Foothill Agrarian: The Emblem on the Wall: On the wall of the FFA classroom at Placer High School hangs an FFA emblem, made entirely of vegetable seeds. It’s a remarkable piece of w...
I just started following this blog, but in reading it, while there are certainly some differences between my experience and his, and my world and his, there are a remarkable number of similarities and many of the sentiments expressed on it find reflection in various posts here.
And here's one.
I've split the rural/town divide my entire life. I'm a rural person, but I've always had a town address. Had it been possible to simply become a rancher in the early 1980s, when I graduated from high school, I would have done that, no matter what it meant. I.e., while a friend of mine claims that I'm so intellectual I could only have found a career as a lawyer or a priest, in his German view, that's not really so. I would happily have spent my days around cattle, horses, cats and dogs if I could have. Being born in 1963 meant that wasn't possible, just as it would have been impossible had I been born in 53, 43, or probably even 33. Realistically, it's probably only my grandparents who last lived in a world where that was a realistic option, i.e., to go from a city street to full-time employment in agriculture. I've made it part way there however, and indeed but for the more realistic economic concerns of my spouse, maybe I would be full time there.
Anyhow, my father was the first member of his family to go to university, let alone obtain an advance degree. Of his three siblings, two more attended university, but I think he's the only one that obtained a degree. An uncle ended up in the Army before he completed his studies and then had a long career as a fireman, a job he loved. One sister was married fairly early after high school and another did attend university, but I don't think she graduated, although I don't know.
They were all highly intelligent. Indeed, their father, who left school at age 13, helped them with their calculus homework when they were in high school. I didn't take calculus until I was in university and I found it extremely difficult. I can't imagine how smart you have to be to pick it up on your own.
My mother was not a high school graduate, or the Quebec equivalent of it, but she did obtain an associates degree in the 1970s. Her schooling was cut short by the Great Depression. Both of her parents, however, were university graduates, with that status being very unusual for a woman such as her mother at the time.
The point, well I'm not sure if there is one other than to note that all of these people were really sharp. On my father's side, they were very sharp people associated with the cattle and sheep industry, which my father was to until that was cut short by my grandfather's death.
I guess that's all background to something noted in the linked in article.
When I was growing up, the rural/town divide was there, but the lines were very blurred compared to what they now are. Many of us kinds in town were quite feral, so to speak. I.e, being a town kid meant, if you were male, that you were probably at least somewhat of a hunter and/or fisherman. But things worked the other way around too. Of my father's friends, quite a few of the men were ranchers or had come from ranches and farms before they went into professional jobs in town. A doctor or lawyer was as likely to have grown up on a farm or ranch than in a city, and to retain rural interests.
Ranchers in my region have always been pretty conservative. They haven't always been 100% Republican. Part of that has to do with the way that the parties have evolved, but as an example, a ranching member of my wife's family was such a Democrat that he always voted a straight Democratic ticket, no matter what. The point is that as late as the 80s, at least, a diversity of views existed beyond the city limits. For that matter, a diversity of views existed within the city limits.
Political party diversity has all but died in my state, starting for some reason with the Clinton Administration. Up until that time the Democratic Party here was a minority party, but a strong one. At one point in the 70s our Senator and Congressman were Democrats. We had an entire string of Democratic Governors, having had one up until fairly recently. Something started to fall apart during the Clinton Administration, however.
Anyhow, conservatism has always been strong in the rural areas outside of town. And its expressed itself a couple of times in huge divides between agriculturalist and everyone else, including other people, that resulted in near political uprisings by the regular folks. All of these have involved efforts by ranchers and farmers to take over, in some fashion, the public lands or wildlife. This is massively unpopular with average Wyomingites and it's been put down, as noted, a couple of times, but that hasn't stopped our Congressman from supporting it or Sen. Barrasso from getting it inserted into the 2016 GOP Platform.
What's become really remarkable, however, is the absolute elimination of diversity of views in the countryside.
Now, in fairness, diversity of views has been much reduced inside of town as well. It's still there, but it's much more likely to show up in the break room or in closed door office conversations than openly. It does occur, however. Indeed, one of the things I've noted about Rep. Harshman's recent off color remarks about Rep. Gray is how many people, if they know you, will now say "he said what we were all thinking". I'm really pretty surprised by it.
We vaccinate cattle.
Eh?
Now, that's not a sudden non sequitur.
I note that as the resistance towards COVID 19 vaccination was an epic level out in the prairie. Not so much anymore, but it took some people dying in order to change that. And even now, at a recent gathering, I was hesitant to mention that yes, I'm vaccinated.
Now, in town there are people who will subject you to a blistering lecture about being vaccinated. But they're a minority. Most of the people who are avoiding vaccination on a whatever basis will at least cite individual rights as part of their view and that people shouldn't be required to get vaccinated on that basis. That's an entirely separate topic, but in some rural quarters the opposition to vaccination was really so strong that you just avoided the topic if you could.
As noted, that changed when people started getting really sick and some died. A lot of the hold outs started getting vaccinated at that time. It baffles me a bit, however, as we vaccinate our cattle and horses, and nobody seems to think it inconsistent to vaccinate them, and not ourselves.
But then there's politics.
Ever since the election of President Obama there's been a turn towards polarization in politics that's had a disturbing corrupted aspect to it. And coming up with it there started to be a set of beliefs that oddly you had to subscribe to. Indeed, the one real sharp distinction, I think, at this point between conservationist who are sportsmen, and agriculturalist, is that conservationist have adopted the mantra that "you are entitled to your own beliefs, but nobody is entitled to their own facts".
Like it or not, you really aren't entitled to your own beliefs. That's an American bromide, but it's completely false. The truth, and much truth can be objectively determined, dictates what you are entitled to believe. This is true of the physical and the metaphysical, and therefore it not only dictates what you have to believe about physics and science, but religion and philosophy.
Now, as Shakespeare noted, human knowledge is quite limited, and can be much in error, which provided the basis for the quote from Hamlet that:
There are more things in heaven and Earth, Horatio,Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
In that quote, it should be noted, the bard was referencing "philosophy" as science, the two being a combined discipline at the time. And what it also doesn't mean is the left wing position that somehow science and religion are diametrically opposed to one another. They are not. Indeed, I'm a Mass attending, Confession going, Catholic, and I have a degree in the hard sciences and there's no conflict at all, something that every Catholic agreed upon until very recently.
So what's my point?
Somehow, in the last twenty years or so, people went from being in camps to nearly being in cults, politically. That is usually the end stage for a democracy. When members of the opposite party become the enemy, in your mind, you become the enemy of democracy yourself. And we're darned near there.
There are now those in the local GOP, and more than a few, who are at the point where the only thing they can see is whether or not you agree with Trump populism or not. Whenever a Republican legislature shows an inclination to ponder or debate, if he's not right in line with Trump populism, he's criticized simply on that basis alone on a basis that shows no inclination to thought. To depart from the line is to question, apparently, something held to be dogma. One Republican figure at the time of the last election seriously backed a proposal to boot Republicans who didn't unyieldingly adhere to the official platform out of the party. The leadership of the party more or less officially takes the position that the January 6 insurrection didn't happen and is pretty close to maintaining that the election was stolen, which is simply untrue.
That's not the point of this post. But this is. Nobody, in any occupation, should take their beliefs from a political party unthinkingly. But people out in the sticks should do that least of all. The political parties didn't come up with their platforms at a branding or at a lunch break during the harvest.
What everyone should do is to have reality inform their political beliefs. You can believe what you want to, in other words, as long as it isn't contrary to nature, science and reality.
And, we might add, as long as it isn't contrary to the true principals of your Faith. Faith is supposed to inform your world view. Your politics doesn't inform your faith.
But, for a lot of people, it seems like it does.
Anyhow, some points to ponder.
For those out in the sticks, there's a lot more of them, than us. When people tell us that the election was stolen, we ought to consider that we're a tiny minority and that what natural and obvious in our political views probably doesn't seem that way at all to most people. The amazing thing isn't that so many liberal politicians are elected the US. . . the amazing thing is that any conservative ones are.
In other words, you might not have wanted Biden to be elected, but the fact of the matter is that Trump only was President in the first place because of the Electoral College. He lost the popular vote twice. Most Americans don't want him as President. The surprising thing was that he ever was, not that he lost, and he did lose, in 2020.
Most politicians aren't ranchers or farmers and there's a lot of money in politics and it didn't come from us. People don't invest money in something and not expect to get a return. Being a member of a conservative political party, therefore, is one thing, but buying off on everything it says about everything else, including science and industry, is something a person shouldn't do without really thinking it over.
Neither political party is the Agricultural Party, or the Rural Party, or the Agrarian Party, and frankly they don't really have that much interest in the topic at the national level.
Just because agriculture is an industry doesn't mean that what's good for other industries is good for it. Far from it.
Science is science and you can't ignore science as you don't like what it means for you personally. You don't get, for example, to smoke cancer free because you like smoking.
Agriculture has much more in common with conservationist movements than any other movement out in the wider American landscape. The two should be allied, not at each others throats.
We should be adaptable, and there are a lot of things we may have to be adapting too. Ironically, unless you are Amish or eccentric, almost everything you are doing today features some sort of adaption that your grandparents or even parents made in the first place.
Moving forward sometimes means moving back.
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