[FRIAM] The year ahead

[Owen Densmore]

Steve: You might like the RedNeck Liberal.
  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTHsQd-vRXK1bp4vpifl6yA

   -- Owen

On Sun, Jan 8, 2017 at 9:51 PM, Steven A Smith <sasmyth at swcp.com> wrote:

>
> Gary -
>
>  I remember a recent Facebook post by one of my cousins that said
> something along the lines of "people have forgotten what an alpha male is
> like, and Trump is going to show them."
>
> I have been enjoying this kind of rhetoric among my Trumpian friends.  It
> gives me the opportunity to exhibit my own often-hidden alpha male side.
> I'm the guy who doesn't anger easily at all, but somehow manages to break
> up every bar-fight I have witnessed...  other's anger and/or alpha-male
> behaviour brings mine out in (usually) fairly balanced and productive
> way.   I think I am not the only one.  I think we will see plenty of
> presumed "yellow bellied liberals" stepping up into the face of these
> "alpha males".   It will include females and plenty of all gender
> identifications who do not identify as alpha.   I recently saw a grey
> haired woman with a firm jaw and a steely gaze wearing a T-shirt that said
> "this pussy bites back!"   I've got her back (if she needs it).
>
> This is closely tied to the religious fundamentalism of the south, which
> to my thinking, is damn close to that of Christian cults (I don't have any
> personal experience, just going by what I've read about figures like David
> Koresh and the Branch Dividians, and the Hollywood prortrayal of them).
>
> There was a pretty good story/study on the history of the southern
> (redneck/hillbilly/???) aesthetic/mind-set, I'll try to find the
> reference.  My parents were both born and raised in the hIlls of Kentucky.
> They identified as escaped or reformed, or recovering hillbillies.   They
> moved west in 1949 for my father to become a professional forester...
> "picnic" in the woods every day he called the work.  They left behind most
> if not all of their Applachian legacy.  The premise of the story had to do
> with the marginalized Scots-Irish immigrants on the eastern seaboard who
> flooded through the Cumberland Gap and then spread south as the pressures
> of civilization squeezed these strong people who had the wicked-pride and
> quick tempers of their "Highlander" forefathers.  These were the people for
> whom Hadrian had to build a wall, not unlike the one in China to slow the
> Mongols.    The story included a study (I think using MRIs) showing that
> their subjects had an instant fight/flight response from stimuli that
> others did not... basically anything vaguely affronting their honor,
> triggered this.  I think the conclusion that this was a result of nurture,
> not nature, that there was something in the culture that propogated
> habituation to this response, not genetics.   I  think the recent book "Hillbilly
> Elegy <http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27161156-hillbilly-elegy>" also
> touches on these topics.
>
> I grew up in western redneckia, another hillbilly culture really.   And I
> mean that fondly.  Salt of the Earth, hard working people who got their
> hands dirty every day, left plenty of sweat, and sometimes tears and blood
> behind on their work product (cattle, ore, timber).  They worked in what is
> now considered "extractive industries" (ranching, mining, logging). In
> their mind, they are the *source* of all good and necessary things.  If you
> eat food or grain or produce from a store, use toilet paper, copper wire,
> or 2x4s, you have to admit they are "onto" something there.  They had good
> reason to be proud, but in my estimation, for better or worse, the time for
> that work and the way of life required to be good at is now long past.
> THEY came from two types of stock.  Hispanic descendents from the Rio
> Grande Valley who moved 100+ miles west to "greener pastures" in the
> 1850s.  Younger sons of new world "nobility" who would not inherit much if
> anything in a strongly paternal/patronage system.  And then a flood of
> Confederate Soldiers after their defeat in the 1860s.   The former were
> pastoral, the latter ranged from being "wild cowboys" to literal outlaws
> (think Billy the Kid, Ketchum, Evans, Kinney, High Fives, etc) .   The tale
> of Elfego Baca is a good read.  So is Conagher (L'Amour).  Romanticizes
> both sides of that equation.   I grew up with both Bacas and McCarty's,
> descendents of these two proud if nuttier than a fruitcake "hillbilly
> families" there WAS cultural if not genetic inbreeding afoot.    This town
> (Village of Reserve, county of Catron, NM) voted to *require* every head of
> household to own a gun.  I'm sure my entire 1st grade class of 20 now own
> guns (with ammo) including the girls.  I don't know how well it was
> enforced... but you get the drift.
>
> Somewhere in this mix, a big dose of fear of the government controlling
> our lives leads to fierce defense of the right to have guns - despite the
> more "moderate" views in the NRA of needing guns for hunting and self
> defense, the most strongly held view is that they are necessary to take
> back the country if the government gets too powerful. I must admit being
> torn on that issue myself. I don't buy the whole "I'll give up my gun when
> they pry it from my cold dead hands" mindset, but I'm also pretty
> suspicious of an overly strong centralized government. You can take the boy
> out of the country...
>
> This town (Village of Reserve, county of Catron, NM) voted to *require*
> every head of household to own a gun.
>
> I also lived in the Mining and Smelter towns of Silver City, NM and
> Douglas AZ.  Different but not that much.
>
> There is still a lot of country in this boy too, thank Gawdess I found my
> way out of most of the narrow thought patterns of those I grew up among,
> bless their hearts.
>
> I own a gun, but no ammunition, otherwise I might use it.
>
> I identify as Viking, but maybe I'm all Pict?
>
> Don't piss me off Donald, I'm telling ya!  Not all "alpha-white-males"
> want anything to do with you, your bully style, and your privileged,
> xenophobic, misogynistic ways.  I attribute much of my "recovery" to a good
> general education in the Arts and Sciences... I think if I'd gone straight
> engineering or business or some "trade",  I could have missed the
> philosophy, anthropology, psychology, literature, and other bits I needed
> to "become more human".  If I'd gone straight into the workforce (in some
> extractive industry?) ditto.
>
> I have very well trained (not educated?) friends who probably voted a
> straight ticket of Reagan/Bush/Bush/Trump right down the line, and are very
> proud of their "rational practicality" or somesuch.   We may yet have folks
> on the list here who feel this way.  I'm sorry if we squelch your voice...
> I voted for Reagan once, that cured me, but it has been a long recovery
> beyond that.
>
> We all take different paths.
>
> Carry on,
>  - Steve
>
>
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