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21 February 2013

Union and Disunion


I write this brief essay because I communicate with folks living in urban America (presently in New York and California) who really seem oblivious to the way many of us think and live in “the fly-over states,” or in the “Farm Belt,” or in the South. From repeated experiences with self-professed “liberals” or “progressives” living on the coasts or major urban areas such as Chicago, I realize that the gap between their thinking and the more “conservative” way in less urban America is probably wider and more disharmonious than at any time in our country’s history.  Having read considerable material about the development of the so-called “Civil War,” I think that the gap between pro-big government liberals and more rural conservatives is at least as large and as unresolvable as the gap between the urban, aggressive, imperialistic, and capitalist North and the more traditional, agrarian, and defensive South before 1860.  

Consider a concrete case: As a political scientist, I should have realized that Romney’s bid for President was in considerable trouble from my everyday experience in Montana, but at the time, I failed to see it adequately.  Nearly no one I knew said that they would vote for Obama.  So I took that to favor Romney.  What I overlooked was in plain sight: nearly no one--if indeed a single person I know in central Montana--expressed any enthusiasm for Romney’s candidacy. And it was not because he was “Mormon,” although media know-it-alls could latch onto that superficial explanation. Only one person mentioned Romney’s religion as disturbing, and that man has been a lifelong Democrat who said that he could not vote for Obama because of his “big government liberalism,” but he could not vote for Romney, either. He related that he had had a “Mormon” boss years ago who expressed anti-Catholic sentiments to him, and that turned him off.  No, the utter lack of interest in Romney’s candidacy was much more basic:  Romney was seen as “one of them,” as “another liberal,” as a “big city man,” as “part of the establishment,” and most definitely not as “a conservative.”  Romney was “one of them,” not “one of us.”

What I have discovered in Iowa, South Dakota, and perhaps most especially in Montana is a fascinating and highly serious political phenomenon: most people with whom I live and work show little if any attachment to the Federal government.  Indeed, there is among Midwest and mountain Westerners two primary sentiments regarding “Washington, D.C.,” and the Federal Government in particular: many folks are highly suspicious of the government, distrustful, and in a word, alienated from American politics in general and surely from the political elite and rulers found in Washington, D.C. Whereas many, indeed most, are openly hostile, some would simply be indifferent, or have no positive attachment to the Federal Government. The hostility and the indifference are so deep and long standing that I am forced to wonder if open rebellion from the central Powers would not be possible, or even likely.  

It was said of the American Revolution (by John Adams, if I am not mistaken), that the real revolution and break from Britain occurred in the hearts and minds of the colonists long before firing a single shot. I would say that the break in political consciousness, of any real attachment to the Federal government, has already occurred in large areas of the United States of America. We are not united except by power, by force, and to a much lesser extent by a history that has all but faded from consciousness. Popular culture creates some bonds with the urban culture in America, but it does not yield a harvest of attachment to the regime.  

To put the matter in different words:  A common belief among Montanans (at least those whom I know, and with whom I speak of such matters) is that our loyalties are to our ranches, farms, and small towns, perhaps to the county, and more weakly to the state.  I detect little loyalty to, or respect for, the central government. On the contrary, as I have noted, what people think and feel is at best indifference, but more strongly a genuine antipathy to Washington, to the ruling powers, to government’s attempt to control our lives, and so on.  

The “red state / blue state” dichotomy is trite, and hides the deeper reality: Americans living in most counties across this country have attitudes and beliefs at odds with those living in major urban centers. From the rural perspective, the country is dominated by power elites, money, and highly degenerate culture from a few urban centers: Los Angeles, the Bay area of California, greater New York, City, Boston, and of course, Washington, D.C.  The attitudes and “values” (desires, wishes, beliefs) of these self-described “liberals’ or “progressives,” or “establishment politicians” of both parties, claiming to know what is best for everyone else, and seeking to impose a way of life on all of us through the media, through the destructive entertainment industry, and especially through the Central Powers are wholly out of tune to rural and small-town Americans.  

Two vastly different political cultures have emerged within our country, so much so that in reality, we are two overlapping and co-existing regimes, not one. The “Union” so idealized and idolized by such figures as Lincoln, and forced on the whole country by Union armies, carpetbaggers, and much meddling legislation, is no longer a reality. America of the post-Civil War era is dead, or, shall we say, has evolved into what it was becoming in the Civil War: an enormous power shell devoid of spiritual substance, and seeking to dominate the lives of all citizens.  For many living outside of big-city America, the mask is off, and the central and centralizing government is seen for what it really has become: tyrannical, even totalitarian. It is alien to the traditional American way of life.  

I dare say that this is the reality felt and rejected by many living in rural and small-town America. The Federal Government is seen and felt as “the oppressor,” as an enormously powerful conqueror over our way of life. Resistance to its dominance takes various forms, and needs to be solidified, to be more effective. At times I wonder if a state such as Montana would join with Texas if it were to secede from what is felt to be the tyrannical Union. Perhaps politicians working in Helena would seek to keep Montana in the Union, in large part because their own power is linked with the fate of the federal regime. But I can imagine an issue, such as an attempt to confiscate rifles and handguns, that would ignite an open rebellion against the Central Powers unlike what has been seen for many years in this country.  And the underlying reason needs to be kept in mind: the break from the tyrannizing governmental powers has already occurred. Some have realized this, others have not.