Post Election Blues

Musing on the “Republican wave” of last Tuesday, I got to thinking about a question that has haunted me for my entire adult life. Why doesn’t the white working class seem to feel any attachment/attraction to the progressive message of fairness, social justice, and truly equal opportunity? This haunts/troubles me deeply because I feel that if the folks who are often labeled as the “guns, gays, and God” crowd ever did get behind the progressive message this country would be utterly transformed in the blink of an eye. I like to tell myself too that it hasn’t always been this way. Texas once had a thriving progressive Democratic party and FDR was seen as virtually a saint in many parts of the deep, deep, South. So why is it now that “red state” and “red neck” seem virtual synonyms? Searching for answers, as always, I thought I’d turn to country and western music and see what I might learn. So here we go….

Merle Haggard: Big City

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ou5tnqSLNlM

You have to start with Merle because he is the high priest of a certain libertarian/progressive mixture that characterizes what I think is a profound confusion/discord between embracing the idea of fairness on the one hand and engaging in a kind of cranky “I’m going to bite my nose off to spite my own face” distrust and hatred of any kind of organized, formal response to social injustice. This song illustrates it perfectly. So we have “some lyric” (as Merle might put it) that completely expresses working class frustration:

“Been working every day since I was twenty/And not a thing to show for everything I’ve done./There’s folks who never work and they got plenty./Think it’s time that guys like me…”

Well, you think for a second that Merle might finish this line with “go out and get a gun…” But instead he says, “should have some fun,” which is a different thing altogether. Sigh… Then, with the chorus, Merle goes entirely off into libertarian la-la-land:

“Turn me loose and set me free/Somewhere in the middle of Montana./Give me all that I’ve got coming to me./And keep your retirement and your so-called Social Security./Big city, turn me loose and set me free.”

Can anyone tell me what those lines mean and who they are addressed to? Social security is somehow the problem? Boy, I just don’t get it. When you hear Merle Haggard classics like “Hungry Eyes”, you can’t for a moment doubt that this man knows what it’s like to feel hunger and class snobbery and deprivation in his bones. But who is responsible for it? If you listen to a song like “Fightin side of me…” you get the answer that it is those “squirrely guys who don’t believe in fightin…” Hearing that my heart sinks into my shoes.

Gretchen Wilson: Politically Uncorrect

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZu0nExoN9s

Merle Haggard actually makes an appearance in this one so it’s kind of a hand-off to the “new generation” of country music as represented by Gretchen “Redneck Woman” Wilson. Again, there is this sense of total identification with the people who work and toil and suffer every form of exploitation. But what is the remedy? The Bible? The Flag? The Forefathers’ plan? Oh, that’ll do it, alrighty! That’s just the ticket! And again there is the sickening feeling that the people who are not giving any “respect” to the “workin’ man” or the “single Mom raisin’ her kids” are the people who make up the progressive movement itself. So there’s always this feeling that the responsible parties are the very ones who might be seen as allies in another dimension/space-time continuum.

Josh Thompson: Way Out Here

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0sYnro_3Rc

Josh Thompson is part of the C&W rear guard that is fighting a (mostly losing) battle to preserve the “outlaw” roots of the music; e.g., Willie, Waylon, and the boys. So he is very much struggling against the boy bands and Brittany-style-cutie-pie-clones that make up most of the horrible country schlock on the radio. A couple of his lyrics in this song really stand out for me:

“Our houses are protected by the Good Lord and a gun/And you might meet ‘em both if you show up here not welcome son…”

It’s a shocking and defiant line and one likely to raise the hackles of a lot of people. However, when I heard it, I remembered being in Bullard, Texas, with my Aunt Fay. We were driving out in the country and she was looking for the house that my grandfather had built back in the 30s and where my grandmother, Aunt Fay, and my mother grew up during the Depression after his early death from “tuberculosis of the bone”. We finally found it – a tiny place really – way out in the middle of nowhere - when two rather large men emerged from inside who looked like your prototypical denizens of the “backwoods.” With a look of real suspicion, they asked who we were and what did we want. “Oh, boy, “ I thought, “I’m going to get to be in my own real life Flannery O’Connor story. Lucky me!” However, my Aunt quickly explained that I had come out all the way from California to learn about my Texas roots and to see the house where my Momma was raised. Well, within 10 seconds, we were inside getting a tour of the house and ended up sitting out on the porch with those “good old boys” and their family and eating homemade peach ice cream. So I guess the flip side of this line is that if you are welcome, Son, you’ll see a level of hospitality and genuineness that is often lacking in our soulless “big cities.” So go figure…

“We’ve got a fightin’ streak that’s a mile wide but we pray for peace/Cause it’s mostly us who end up servin’ overseas.”

If you ever watch the News Hour on PBS, you’ll know how they sometimes run memorials to the war dead in Afghanistan and Iraq. Just heartbreaking stuff where they show all these (now dead) 22-year-old kids with their beautiful, young, fresh faces. Next time you watch it just count how many of them are from the South. Usually, it’s about 50%. When you realize what a small proportion of the country Southerners really are, that figure brings home the truth of Thompson’s words. At the same time, who is the “son” who is being advised to not show up “not welcome?” Hard, hard not to believe it’s us… the liberal/progressive community. And, once again, the remedy is only a kind of nostalgia that the country should be run “the way it used to be/the way it oughta be…” But what does that mean? And when was that anyway? Anybody got a clue?

So there you have it. What seems to be a profound contradiction between valuing the poor and hating the very people who claim to want to work on their behalf. Any solutions to this dilemma? Any ideas? Let me know. Meanwhile I’m going to go soak my head in some Tennessee sipping whiskey and listen to some Jimmy Rodgers…

"But my pocket book is empty./And my heart is filled with pain./A thousand miles away from home/Waiting for a train…"