The value of community
Small backwater towns are not all Frank Capra and social capital. They can be all MAGA and fuck wearing masks, instead.
Ten years ago, Dr. Kristina Darnauer and her husband, Jeff, moved to tiny Sterling, Kan., to raise their kids steeped in small-town values.
“The values of hard work, the value of community, taking care of your neighbor, that’s what small towns shout from the rooftops, this is what we’re good at. We are salt of the earth people who care about each other,” Darnauer says. “And here I am saying, then wear a mask because that protects your precious neighbor.”
But Darnauer’s medical advice and moral admonition were met with contempt from some of her friends, neighbors and patients. People who had routinely buttonholed her for quick medical advice at church and kids’ ballgames were suddenly treating her as the enemy and regarding her professional opinion as suspect and offensive.
Because somehow medical science and reliance on evidence and listening to expert advice became a matter of politics instead of a matter of the right tools for the job. It makes about as much sense as deciding that calling a plumber when a pipe breaks is something liberals do, while conservatives prefer to let it fix itself.
That wedge is splitting off health care workers from communities that desperately need them.
More than a quarter of all the public health administrators in Kansas quit, retired or got fired this year, according to Vicki Collie-Akers, an associate professor of population health at the University of Kansas. Some of them got death threats. Some had to hire armed guards.
“These are leaders in their community,” Collie-Akers says. “And they are leaving broken.” Collie-Akers notes these professionals also leaving at a terrible time. The pandemic is still raging. Vaccines still need to get from cities to small towns and into people’s arms; public health officers are as important as ever.
Also it’s going to be hard to replace the people who are leaving, because the situation remains what it is.
‘the value of community, taking care of your neighbor’ Hahaha no. At least not in that part of the country. In the year plus that I lived in a different small town in Kansas one of the many things that shocked me was the contempt with which people treated people outside their nuclear family. Even adult siblings and grandparents were not immune from the ‘you’re on your own, don’t expect anything from me’ mentality.
We bought a house a couple of years ago, and it came with a swimming pool, so now I maintain a pool. One recurring task is removing small creatures (dead or alive) that get trapped in the pool.
One day my wife IMs me a picture of a snake that got into the pool. Ick! she texts. I’m not touching it. It’s going to have to learn how to get out on its own.
I explain that it doesn’t work that way. Snakes have a repertoire of behaviors that evolved over millions of years in an environment where there were no swimming pools. The snake may have some behavior that suffices to get it out of the pool. If it does, it escapes; if it doesn’t, it drowns.
More generally, after extracting various animals that got trapped in the pool, I have concluded that in many cases they had the physical ability to escape, but lacked a behavior that would get them out.
You would think that H. Sapiens has made some advance on the snakes over the last 60M years, but after watching the behavior of my own species this year I am no longer convinced of that. I’m not being snarky or hyperbolic here. I am really not seeing the substantive difference between us and the snakes. People have a repertoire of behaviors that evolved to help our ancestors survive in small tribes on the African veld. People today have the physical ability to wear masks, but that is not something that is within their inherited repertoire of behaviors, so they don’t and the virus continues to spread.
Well that’s the thing though, we’re not that different. We *can* override instinctive behaviors (unlike snakes) but you have to want to and it’s often hard to do so. That Selfish Gene may be all about self-preservation but it isn’t smart.
That idea of moving to steep your kids in smalltown values has always angered me. Why? Because I grew up steeped in those values. Conservative Christianity? Fuck that. Anti-welfare? Fuck that. Racism? Fuck that. I have been spending most of my life trying to get away from backwater America, but somehow keep landing in even more backwater America with each effort. When I retire, I am going to join the rest of the coastal elites on the coast. Out of the “heartland” and into a place where your neighbor really doesn’t give a damn that you skipped church to sleep in, or that your daughter is pregnant without being married (or has been married 5 years without being pregnant – equally as unacceptable).
I hear a lot about small town values, but I promise you, they are not what you want your kid brought up in, unless you are a conservative Christian or someone who hates yourself and your kids.
One value – glom onto as many federal and state tax subsidies as you can, while railing about getting nothing from the government – even though you are also sending your kid to the public school system from kindergarten through graduate school
Another value – don’t let anyone test your water for nasty stuff because nitrates “only hurt infants” and don’t need to be worried about (yes, I heard that one – and from the water treatment plant, to boot).
Another value – Drive the biggest, baddest, loudest truck you can drive, because you don’t believe global warming is real, and besides, what is so bad about getting warmer. And because you are a REAL MAN.
Another value – Carry guns into WalMart with you, just in case someone might think you are a sissy.
Another value – Never vote for women.
There are a lot more, but I’ll stop. I’ve ranted long enough.
iknklast:
I still think Blazing Saddles sums it up the best.
“What did you expect? “Welcome, sonny?” “Make yourself at home?” “Marry my daughter?” You’ve got to remember that these are just simple farmers. These are people of the land. The common clay of the new West. You know… morons.” – Jim
DJT missed a selling opportunity. He could have sold millions and millions of MAGA masks.