In the post election mortem there has emerged a lot of the stuff that falls out of the back ends of bulls about the “heartland” of America. The reference—and this comes from both parties—is to the “center” of the country, the part that these days that is colored red. An aspect of this is the residue of good old-fashioned American “regionalism.” Regionalism was that notion, expressed in paintings and novels in the early decades of the past century, when cities had overtaken the countryside both demographically and economically. It alleged that the true spirit of American, the “heartland,” was in the small towns and rural areas. This might be expected in a nation one of whose founding fathers, Thomas Jefferson, said that “great cities are a sore upon the body politic.” The myth of the yeoman farmer and small town American remains alive and well, and is retained as a location where those “moral values” are rooted deep in the soil and preached from white clapboard churches. The “real” America, the heartland regionalists contend, is not in those multicultural, multi-colored, multi-sexual, cities.
Red-state-heartland politics, which are basically George Bush-religious right politics, draw great strength from this myth. It is a place of “straight talk,” “staying the course” no matter what, a countervail to moral relativity of those elitist bastards in big coastal cities, and their dirty movies, their Internet, and their same-sex marriages. It is a place that can produce good, patriotic boys and girls to go and kill whomever their commander–in-chief says are terrorists. And so the myth gains strength as a moral stronghold, the place to go and find America when it seems to have lost its bearings.
It should be said that there are a lot of “pink” and “purple” people in America’s heartlands. In the political spectrum “pinkies” are those who have enough reality in their lives to know that the heartland is a myth, but will not or cannot part with it because they have nowhere else to go, physically, morally, or politically. “Purple people” have already “gone” somewhere, usually to one of the major cities in the “heartland,” first to work in a factory, and these days, more and more as their jobs are out-sourced, to be a Wal Mart drone with a plastic “howdy” smile. For them the farm or the little shop or a business in a small town are long gone. They know they just might need unions, public assistance, government-supported health care, and a lot of other stuff that doesn’t fit the myth of the self-reliant heartlander. It’s the mixture of red and blue that make a “purple” person, often with red “moral values” and blue political leanings. Purple people occupied the no-man’s land that was the prime battleground, and most of them voted their red values instead of their best interests.
But what is this “heartland”? Yes, it is first of all the region that produces most of our foodstuff and other natural resources. But these days that is produced predominantly by big corporate agribusinesses, not family farmers, and oil, gas and coal are produced by similar corporations. The fact is that mythical heartland America is an economic drag. Most every red state is a fiscal welfare recipient that receives much more in Federal revenue than it contributes in taxes and agriculture is the biggest hog at the trough. Nine of the ten states that get the most federal dollars and pay the least in taxes are red. Eight of the ten states that receive the least and pay the most are blue. So much for self-reliance. And as to family values? Massachusetts, the capital of gay marriage, has the lowest divorce rate. Nine of the ten lowest divorce rates are blue states, most in the Northeast. The people that end up paying for the price supports, the welfare, the farms loans, the disaster relief, and the rest that goes to red states are taxpayers in blue states.
Now the Bush administration, bent on paying off its faithful red voters, wants to soak the blue states more. In the guise of overhauling the tax code, one of his campaign promises, Bush is floating the proposal that would kill the deduction for state and local taxes. Dropping this deduction from Federal taxes would fall much harder on citizens of blues states such as New York and California, which have state income taxes (9.3% and 6.5%, respectively, than on states like Texas and Florida, which have no state income taxes at all. Hey, and if they can keep those homosexuals from marrying, then their estates can go to the red states as well.
Heartland? What heartland? America’s heartland has been in its cities and on its Northeast and Western coasts since the 1920s, and anybody who takes an de-mythologized look and the economic, social and intellectual progress of America will be able to see that. Bush’s “heartland” has been more like a third world backwater living off its urban relatives and exculpating itself of biting the hand that feeds it with its, former slave-owning, backward, Bible-thumping morality. What a waste that a half-million people had to die ton keep these states, and the likes of Strom Thurmond, Jesse Helms, and Trent Lott, in the Union. What were we thinking? [Next, the Homeland]
___________________________________
©2004, James A. Clapp (UrbisMedia Ltd. Pub. 12.11.2004)