Back from the desert
May. 17th, 2006 07:28 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jaunthieI just spent several days in red-hot, Red-State America, visiting with my grandmother and my aunt (and Grandma's doing much better, thanks to everyone who asked and/or sent good wishes!). It was good to see them, and I'm glad I went, even if it was over 100 degrees there. (That's way too warm for May, IMHO.) I didn't have much time for gadding about or sightseeing or anything, even if I'd've wanted to in that heat, but driving back and forth I discovered something interesting. The van I was driving was tuned to KMLE, or as they like to refer to themselves, "Kamel Country" (okay, so maybe they don't spell it with a K, but it sure sounds like it, and since their station starts with a K-call sign, it makes sense), a country-music station. Being a curious sort, I took the opportunity to listen in to what they were playing and what they were talking about. Now it's not like I can't listen to country music at home (the top-rated station in my area is a country-music station), but I figured I might learn something specific about the red-state state of mind from the choices on the playlist and from what the DJs said. (For example, I discovered no Dixie Chicks on their playlist, and the DJs were in agreement that whatever the NSA did in spying on Americans' phone calls must be okay, because it was to protect us. And for the record, I hate the whole "red-state"/"blue-state" labelling system; it's simplistic and divisive, but for the sake of simplicity, I'm going with it here.) Beyond the surface stuff, I did learn something else, but it was probably something I should have realized a long time ago:
They're romantics.
Okay, this is a huge generalization, and I know generalizations are dangerous. Undoubtedly 90% of what I'm speculating about here is crapola; certainly it's just a theory. But it just explains so much to realize that part of the mindset is a deep, profoundly romantic streak. An optimistic mindset that everything will come out all right in the end, that all you really need is the love of a good person of the opposite gender (and a nice cold beer, prerferably handed to you by said good person), that even if you screw up God will make sure everything will be peachy-keen, and that people (particularly our government, but people in general) really mean well and will take care of us (except for the evil terrorists, of course).
Now I have a pretty strong romantic streak myself, and I like to think the best of people in general, but I was also born (and raised to have) a pretty good cynical streak, too. I'm an optimistic cynic when I'm not a cynical optimist, and blindly drinking the Kool-Aid is just not something I'm gonna do. So while I love the romanticism of the idea that every wrong thing you do leads you to the love of your life, I'm not buying into the thought that all those wrong things were somehow okay, or predestined, or whatever, and that you had to be such a doofus/bad person/patient-person-just-waiting-for-my-prince in the first place. Nor am I used to the complete acceptance of cliches, which were rampant in both the songs and the DJ chatter.
Moreover, I was raised with other principles I found strikingly missing from the music and chatter I heard on that station, principles (and cliches, I admit it) I distinctly remember being part of the country music my dad listened to when I was a girl (Kenny Rogers, Marty Robbins, Alabama, Frankie Lane, Johnny Cash, et al): that you work hard to get what you need, and that God helps those who help themselves. A happy ending isn't guaranteed, and you've got to work hard to get the things you want to have, whether it's love or a home or salvation. Even with all that hard work and risk-taking, things still might not work out (you just might get shot on the way back to El Paso), but you have to try if you're going to get anywhere.
These ideas - hard work, striving, helping yourself, the potential for a non-happy ending - were nowhere evident in what I heard on that station, except in one paean to the hard-working American soldier (and even then, nowhere in that song was any kind of suggestion that the listener make similar sacrifices of time and effort). And I find that lack even more disturbing than the trusting, passive romanticism.
I have more thoughts on this, but they're still so jumbled and in formation that I can't really express them yet. This bears more thinking on.
They're romantics.
Okay, this is a huge generalization, and I know generalizations are dangerous. Undoubtedly 90% of what I'm speculating about here is crapola; certainly it's just a theory. But it just explains so much to realize that part of the mindset is a deep, profoundly romantic streak. An optimistic mindset that everything will come out all right in the end, that all you really need is the love of a good person of the opposite gender (and a nice cold beer, prerferably handed to you by said good person), that even if you screw up God will make sure everything will be peachy-keen, and that people (particularly our government, but people in general) really mean well and will take care of us (except for the evil terrorists, of course).
Now I have a pretty strong romantic streak myself, and I like to think the best of people in general, but I was also born (and raised to have) a pretty good cynical streak, too. I'm an optimistic cynic when I'm not a cynical optimist, and blindly drinking the Kool-Aid is just not something I'm gonna do. So while I love the romanticism of the idea that every wrong thing you do leads you to the love of your life, I'm not buying into the thought that all those wrong things were somehow okay, or predestined, or whatever, and that you had to be such a doofus/bad person/patient-person-just-waiting-for-my-prince in the first place. Nor am I used to the complete acceptance of cliches, which were rampant in both the songs and the DJ chatter.
Moreover, I was raised with other principles I found strikingly missing from the music and chatter I heard on that station, principles (and cliches, I admit it) I distinctly remember being part of the country music my dad listened to when I was a girl (Kenny Rogers, Marty Robbins, Alabama, Frankie Lane, Johnny Cash, et al): that you work hard to get what you need, and that God helps those who help themselves. A happy ending isn't guaranteed, and you've got to work hard to get the things you want to have, whether it's love or a home or salvation. Even with all that hard work and risk-taking, things still might not work out (you just might get shot on the way back to El Paso), but you have to try if you're going to get anywhere.
These ideas - hard work, striving, helping yourself, the potential for a non-happy ending - were nowhere evident in what I heard on that station, except in one paean to the hard-working American soldier (and even then, nowhere in that song was any kind of suggestion that the listener make similar sacrifices of time and effort). And I find that lack even more disturbing than the trusting, passive romanticism.
I have more thoughts on this, but they're still so jumbled and in formation that I can't really express them yet. This bears more thinking on.
