Politics, as seen from the sticks

Since George Bush defeated John Kerry for president last Tuesday, the media has hyped a country sharply divided between Republicans and Democrats. Is the division one between political parties or is it between people with different cultures? If you study post-election maps for voting patterns, it looks as if the division is between city and country people. It just may be that those who live in layers in cities see the world differently from rural people who live linearly close to the earth.

When Kerry conceded the election, city people, media included, acted as if they had been blindsided by the Republican Party. They are still at it one week later. The headlines of Monday morning’s online New York Times linked three election stories. One was “Music Review: American Revolution Tour: Mixing the Rednecks with the Blue States.” The Washington Post ran “Evangelical Led GOP Efforts.” The Chicago Tribune posted, “Illinois: A Blue Island in a Red Sea.”

The last one says it all. If you look at the election maps for all states and their counties or election districts, you will find only two or three states that are a blue sea. The interior of all the other states is a sea of red, with blue islands denoting city voting.

On Wednesday, the soul searching began in those blue islands. What went wrong? How could the Republicans fool so many people? It had to be traumatic for them to realize that they were the minority. It’s no secret that the prevailing opinion is that city dwellers are more tolerant and civilized, better educated, and at the center of American culture. Cities are where the famous and wealthy live.

Last Wednesday they had to surrender their superiority to the rurals. One reporter wrote: How isolated would you be if you were pro-Kerry and lived in a red county in Tennessee or Arkansas?

What this reporter overlooks is that the red county in Tennessee was closely divided between the two parties’ candidates, a mirror of most of the country. What this reporter failed to see was that those Tennessee voters live together, know one another, and talk the same language. After the polls closed, votes were counted, and the winner decided, they went back to work with one another.

Evidently this hasn’t happened in large cities, where bitterness and disbelief persists, where election analysis is on-going. They may be the isolated ones who don’t see the full American picture, one that includes country people.

There was a pre-election clue that showed this lack of vision. In the month preceding the election, the Democrats gave up on West Virginia, pulling most of their money out of the state to spend in the battleground ones. West Virginians are die-hard Democrats, notorious for their straight-ticket voting. Last Tuesday, as usual, Democrats won most of the local and state elections. But the Republican presidential ticket garnered the state’s five electoral votes. What does this say about the Republican candidate? It says his values are closer to those of West Virginia Democrats. The Democrats didn’t see this when they were looking for a candidate?

Another thing that city people miss is that the country is not Mayberry anymore, that “The Waltons” and “Little House on the Prairie” are dated. Today, descendants of English, German and French pioneers are not the only ones you find in the phone book. Mixed in with them are exotic names of people from places like India, Pakistan, Mexico and Russia. It’s not unusual in small town America to live next door to a Japanese immigrant. Cities no longer have a lock on multiculturalism.

If city people shape their vision of the country from watching Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie’s TV show “The Simple Life,” they are getting a distorted view of America’s hinterlands. On the other hand, country people have lots of shows they can glean information from. They see Chicago through Oprah’s eyes; New York City from shows like “Friends,” “Seinfeld” and “Sex in the City”; Los Angeles from Jay Leno, and Seattle from “Frasier.” They recognize the Sears Tower, Empire State Building, Times Square, Central Park, Flatiron Building, Rodeo Drive, Beverly Hills, and the Space Needle when they visit those cities showcased on TV.

Country people travel. That may be because they live linearly along roads. And who doesn’t want to see where the road will take you? They also leave for jobs, for concerts and conventions, for shows and sightseeing, to shop, to study at a university, to get medical help at a major hospital. Their city counterparts don’t have the same motivations to travel, especially to the countryside where everybody knows there’s not much to do.

City people might not understand those who notice that the warm November sun is making the grass grow, who don’t mind the earthy smell of farms and farm animals, earth worms and newly turned soil. They might not understand those who sit on the front porch or the patio and watch the moon rise over the mountain, or the plain, or the desert. Unlike the porch sitters, they might not notice the plane, going somewhere, leaving a contrail in the sky.

City people might not understand country living, but if they want their party’s candidate to be elected, they had better try. They could begin by studying the Democrats elected in the red states. Maybe they should consider someone for president who speaks the language of the hinterlands, the boondocks, the language of evangelicals, Pentecostals, and other terms that they paint us with. Maybe they should consider people like Virginia’s governor, Mark Warner, and West Virginia’s Joe Manchin, men who probably noticed last Friday night that the wind blew so hard, it blew all the leaves off the trees, leaving the region looking like winter has arrived.