'Coastal Elites' & 'Rednecks'

Mix their blood together and what colour do you get?

I wrote this piece below after Biden was elected and just after the January 6 Capitol Hill confusion.

It remains relevant - not least because until Americans are willing to at least try to understand each other, the end is ever closer to nigh.

Given the assassination attempt on Donald Trump yesterday, the continued disconnect and lack of unity in American politics is stiflingly close to KABOOM.

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Is it a conspiracy theory to believe that the storming of the U.S. Capitol isn’t all down to the protagonists simply being conspiracy theorists?

Does holding a sincere view that these are real people leading real lives - not caricatures - also mean that I’m on their side? I’ve somehow been red-pilled too?

If your answer to that is ‘yes’ then you really need to read this. For it is you who is the problem. It is you who, like them, is rabidly tribal. It is you who will unwittingly aid and abet America’s (and, consequently the West’s) downward slide towards anarchy. Because where America goes, we go.

Storming the ‘home of democracy’ was a pure act of subversion. Wrongly, the mob believe it was a great thing to do. While most see it as the polar opposite, in their minds they are ‘patriots’ and ‘heroes’.

Notwithstanding, it is lazy and disingenuous - and, no doubt, granularly true - to label them as nothing other than white supremacists, racists, nut jobs, deplorables, haters etc. There’s more going on than that. If there wasn’t, Trump wouldn’t have been elected.

And just as Trumpians delight in calling Democrats lib-tards, woke jokes, snowflakes, virtue-signaling commies, again, there is some partial truth here. But, again, there is more to this rancorous swamp than just floating algal bloom.

Nations, like human beings, have complex back stories. They evolve throughout time and space into the version we see before us today. To think any other way is to deny culture and circumstance. It means taking a wholly-dimensional thing and trying to turn it into a brick. It cheapens us all.

I know that living for many years in San Francisco (as I have) is entirely different from spending decent chunks of time in places like Oklahoma/Kansas/Texas/Colorado (as I have). Practicing falconry in those vast mid-American spaces with good ol’ boys (and gals) for months on end taught me much.

Hunting jackrabbits with a Western Redtail hawk in the Cascade Mountains 2015

I have friends who can best be described as ‘coastal elites’ and many others who cheerfully identify as ‘rednecks’. They couldn’t be more personally and politically different from each other if they tried. (Funny, but when we’re out hunting together with falcons, hawks, or golden eagles those differences float away like a white, fluffy cloud on a breezy day).

Conflict Resolution Studies 101 is about trying to take the all-important step into someone else’s shoes. Without that, everything remains unresolved. To constantly remain stuck in believing your side knows all, is right, and good, and noble is to remain uncommitted to solving the problem.

Do you honestly believe President Joe Biden will single-handedly or symbolically be able to heal the Grand Canyon-sized rift? It’s going to take a massive hemorrhoid-inducing effort by the citizenry to bring the country back to some semblance of togetherness. But they have to want it. They have to want relief. They have to want to be good winners too.

My belief is strong on this. Until the American left - including media, academia and cultural institutions - start at least attempting in good faith to get a handle on the history, the frustrations, and the culture of their ‘enemies’, things will only worsen unimaginably.

America is not a one-dimensional brick. And yet Americans are the ones who most need to understand this about their own country. And soon.