Let's Talk About Rural B*llsh*t!

Such as ...

We are born of an agrarian society filled with little farmers, and despite the industrial revolution, those Norman Rockwell images of the heartland in large part resonate as our national persona even among those who have never been through Kansas' never-ending flats of corn or have ever had to drive ten miles to a grocery store.

(This is a rebuttal diary to the hugely popular Daily Kos dairy, "Let's Talk About Rural Poverty and Long Commutes.")

Look, I'd like a new FDR too, but this paint-by-numbers feel-good summary of rural America belongs on Joe Scarborogh's Heartland Hoe-Down. For instance, I'm a fourth generation Kansan. There are no "neverending flats of corn" there! It's a wheat-growing state! Another fallacy, Kansas ain't flat folks, it starts out around 800 feet at the Eastern border and rises at is goes west, to something like 4,000 feet at the Colorado border on the High Plains.

The High Plains were overbuilt in the 1880's by speculators and real estate sharks who convinced Easterners that the Plains offered much more rainfall and excitement than was indeed the case. Many of these little towns - which are comparable to failed nineties dotcoms - are now ghost towns, and largely because the area is too arid and remote for large scale habitation. The agriculture that exists depends on the Ogallala reservoir, which in another example of the "Tragedy of the Commons," is just about tapped out by the farmers and industrial farming operation. Think: Peak Ogallala.

Anyhoo, the long and short of it is that we kicked the original inhabitants off much of this Norman Rockwell-esque Grotesquerie called rural America. We did that so that we could exploit the land. Who among us can trace our ancestry beyond the 1630s? If so, you're a Native American and I WOULD LOVE your opinion about all these commuters complaining about the long drive to the Gap or wherever they slave away to make the SUV payments.

Look, if communities aren't sustainable, we shouldn't sustain `em. That goes double for the 'burbs! If the kids are leaving, maybe it's for a damn good reason. What agrarian society are you hoping to sustain? The one in Kansas with all the corn? Well, sorry to break it to you, but that's a lie that never existed.