the BOP, middle america, and me
a couple of nights ago tif and i were out at a restaurant having drinks and snacks after checking out the “first thursday” gallery walk that happens once a month in portland, and we were accompanied by two of her new friends from the “new in portland” meetup group that she hangs out with. i have remarked upon how different my experience of starting this new job is going to be from tiffanie’s because she blazed a trail just recently enough for it to still be fresh for me to follow, but not long enough ago for it to be overgrown or for her to be bored and onto the next stage of firmly entrenched habits. she knows some cool places to go but is still searching for “her vid” on the portland scene, and we still get quite a few laughs joking about trying to convince people newer than us that, just as the willamette is pronounced will-AM-it in the local lingo, the columbia is actually pronounced coo-lum-BE-a. crazy oregonians and their rivers.
i’m not sure if we could actually pull of that speech without collapsing into laughter, or if we would really be so mean, but… i digress.
out for drinks and tapas the other night at this trendy south american joint that made me a cucumber mojito, the topic of our recent midwestern life came up, and we were offered consolation. tif, who is actually From indiana, not just a transplant like me, appropriately bristled in desfense of her roots.
ever since the last election this attitude has really not sat well with me. i remember going home from the informatics building where we were watching the results on the big tvs and realizing that enough americans had voted w. back into office voluntarily and thinking about how cut off i felt from
i read “what’s the matter with kansas” as well as some conservative handbooks and
so the other night i say something like “it’s not smart to disregard red america or think of them as only a bunch of hicks,” which was received with raised eyebrows. “i think it’s dangerous to think of
“oh, i don’t think they’re stupid.” the friend responded.
and i realized i had backed myself into a corner a bit because i haven’t spent the time i really should spend making sure that my argument is more than just an emotional upsurge and a really strong hunch.
so this morning the topic returned to my mind as i was reading something about the war in iraq and i thought, “hey! maybe i should blog about it!”
the simplest way to put it is to say that i think that the intensity of american fundamentalism can only be attributed to some very real, very deep psychological, emotional, moral – in a word, human – needs going unmet, and any time a group of people can be united behind the righteous force of an unmet need you ignore them at your peril. i think the same is true of islamic fundamentalism, of straight up christian fundamentalism, even of newly gestating atheist fundamentalism. i’m really just talking about the way we react as a society to
i should say quickly that i understand that i’m not saying anything deep or profound here. just as i really do believe that educated, compassionate, forward-thinking folk like our friend at the tapas bar really don’t view