Looking back, I remember Barrack Obama’s Keynote Address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention like it was yesterday. As a bitter, recent college graduate, clinging to the liberal idealism of academia, I saw, in Obama, an end to the divisive nature of partisan politics.
“Do we participate in the politics of cynicism, or do we participate in a politics of hope,” Obama asked his audience.
His tone was direct and powerful. His cadence was calm and comforting, like that of a pastor. I found myself wanting to shout, “Amen,” as he sought to dispel the myth of a “liberal” and “conservative” America, of “red states” and “blue states,” assuring us all that “we worship an awesome God in the blue states, and we don’t like federal agents poking around in our libraries in the Red States.” Obama’s entire speech was built on understanding those different from him and for the first time in my life, I felt that a politician understood my unique views.
As I learned more about Obama and rediscovered my own conservative roots, my interest in the Illinois senator began to wane, but even after the Jeremiah Wright fiasco I looked at Barry Obama as a harmless threat—a misguided socialist who actually believed the words he spoke at the 2004 convention. Obviously, his pastor and his wife had anger issues, but Obama was your typical, over educated, under churched American who wishes to make a god out of the government to replace the God they have destroyed. He wouldn’t get my vote and his ability to draw guilty white voters annoyed me, but Barry, personally, had not done anything to offend me.
Then I read this quote:
“You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them, and they fell through the Clinton Administration, and the Bush Administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”
As I read the quote, I allowed myself to soak in the emotion. I knew at first glance what Mr. Barry H. Obama was trying to say, because I used to think like Mr. Barry H. Obama. This particular train of thought, this over simplified explanation for the state of our nation, is one I heard in many a college lecture hall. I was reminded of an American history course I took in college, an entire course, built upon the premise that the modern American political, social and cultural schisms can best be reduced to a conflict of corporate values, favored by rural Americans, and the individual liberties, favored by the urban and educated. In other words, rural American find solace in the things that bring them together, their shared beliefs, and want a government to reflect these values (e.g. “guns and God”), while urban, educated Americans feel that the government is a tool to be used to create and sustain personal liberties.
The implication is that rural Americans are either too stupid or are too naïve to understand what is best for them and they need the urban/educated person to make those decisions for them. The thought process is not isolated to academia. Thomas Frank explored the subject thoroughly in his book, What’s The Matter With Kansas?, where he attempts to show how the value-oriented, yet simple minded folks from Kansas, have been duped into voting against the own interests by the promise of more God and less government.
And as a matter of full confession, I’ve been guilty of thinking the same things about my native land.
As you may know, I’m originally from East Texas, a land full of roughnecks, rednecks, wildcatters and lumberjacks. I spent the first twenty-six years of my life here, learning from the sturdy people inhabiting the area and lamenting over their apparent lack of social and cultural evolution. I often thought to myself that the pine trees, which grow so abundantly in East Texas, were not only responsible for disrupting cell phone signals, but signals of change—political, social and cultural—as well.
Daydreaming helped me cope; I pictured myself in a Woody Allen movie, walking the streets of the city, engaged in stimulating conversations about Nietzsche, Felini, and Cole Porter with like-minded individuals. Indeed, I longed to be an Ivy League-educated, East Coast intellectual. Upon moving to Dallas in 2005, I found city life wasn’t what the movies made it out to be. I had the apartment with a downtown view and I even had the neighbors with the fancy degrees, but what I soon learned was that I was surrounded by hopeless dependants—out of touch trust funders and yuppies with MBA’s who understood the value of a dollar, but couldn’t comprehend the value of a hard day’s work or the value of an independent life.
I knew I had to reconnect with my roots, the roots that lie in the same ground as the roots of the pines, roots that connected me to people in touch with reality.
I thought of the party I was at on New Years Eve 1999. As the rest of the world worried about the possibility of the collapse of Western Civilization because of a computer glitch, my friends remarked that everything we ate that night was either caught or killed by us. The water came from a well in the ground that could be manually operated in a pinch and in the spring and summer there was a full vegetable garden. We had guns. We had food. We had water. We were completely self sufficient and we didn’t need the government’s help to survive. We clung to our guns, not out of bitterness, but out of necessity and because of our roots.
I thought of a lady who helped rear me, an aging African-American lady named Claudine. She told everyone she met the story about how she brought me home from the hospital after I was born, never noting the difference in the shades of our melanin. It was at that point that my bond with her was formed. She taught me so much about life. Whether it was the 23rd Psalms or about the life of Dr. King, Claudine played an indelible role in shaping who I am today. As I grew older, Claudine called me on my birthday and Christmas to see how I was doing, reminding me to stay true to my roots, her roots, roots that intertwine with the roots of the pines.
My best friend’s grandfather, a man I call “Grandpa,” also taught me the significance of letting roots take hold in my life. Like other members of the “Greatest Generation”, Grandpa saw a “Great Depression”, a world war against an evil dictator, a Cold War and the rise of the United States as the world’s lone super power. However, Grandpa’s story stands out even among this group of American icons. Not only did Grandpa survive the Great Depression, he also survived lung cancer and regained his vision after being blind for over a year. Not only did Grandpa’s service to America foster and nurture her growth into the world’s only super power, he also fostered and nurtured six kids and later in life became the sole guardian/supporter of three grandchildren. While many members of the “Greatest Generation” retired years ago and spend their days playing bingo, Grandpa continues to work in the garage in his backyard. Harvard educated students must plagiarize in order to capture an audience; this “shade tree” mechanic just talks about his life, staying true to his roots, my roots, the roots of the pines, teaching us all what life really means.
These are lessons that Barry Obama will never understand. These are people that Barry Obama will never understand. These are the roots that Barry Obama will never understand.
You see, it is these roots, not bitterness, that causes these people, including myself, to cling to God and country. It is a belief that the individual is far greater than the government and that, by the grace of God, a person can achieve whatever he or she sets out to accomplish.
This scares the hell out of people like Obama, because it is people in small towns in East Texas, in Pennsylvania, all across this nation, that by their actions and words, tell Obama and other socialists, we don’t need what you’re selling. We don’t need government in our health care. We don’t need government in our economy. We need the government to protect our nation from foreign and domestic threats and leave us the hell alone and that means Barry Obama is out of job.
What the hell is Obama going to do outside of politics? He has no life skills. He has no trade.
