Column: We need a candidate who tells the whole truth

[DaLveN @CSBD]

It’s mighty interesting to drive through “flyover” country, as the midsection of America is sometimes called. This summer, for family-visiting reasons, my wife and I drove round trip from Colorado to Vermont and back, with a side trip through a chunk of Ontario. Eastbound we drove through Kansas and Missouri. Westbound we skewed north through Iowa and Nebraska. In all four states, with a dash of Illinois and Indiana added, I observed a rather odd billboard phenomenon. A significant plurality of billboards advertised either “adult” video/sex toy stores or evangelical churches with anti-abortion missions. I counted for a while and they were about even on the scorecard. It is beyond my ken why this is so, but I guess in some way best left to the imagination they balance each other out. It’s like the history of Victorian England on Burma Shave signs. (Look it up, youngsters.) Behind a façade of Christian sobriety, folks in the heartland apparently whoop it up behind closed doors. For some reason it made me think about Mike Pence. Having a lot of time and little traffic, my eye constantly drifted to the landscape. I saw disappointment in all directions. Successful farms were evident and massive — the mammoth footprint of agribusiness stomped all over the land. But the smaller parcels, fragments of family farms and farm towns, were abandoned or in the midst of being foreclosed by weather, gravity or banks: warped, gray siding; rusted equipment and weed-tangled yards; broken swing sets and old bicycles. I found myself saddened by the lost hope represented in every frame. My mind’s eye saw a child thrilled by a new bike, or a parent erecting a swing set. And then I saw the faded, drooping remains of what had been someone’s proud new home or the deteriorating evidence of a long ago joyful moment. It wasn’t all bleak, of course. Most exits from the highway had the ubiquitous representations of commercial culture — McDonald’s, Dunkin’ Donuts, Holiday Inn (though few folks spend holidays in these places). But between the predictable oases designed for passers-through, the countryside was mostly tired and dreary. Back in Vermont I couldn’t shake the feeling, especially when visiting St. Johnsbury and other parts of the Northeast Kingdom. Rural New England is rural Nebraska with more hills. Perhaps it’s just the effects of age — the reality of long life experience, where all new bicycles eventually rust, every porch sags and each cultivated field is inevitably taken back by nature. These cycles have always been part of life. But for most of American history there have been new bicycles, renovated barns and new swing sets for grandchildren. Now, in most of America, deterioration is rapidly outpacing renewal. The juxtaposition of rural dreariness with agribusiness prosperity is a snapshot of America in this era. Our common infrastructure is falling to pieces, while islands of garish consumption grow more obscene. Real wages stagnate while the stock market rises inexorably. Amazon has reduced thousands of Main Streets to ghost towns. Cargill and other corporate behemoths have nearly destroyed the family farms that sustained us for several centuries. Outsourcing and automation have left machine shops, textile mills and manufacturing facilities to rot and rust by roadsides and riversides all over America. Major pharmaceutical companies have squirreled away billions while victims of opioid addiction languish in the dark shadows of forgotten towns. The mal-distribution of wealth and opportunity in America today is not a new thing. The gilded age was even more conspicuously obscene, but economic depression, war and a generation of progressive politics ultimately brought it down. This time the oligarchy is more clever, having convinced a plurality of Americans that their interests will be served by allowing unfettered enterprise. Tides have indeed risen, but they are floating the yachts, not the dinghies. America’s problems are complex. I have great empathy for those who turn to some combination of numbing drugs and evangelic churches (or adult toys). Empathy aside, it is baffling that the majority of rural Americans supports a president who intends nothing good for them — or anyone else. The 2020 election may be the last chance to save the country I’ve grown up in. It’s not too late to reverse the relationship between deterioration and renewal, but it requires revolutionary change, not modest tinkering. There is only one candidate who tells the truth — the whole truth. Vote Bernie 2020. You may not love him, but we don’t have to love the paramedic who is most likely to get our heart beating again. Steve Nelson lives in Boulder, Colo., and Sharon. He can be reached at stevehutnelson@gmail.com.

Edited October 21, 2019 by DaLveN @CSBD