Sweet potato pie and I shut my mouth
Gone, gone with the wind
There ain't nobody lookin' back again
Cotton on the roadside, cotton in the ditch
We all picked the cotton, but we never got rich
Daddy was a veteran, a Southern Democrat
They ought to get a rich man to vote like that
Sing it
Song, song of the south
Sweet potato pie and I shut my mouth
Gone, gone with the wind
There ain't nobody lookin' back again
Well, somebody told us Wall Street fell
But we were so poor that we couldn't tell
Cotton was short and the weeds were tall
But Mr. Roosevelt's a-gonna save us all
Well, Mama got sick and Daddy got down
The county got the farm and we moved to town
Papa got a job with the TVA
He bought a washin' machine and then a Chevrolet
Sing it
Song, song of the south
Sweet potato pie and I shut my mouth
Gone, gone with the wind
There ain't nobody lookin' back again
~Alabama, Song Of The South.
...
And so tomorrow, as we take the campaign South and West, as we learn that the struggles of the textile workers in Spartanburg are not so different than the plight of the dishwasher in Las Vegas; that the hopes of the little girl who goes to a crumbling school in Dillon are the same as the dreams of the boy who learns on the streets of L.A.; we will remember that there is something happening in America; that we are not as divided as our politics suggests; that we are one people, we are one nation. And, together, we will begin the next great chapter in the American story, with three words that will ring from coast to coast, from sea to shining sea: Yes, we can. ~Barack Obama
I had to work last night.
It was Truck Night, and by around 11PM me and my co-worker didn't have much more to do than wait for the truck to show up. I had YouTube music on, with the quoted song playing.
I hadn't especially intended it as a statement of anything, let alone politics, it was just where the playlist (one of those the app generates as what music you listen to accrues over time) was at.
Kid in an IBEW (International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers) hoodie comes in, likely an employee of any one of several local union factories. I'd guess mid-20's Nothing out of the ordinary; Soda and snacks, asks for a pack of Marlboros.
While my compatriot is getting his smokes he pipes up "Pretty good music y'all got playing. I ain't heard this one in a minute."
(This song is way older than him, if he knows it, I'm kind of impressed.)
"Well, kid, believe it or not there was a time Country music was actually about something and stood for some things. I grew up on this stuff, Johnny Cash, John Denver, Kris Kristofferson, Willie Nelson and all them."
(Co-worker puts his smokes on the counter, I finish ringing the kid up, he pays for his shit with a USAA debit card. I bag up his stuff.)
Kid comes back with "Well, ya can't go wrong with Willie. Me? I'm a Union guy, just got my card, in fact. That means something to me. (Where I work is a union shop, if the kid didn't know that before this conversation, it says so right on our work badges) I know you guys know what I'm talkin' about, but like that song you just had on says, ain't no going back."
My co-worker (A gay dude from Oklahoma who pretty much only cares about or talks about politics in the context of LGBT issues and rarely enough comments on that or anything else to people he don't know) comes back with "I understand the assignment."
Kid nods and smiles slightly, I hand him his bag and his cigarettes, and he leaves.
...
You have to understand something about where I live; It's a small city two hours from the freeway in either direction where there is one, with Lake Huron in the other directions either way. 30-40 years ago this area was the epitome of Whitebreadistan and I'm not joking.
In the 1980's and early 1990's if you saw a Person of Color in my town, the odds were extremely strong that they were either an Airman stationed at the nearby Wurtsmith Air Force Base or married to somebody who was. Or there was a smaller chance that they was a National Guard troop deployed to the (also nearby) Air National Guard station for training. In 1993, Wurtsmith AFB closed and the level of local diversity was affected accordingly, although with the increasing importance of the reserves and "Joint" nature of everything from the mid-1990's on, the number and eventual diversity of Guardsmen (and eventually, troops on active duty doing training) became larger and more relevant over time until now there's way more of them (and they themselves are a much wider slice of humanity) than there ever was of SAC troops from the 379th Bomb Wing.
Fuck, in 1994, finding an openly gay person in this area was like finding a Unicorn in the wild. Again, I'm being completely serious.
And it's worth noting that from 1993 to 2011 this town was in a Blue district, and while the level of Obvious Liberalism in this area, writ large, was never particularly overwhelming, back when I was a Republican (although I usually voted for our conservative Democratic House Rep when I lived here and he was in office) it was still enough to often make me feel like an outsider.
But then, as a thinking Republican, I was an outsider, just not in the way I thought.
Our local House Reps since 2011 (via the Tea Party BS) have since been a couple of Republicans, and since 2008 I've been a Democrat, and although Michigan has transitioned to being a Blue State this area is overall more pink than purple and the personal dynamic for me has kind of flipped since the 1990's and the Aughts. In town here, there's a slight majority of Harris/Walz signage. You go out of town, it flips to being a slight majority of Trump/Vance signs.
Go to my Mom's house? You go through two or three areas where it's nothing but Trump signs, and a raging fuck-ton of them. Perversely, it's the low-income remote-as-fuck areas you know somebody like Donald Trump would never go where it's the worst. And it's people he would never so much as speak to directly putting them up.
Shit, my Mom's neighbor has two Trump/Vance signs in his yard (And those are two of the four Trump signs-plus one flag-within a mile or so.)
It's worth noting that in 37 years (including in high-emotional-tempo elections like 2000, 2008, 2016 and 2020) I've never seen a political sign on our little side-road beyond the level of hyper-local HOA stuff until this year (and those only because over the years one HOA board member and a friend of another have lived on that street.) My grandpa's generation (which dominated the block for most of my life) didn't really do that kind of thing, for one.
(And I'm not a fan of the change, neither is my Mom. For one thing, if you don't want to deal with that crap you should be free not to. Nobody should have to blow the damn narcissist or be required to watch somebody slobber all over Trump's jackboots.)
The guy who lived in the house that currently has the Trump signs before the guy who put them up? Whose name is still on the sign that the tree out front is now gradually growing around? Never said a word about politics (or much else) in the 50 years that I, my Mom or my grandparents knew him and from when I came up here as a kid until he died a few years ago. Like the only thing to give any indication of what that guy cared about was the fact that we knew he had a National Geographic subscription...and that just from seeing him take the mail in the house.
But around the corner, another neighbor has a VoteVets "I'm a veteran, not a sucker or a loser" sign to go with his Vietnam veteran flag and license plate. Note: First time I've ever seen a political sign on that street, too, and the guy who put it up is also pretty old, probably just a bit older than my Mom.
I have a sticker that says that, but it's in my laptop bag, still not applied to anything, I got it last week. It's only the third time in my entire damn life I've either bought anything like that or made a political donation of any kind. The other two being my Lincoln Project shot glass that I got last year and a $5 donation to Bush/Cheney in 2000...but I was a volunteer and it was kind of expected. I also have American and Ukrainian flags, but they're in my house.
(The only time I ever had a sign or any other outward political statement, I lived in a Red area and because me and my ex had a Bush/Cheney campaign sign-still the only time I've ever had a political sign-it seemed like half the neighborhood still had their dogs crap in my yard. The Schnauzer I had at the time loved it. Me? Not so much. Again, I only had the sign because I was a volunteer. Plus, my Grandpa's generation pretty much taught me not to make a lot of such statements.)
So yeah.
My Mom voted by mail, early, for Harris.
I'll be voting for Kamala Harris tomorrow morning.
I don't usually say so, but increasingly, it feels important to.
I'd like to go back to simply being able to say "I voted" without for who being so damned deadly-serious important that I feel the need to say so.
The stakes feel higher than in 2020, but so does the "People are sick of this bullshit" variable.
Maybe it's just me, but I think we've got this and we're gonna be Okay.
See you tomorrow.
If you want a Better Nation, go and be a Better Citizen.
Yes We Can.
Слава Україна!
We welcome change and openness; for we believe that freedom and security go together, that the advance of human liberty can only strengthen the cause of world peace. There is one sign the Soviets can make that would be unmistakable, that would advance dramatically the cause of freedom and peace. General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization, come here to this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate. Mr. Gorbachev...Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!
~Ronald Reagan
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows. ~George Orwell, 1984.
No comments:
Post a Comment