was in WW1.

Nope, not good enough.

Helping my folks start a small business (still going strong 24 years later). Nope, not good enough.

I, you see, like most americans, live in a city. I, therefore, am somehow not quite the real thing when it comes to being an American.

About a year ago someone at Obidian Wings saw the same thing, and wondered the same sort of thing I'm asking about now,
"When do I get to be one of the "American people?"

Comments

[porysski.livejournal.com]

I think Kung Fu Monkey's justified rant on this topic back in 2006 covered my feelings on it perfectly:

For chrissake, only 17% of Americans live in rural settings anymore. Only 2 million of those people work on farms or ranches (USDA figures)...

Four million people in the US play World of Warcraft. And yet, do I ever hear:

CNN: We stopped by the gates of Ogrimmar in Durotar, on the east coast of Kalimdor, where one local told us Hollywood just can't relate to the level-grinding life.

UNIDENTIFIED ORC: They've never been back here, questing Razormane or Drygulch Ravine, y'know ... or farming for Peacebloom and Silverleaf. They're out of touch.

No. No I do not.

Why is it that those of us who are the majority of the population (i.e. urban dwellers) are somehow less "real"?

[antonia-tiger.livejournal.com]

If you want to find a wunch of bankers, you go to the cities.

Cities are were you find all those people who screw up your life.

Cities are where the insurance companies and the hospitals and the opera houses are.

They have lawyers!

And, I imagine, the USA is so big that the "city"--the dense urban environment--is something largely outside the rural experience. Here is rural England, it's within reach.

And everyone gets fucked over by the politician: they just feel more ignorant of rural life. They can't even use the proper tools for clearing brush and treestumps.

(Yes, I know how to drive a Cat.)

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

The state and the society are imagined political communities. The core issue is how Americans imagine themselves. What the Republican Party has succeeded in doing is appealing to an imagined America that is a cross between the 1920s and 1950s (small town/suburban), with all of the inequities painted over. A Disneyfied vision of America if you will.

[don-fitch.livejournal.com]

Thank you for encapsulating it in one sentence -- "What the Republican Party has succeeded in doing is appealing to an imagined America that is a cross between the 1920s and 1950s (small town/suburban), with all of the inequities painted over."

My own Image (which I hope has some substance) is of a somewhat earlier era, so I'm expecting (or at least hoping for) the application of more Practicality when the time comes to actually mark ballots.

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

Dare I ask which era?

[don-fitch.livejournal.com]

Apparently, albeit indirectly.

I'll skip the Literal game & cut to the chase by answering your real question.

The Era of the Intrepid Pioneer Farmers.

I was born during the '20s (only by about 14 months, but...), and lived for ten years in villages/small towns on the outskirts of what was a "Big City" (Toledo, Ohio) by virtue/measurement of having _two_ Chinese restaurants and three major factories (Willis-Overland, Libby Owens Ford glass, and Electric Autolight). [Okay, there might've been more of both, but that's what I knew about.]

Probably I had or have some (pleasant) illusions about that environment & era, but nothing approaching serious Nostalgia.

That was reserved for the era of (mostly) my paternal-line great-great grandparents (all safely dead by then), who had come from Vermont & Upper New York State and claimed Land Grants in The Northwest Territory (a year or so before that part of it became Michigan, and the inhabitants could share in the annual distribution of the surplus in the Federal Treasury (*sigh*)). Sure, cutting down the forests & creating productive farmland was hard work, but Time has a way of glossing-over that, and the Vision/Illusion I got -- probably from my elders -- was of hard-working, independent, cantankerous, mostly-honest, thoroughly-pragmatic people who owned their land and could manage to eat reasonably well (even if they got damned tired of chicken [which cousin Alma still detests], and of canning food) and pay their taxes even through times of serious economic Depression.

The keyword here, I think, is "pragmatism". Farmers and factory-workers have (or used to have) a pretty good idea of what works and what doesn't work, and -- even if not highly-educated -- are generally smart enough to think things through if the facts are presented to them. Not necessarily rapidly, unfortunately -- it took my father something like 20 years to conclude or admit that FDR's policies were a reasonably good solution to the mess the country was in c. 1930. They expect a certain amount of lying from Politicians, but balk at egregious attempts to pull the wool over their eyes. If that still applies, I have some hope for the results of the upcoming election.

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

Having been, in my time, an intrepid pioneer farm boy I have no illusions about that life or that era. There's a reason why George M. Cohan asked 'How can you keep them down on the farm now that they've seen Paree?'

[don-fitch.livejournal.com]

Considering the number of Alaskans who vaunt their Difference from (& hence superiority to) the people in The Lower 48, I don't give much weight to MS Palin's claims of being somehow more representative.

But then, I'm surprised that the Republican campaign has been so successful. The PR people running it seem to be addressing an audience of imaginary midwestern & southern hicks & rubes who don't watch the same movies and TV programs as City People do. Seems to me that "rural" today means something very different than it did fifty-plus years ago, and that the Republicans are at least that far Behind The Times.

[sunfell.livejournal.com]

People have forgotten (or have not yet learned) that Palin was a secessionist before she was a Republican.

As for cities- I prefer them. I can still grow tomatoes, and hear birdsong, rake leaves, collect pecans, and do lots of wonderful things in my city- and not have to drive 30 miles to be insulted in a Wal-Mart (Me: got Plan B? Them: Baby-killer!). Cities give you variety, and choice. Cities attract interesting people and food.

I like the countryside, and would love to have a little patch of land to take care of- but the countryside is now more deeply owned by corporate interests than the cities are. At least I know that Chesapeake can't come up and plug a frickin' gas drill in my yard in the city. They did on my dad's property in the country, and the noise, busted roads and spoiled water are really pissing people out there off.

Gimme the city. Please.

[ortho-bob.livejournal.com]

I also like the way they try to present the Palins as being in the same financial boat as all those other middle Americans, trying to make ends meet, long nights with the bills at the kitchen table, blah blah, when she and her husband make at least $200,000pa. Not a fortune by Mrs McCain standards but not Walmart wages either.

[maiamuse.livejournal.com]

you have to be alaskan to count to palin.

[martyn44.livejournal.com]

What makes you think you count if you are not Palin. Not a Palin, just Palin.

[maiamuse.livejournal.com]

i am not sure i understand your comment.
i don't think i count...i'm not alaskan. ;)

[hammercock.livejournal.com]

This shit bugs me, too, and has for years. Forget my father who spent 36 years as a federal civil servant. Forget my grandfather who served in WWII. Forget my great-grandfather who helped build the Brooklyn Bridge. Forget my great-great-something ancestor who sewed uniforms for the Union Army in the Civil War. I live in liberal New England, in the queer-lovin' state of Massachusetts, within walking distance of such bastions of elitism as Harvard and MIT, so I must not be a Real American [tm].

If it's any consolation, this kind of idiocy isn't confined to the US. When I lived in Australia, I frequently spied bumper stickers proclaiming, "Real Australians don't live in cities." I'll bet that comes as a shock to the 87.2% of Australians who live in urban areas.

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

In the film set of their imagination, I've no doubt, even city-dwelling Aussies are all Ned Kelly.

[commodorified.livejournal.com]

Ignore sixteen years in the National Guard (and a tour in Iraq, and duty overseas in Germany, Korea and Ukraine).

Well, yes, love, ignore it. In this context, ignore it. And all the rest of it.

You're a citizen of the US and therefore you are a real American. Don't get distracted into defense, or into putting up a rival definition narrower than that.

One thing I have learned from paying attention to media manipulation and propaganda – and from years of watching feminist communities get torn up over who is Real – is this: it's very hard to tell people what to think. It's disturbingly easy to tell them what to think about. And getting people to start lining a group up into Real and Fake in their heads is an all-time winner if you want to split the ranks of your opponents.

The harm this shit does is less in the answers than in way it frames the question: getting people thinking and worrying and arguing about who is Real is just as satisfactory to the bastards as getting them to swallow the definition they want to sell you. Anytime they can get you to focus on who is Real they've distracted you from asking who the Hell they think they are to suggest that some Americans are Realer than others.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

who the Hell they think they are to suggest that some Americans are Realer than others.

Well, that's what I was trying to do...

[commodorified.livejournal.com]

*nods* It's a matter of approach.

[geekosaur]

You get to be one of the "American people" when you vote Rethuglican, of course.

[songblaze.livejournal.com]

I doubt I'll ever be 'American' in that context to anyone.

I grew up upper middle class in a pleasant, quiet suburban neighborhood with several pools and large parks, low crime, community oriented feel. My mother broke into making 6 figures a few years ago (I think she may make $115,000 now).

I'm educated, with 1 degree, enough coursework for a 2nd, and working on another. I'm highly critical of the political process and of politicians.

I intend to go into the DA's office when I finish law school; perhaps a judicial clerkship if I can't.

But apparently growing up in the American Dream, using my 1st Amendment rights to criticize the government, and planning to do a job that will pay me half of what I would make to start at a firm because I believe in doing things that benefit your community aren't enough to make me American. I am, after all, a white-collar intellectual.

[editrx.livejournal.com]

I, you see, like most americans, live in a city. I, therefore, am somehow not quite the real thing when it comes to being an American.

I live in a rural area, daughter of a US Navy Captain, owner of a small (micro) business, wearer of flannel & jeans & hiking boots, know how to dress a deer ... but I'm apparently not a Real American either. Because I am a Democrat. I'm told so daily.

[pgdudda.livejournal.com]

"When do I get to be one of the "American people?"

If/when I ever get US Citizenship. Maybe. I am a deaf gay immigrant, after all, and none of those three groups "really matter".

</snark>