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What am I, chopped liver?
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?"
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?"
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Why is it that those of us who are the majority of the population (i.e. urban dwellers) are somehow less "real"?
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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.)
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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i don't think i count...i'm not alaskan. ;)
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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.
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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.
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Well, that's what I was trying to do...
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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.
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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.
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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>