This is what I was thinking about the other day when I wrote you that the passive aggressive refusal to respond and stand up to cruelty seems to come from the trauma of being an abused child.
In this case, they can’t leave the hole where they have hidden their sharp rock, so they dig in their heels and look for a strongman that tells them I’ll protect your right to live in your hole. It’s the one sharp edge they’ve got and they’re desperate not to lose it.
When Hilary Clinton talked about people in the basket of deplorables this is what she meant. But, it was an unkind statement because she didn’t admit that people have to live in misery digging in the dirt to survive simply because there is a bottom in every situation.
Sometimes hitting that bottom means your chance of ever leaving it again is zero.
When you always have more than enough you don’t measure the cost of being down and out for a lifetime. Would you understand someone who told you life is beautiful, take my hand I can help you?
Probably not, you’d fear every step you took away from where you hid the sharp rock that’s a great can opener. How would you ever find another that works that good?
There’s a wasteland made up of the spaces between people who can’t imagine what the other lives through to make it from dawn to dusk. I really mourn the growth of that wasteland in America over the last twenty years.
If you had only $5 for one week- no more, no less, what would you focus on most?
It’s a self imposed fast from consumption that I challenge myself with once every three months.
This: " ... once you've known enlightenment you can't give it up ... " This is exactly why "we" don't understand how "those people" always vote against "their own best interest." We have no idea what they think their own best interest is. Thank you, Walter.
I married into a family, such as you describe. I spent a couple of decades, trying to help them stop looking for sharp rocks. For the most part, I failed. I feel I saved my husband and his brother. The rest love their misery, are toxic to me, and I have removed them from my life. There are so many more out there, I often despair.
I'm still kind of that way myself as ashamed as I am to admit it. This is a long process, but as long as I'm on this journey I might as well take some notes.
This reminds me of the song “How Ya Gonna Keep Em Down On the Farm After They’ve Seen Pareee!” which came into being either during or after WW1 when American recruits were sent to Europe and to places like Paris, France and then for them to have to return to their previous and utterly banal lives in rural America. It speaks volumes!
You are so right! We have to continue to help the “dirt dwellers” but it isn’t easy. We have to get over the feeling that they are insulting or hurting us personally-it isn’t about us. When I was teaching I had to realize that every kid had worth and the place they had come from was not to be judged even if I didn’t agree with it. Only by continuing to value all these kids and showing them respect and kindness would they learn that there was something else in the world. And sometimes their parents would notice too. Thank you for a great article-you keep me thinking!
I think we have to do more to protect kids who are growing up in awful households like this. Our schools have to be safe spaces for kids who have fundamentalist parents who abuse them. Religion is a big part of the problem here, and we have to have some uncomfortable conversations to hold abusive religious people accountable. So few of these arguments are up for debate, our side retreats too much and look at where it has gotten us.
I have to ask, since I know you grew up in rural Wisconsin, and you have mentioned going out on the river, is that river the Mississippi? As a kid growing up and as an adult, most of our summer entertainment involved, fishing, boating, and relaxing on sandbars on the Mississippi. It was the best childhood for me, and I hope for my kids too. Now, the river is a deep dirty polluted thing that my small city does not appreciate.
I was streamed in rivers are quite polluted from farm runoff and since our state is essentially run by Farm Bureau, I don’t expect much to change. To know more about Iowa I recommend Substack’s Swine Republic.
This is what I was thinking about the other day when I wrote you that the passive aggressive refusal to respond and stand up to cruelty seems to come from the trauma of being an abused child.
In this case, they can’t leave the hole where they have hidden their sharp rock, so they dig in their heels and look for a strongman that tells them I’ll protect your right to live in your hole. It’s the one sharp edge they’ve got and they’re desperate not to lose it.
When Hilary Clinton talked about people in the basket of deplorables this is what she meant. But, it was an unkind statement because she didn’t admit that people have to live in misery digging in the dirt to survive simply because there is a bottom in every situation.
Sometimes hitting that bottom means your chance of ever leaving it again is zero.
When you always have more than enough you don’t measure the cost of being down and out for a lifetime. Would you understand someone who told you life is beautiful, take my hand I can help you?
Probably not, you’d fear every step you took away from where you hid the sharp rock that’s a great can opener. How would you ever find another that works that good?
There’s a wasteland made up of the spaces between people who can’t imagine what the other lives through to make it from dawn to dusk. I really mourn the growth of that wasteland in America over the last twenty years.
If you had only $5 for one week- no more, no less, what would you focus on most?
It’s a self imposed fast from consumption that I challenge myself with once every three months.
A great article, Walter.🌹
Absolutely Jocelyn, great comment!
Was this what Tom Waits meant when he sang about finding the Devil "way down in the hole"?
Perhaps. it's kind of an old image now that you mention it.
The Devil has been doing His Work for a long time, and his presence in popular culture is unavoidable. Particularly that of the U.S.
This: " ... once you've known enlightenment you can't give it up ... " This is exactly why "we" don't understand how "those people" always vote against "their own best interest." We have no idea what they think their own best interest is. Thank you, Walter.
Yes, it's not a justification, it's an explanation that will give us the tools to defeat them.
I married into a family, such as you describe. I spent a couple of decades, trying to help them stop looking for sharp rocks. For the most part, I failed. I feel I saved my husband and his brother. The rest love their misery, are toxic to me, and I have removed them from my life. There are so many more out there, I often despair.
I'm still kind of that way myself as ashamed as I am to admit it. This is a long process, but as long as I'm on this journey I might as well take some notes.
This reminds me of the song “How Ya Gonna Keep Em Down On the Farm After They’ve Seen Pareee!” which came into being either during or after WW1 when American recruits were sent to Europe and to places like Paris, France and then for them to have to return to their previous and utterly banal lives in rural America. It speaks volumes!
You are so right! We have to continue to help the “dirt dwellers” but it isn’t easy. We have to get over the feeling that they are insulting or hurting us personally-it isn’t about us. When I was teaching I had to realize that every kid had worth and the place they had come from was not to be judged even if I didn’t agree with it. Only by continuing to value all these kids and showing them respect and kindness would they learn that there was something else in the world. And sometimes their parents would notice too. Thank you for a great article-you keep me thinking!
I think we have to do more to protect kids who are growing up in awful households like this. Our schools have to be safe spaces for kids who have fundamentalist parents who abuse them. Religion is a big part of the problem here, and we have to have some uncomfortable conversations to hold abusive religious people accountable. So few of these arguments are up for debate, our side retreats too much and look at where it has gotten us.
Thanks for your kind words Laurie!
I have to ask, since I know you grew up in rural Wisconsin, and you have mentioned going out on the river, is that river the Mississippi? As a kid growing up and as an adult, most of our summer entertainment involved, fishing, boating, and relaxing on sandbars on the Mississippi. It was the best childhood for me, and I hope for my kids too. Now, the river is a deep dirty polluted thing that my small city does not appreciate.
No, the Mississippi is a ways from here, but the river I jump in flows into the Mississippi, so I guess in a way it is :)
The local rivers aren't all that polluted, but they're also not as clean as they used to be.
I was streamed in rivers are quite polluted from farm runoff and since our state is essentially run by Farm Bureau, I don’t expect much to change. To know more about Iowa I recommend Substack’s Swine Republic.
I guess the rivers in Iowa must be polluted by Wisconsin farms. Wisconsin has a more reasonable northerly neighbor.
A powerful allegory for the Trump age.
Thank you!