(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Adventures in Flyover Country [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.', 'Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags'] Date: 2023-01-30 The first step in Vegan Chili Warning: This is a very long diary. It is highly personal. It contains a wide diversity of triggering content. And this is only Part One. {Before I start I want to make sure that I am clear. When I say Flyover Country I am being ironic. I am a redneck, a Jack Pine savage and more than a bit hillbilly, when I was young I carried rifles on a rack in my pickup truck, and I have ridden horses since before I can remember. I am a sixth generation rancher with roots in Montana that on my white side go back to 1806 and on my Indigenous side go back at least 11,000 years. I love the parts of America often called, with disdain, Flyover Country.} I am currently covering my local ER. It is not busy, wild understatement, and I am using the time to read DailyKos and the various online news magazines and newspapers that I use to keep up with the world. I work at reading news and opinion pieces from across the political spectrum and around the world trying to avoid ending up in an echo chamber. And just so you know I am only being paid if and when patients show up. I had reached a point where I listened to my news more than I read it and had retired from medicine because of my eye problems (constant blinking and twitches in surrounding muscles). My Doctors finally figured out what was wrong and how to fix it. I am indulging myself in an orgy of reading. I am also back working full time. Though I am still mostly using dictation software to “write” this essay because I still suffer trembling in my hands when I overuse them. I can control the tremors when doing surgery but not when I am writing, go figure. The most interesting thing I have read so far was a Time article in my apple news feed. It is called, The U.S. is Heading Toward a Second Civil War. Here Is How We Avoid It. The author is Peter Coleman whose latest book is The Way Out: How to Overcome Toxic Polarization. Coleman is a Professor of Psychology and Education at Columbia University. For 25 years his research has been focused on understanding intractable conflicts and intervening constructively. I urge you to read the article and check out the book. Two paragraphs from the article stood out for me. I am what Dr. Coleman would call a cross-cutter. A cross-cutter is someone who links traditionally separate or independent parties or interests. I cross back and forth across the American political divide with ease. As a multiracial person I also cross racial divides though not as easily. As a scientist who is also committed to the spiritual aspects of my Indigenous heritage and the religious faith of my white heritage I cross those divides only with difficulty. I generally upset everyone along the way. Dr. Coleman in his article describes his nervousness when talking to a neighbor with a deeply conservative and Republican mindset. I can’t relate to his nervousness. I talk with Republicans every day. Sometimes they are even sitting in a Diner while we talk. Sometimes that is my wife’s Diner or my son-in-law’s. This diary is in part about what Republicans and other rural residents really talk about in Diners (take home: it isn’t what the media report). Then there are all the expat Republicans I am trying to convince to vote Democratic. I am making progress with some of these Republicans and convinced 11 to vote Democratic for at least the midterms. One didn’t vote at all in the midterms. She had voted Republican in every election in which she was eligible to vote and just couldn’t force herself to vote Republican in the midterms. Voting Democratic was unthinkable. This diary is also about how I talked them into switching their votes. Lastly, this diary is about a trip I took this summer through a big chunk of Flyover America, the Republicans I met along the way, and what I learned from them about the state of America today. Yes, what I learned from Republicans (some of them are Independents technically but lean strongly to the right). The trip challenged many of my assumptions about the future of America. Parenthetically, one of my goals for this trip was to do it all by EV. My plan was to use a Vauxhall Vivaro-e with a 75 kWh battery. These batteries take around 45 minutes to charge with a typical 100 kW public charger. Finding charging stations and filling the time it took to charge the battery became one of the best parts of the trip. The van was the ultimate ice breaker starting dozens of conversations with people from all walks of life. Even the few times it broke down led to me meeting some wonderful people and having a number of amazing conversations. I have no idea if these people were Republican or Democratic. I can tell you my easy and friendly interactions with total strangers led to me feeling like America may not be the festering pot of hatred soup almost ready to boil over into violence that I keep reading about in the news media. With each chance encounter my anxiety about the future of democracy in America fell. Then I started talking with people I knew for sure were Republicans. One of my favorite Vegan Broths Most of the Republicans I know personally and talked to on this trip are members of the American Gentry. This is my own tribe, class, demographic, or however you want to put it. These are my people. I am not entirely happy they are my people, but that doesn’t change the facts. One of those facts is that a majority of the American Gentry are committed Trump voters. In addition, way too many are full blown insurrectionists for me to feel happy to find myself in their company. There is an exception to this general trend. In the American Gentry there are still some actual farmers and ranchers. Most members of the American Gentry don’t do anything as blue collar as farming or ranching. They own farm dealerships, fruit processing plants, concrete plants, chains of drug stores, bundles of hardware stores, multiple McDonald’s franchises and so on. Their assets are in Rural America, their mansions are in Florida. The actively ranching and farming subclass of the American Gentry share many things in common. We are all entrepreneurs. We are all philanthropists. We all volunteer our own time to various community groups. We all make our living in rural North America and we live there. Maybe most importantly we are all deeply committed conservationists. There are many ways I and some of the other conservationists stand out. Most of the Republicans I talk with are straight, white, heteronormative and cisgender. But some, at least with me, admit to being gay, lesbian, or like me, bisexual. I also know and talk regularly with a number of Republicans who like me are multiracial. The most common mixing is Métis. Additionally, there are non gender conforming Republicans in my social network and I am gender diverse. I am seriously debating changing my pronouns. (Not a joke, not defiance, not owning Republicans, dead serious.) There are other things that bond the larger group: elite educations, a love of country music, use of guns for recreation and hunting, social and cultural Christianity, cosmopolitan travel, and speaking more than one language. One of the stickiest glues that holds us together is we don’t have incomes, we have assets. Nobody would confuse any of us with “real Americans”. I hate the whole “Real American” meme. I particularly hate it when my friends wrap themselves in the flag of the Real America. Average Americans do not own tens of thousands of acres of America nor do they employ hundreds of people. They also don’t have multiple degrees, often professional or graduate degrees, from Ivy League schools. I could go on and on but make no mistake the American Gentry are not average Americans. Don’t get me wrong. Almost all of the ranching gentry still spend part of our day doing manual labor, breaking ice on the cattle waterers, shoveling shit out of barns, doing mechanical maintenance on combines, tractors and swathers. We ride horses to get from point A to B and roundup stray cow calf pairs along the way. We grew up on farms and ranches. We have deep roots in rural America but it is the people who work for us that could legitimately claim “Real American” status. My trip through Flyover America started with a meeting in Havre. It was a 3 day meeting to talk with other ranchers about an ongoing initiative that is near and dear to all our hearts. I and this group of friends are trying to make sure that all the genetic lines of the native plants of the grasslands are preserved and protected. The idea isn’t to collect seed and stick it in a freezer but to insure these plants are growing and thriving at multiple locations in North America, on farms and ranches, protected by covenants and easements. This session was dedicated to wild legumes. We took tours of different ranch sites that had committed to preserving local wild legumes. We talked about the program with the owners and staff of each plant hosting ranch. Our organization will pay them to maintain specific plants but it is a pittance and we appreciate the hell out of them working with our organization in its infancy. The best part is they fed us and then those of us with instruments would all play together while the rest danced. The hosts invited friends and family and I worked on building our network when I wasn’t fiddling. The attendees were ranchers from British Columbia, Colorado, Oregon, Wyoming, Alberta, Montana, Idaho, North and South Dakota, and Saskatchewan. They were mostly Conservative or Republican voters. As the only admitted environmentalist, socialist (Canada’s NDP), and Democrat I took some serious teasing. My showing up in an EV didn’t help much. I responded by trying to get all the Republicans to commit to voting Democratic in the then upcoming midterms. The final step in Vegan Chili. This is plant based Ground Beef from gardien. Of course every step has chili pepper added and a few hot chiles from my garden. I also add cumin. I served this for dinner the night I am about to describe. Just in a much larger quantity. Yes, I served Vegan chili to Republican ranchers along with Vegan cornbread and biscuits. It was a huge hit. And yes they knew what they were eating. Late at night, sitting around the fire drinking fine single malt Scotch Whiskey, I told you we aren’t Real Americans, my electioneering led to some really interesting conversations. The first night got off to a rollicking start when one of the women, Sue, from Wyoming proposed a toast, “To Wyoming, unbelievably beautiful place but incredibly stupid people.” Sue was deeply angry over the rejection of Liz Cheney by her fellow Wyoming Republicans. It turned out most of the attendees were horrified by the takeover of their party by the cult of Trump. And they all belief it is a hostile takeover. I stupidly interrupted this cry from the heart of my friends by asking them. “then why don’t you just vote Democratic?” Me and my big mouth. {An aside, I just called Sue and asked her about Wyoming’s plan to ban the sale of EVs. Her response was succinct, “Fucking coal humping dildos. Why do we insist on trying to prove that people who live in Wyoming are all brain dead.”} “Democrats are coastal elitists who want to destroy our way of life,” Sue screamed. I just laughed. Sue went to Yale and then Georgetown Law. She has a large ranch operation that is appraised at $38,000,000 and a thriving albeit small chain of grocery stores. That seems pretty elite to me. Thankfully Sue startled to giggle, the giggle turned into a full force belly laugh and by then everyone was laughing. Much as I maintain that I am poor and working class I know that is a matter of how you see things. I am cash poor and I will be doing hard manual labor and fixing my own equipment right up until my daughters drag me off to the nursing home. On the other hand I am like Sue, elite (west coast) education, own land spread over 3 states and 3 provinces and a thriving, albeit small, tech company. Neither Sue or I carry debt of any kind. We are absolutely typical of America’s ranching gentry. Most of our wealth is in ridiculously over priced land. Land we don’t want to sell no matter how much it is worth. This where Dan jumped in. Dan and I first met many moons ago while he was studying engineering and I was studying botany and horticulture. We were in a contest to see who could build the best bridge across the University’s pool out of nothing more than paper as the principle building product. Dan won with a wildly creative design. I was a close second. My design was very medieval. Then I bumped into him at a battle robot competition where he and his team trounced me and my team. Next up we worked on a solar car together. Then we worked together reclaiming a coal mine. It was our joint Master’s thesis project. We aren’t exactly friends but we have a hell of a trust relationship. ”Come on, Sue. You know we only vote Republican because we don’t know what is in our own best interest,” Dan said. Everybody started laughing again. I heard this expression used with scathing sarcasm over and over again as I traveled this summer. Usually followed by gut rupturing laughter. Then Dan looked at me and said, ”George, in all seriousness, I vote Republican because the Democratic Party scares the hell out of me. Everybody here knows that way too many Democrats think of us the way we think of the shit on the bottom of our boots. Or worse. ”Democrats think we are all mentally deficient hicks. Then they come up with nonsense like the Green New Deal and Defund the Police.” ”Don’t forget we are all racists. And white supremacists,” Jeff added. “Apparently, I am a race traitor because I vote Republican.” Jeff is Sqelix w. What white people and even a lot of Indigenous people call Salish, or more commonly and locally Flathead. He and I are unique in this group. We are the only ones who can trace our ancestors in Montana to before Lewis and Clark’s arrival in 1806. Dan continued, ”I think our choice right now is between autocratic fascists and technocratic fascists. I fear the technocrats far more. “The autocrats are greedy grifters. They will say anything to get elected. America would be better off without them and their billionaire buddies and the lies they tell. That the Christian Right have cozied up to them has made me doubt my own Christianity. “The technocrats are more threatening because they are motivated by being right. That is fine if you are right. But God help us if the technocrats are wrong. They won’t ever admit it and change things because they are ideologues, true believers. The only Democratic politician I have ever met with a grain of common sense is Jon (Tester). The rest are a basketful of air heads.” Then he pointed at me, like he was saying “take that.” What I said in response was pure spontaneous and right from the gut. ”I have my own reservations about the pragmatism of many Democrats but I abhor cruelty. I know all of you well enough to know none of us use spurs or carry a crop or whip when we ride. None of us would whip an animal but you are voting for politicians who would think nothing of whipping humans. ”The Republican Party is the party of cruelty. None of us are cruel. On its best day the Democratic Party is Temple Grandin. On its worst day the Republican Party is the Marquis de Sade.” And the fight was on. But I’d hit a nerve. Over the next two nights we came to an agreement that banning abortion is cruel, stupid, and criminal. Getting there was easy, much to my amazement. The other Canadians helped, particularly Betty, a rancher from Saskatchewan who told the story of her rape, resulting pregnancy and abortion. Her parents threw her out because of the abortion. Today Betty farms and ranches on over 59,000 acres. She has three children and five grandchildren and more than 200 employees. And she has worked relentlessly in both Canada and the U.S. to make sure every woman has access to Abortion. She has made it clear that she will be voting NDP in the next Federal Election. As a dual citizen Betty has abandoned the Republican Party and will hold her nose and vote Democratic. Banning abortion was the final straw for her. Sue admitted she was leaning left in November. We also realized we all think Big Oil, Big Pharma, and Big Ag are a plague, a pestilence that needs to be burnt to the ground. We want huge taxes on the 1% (even though most of us are in that tax bracket) and particularly the 0.1%. We also agreed on the need to reinforce and enforce antitrust laws. Then there is the Obama Promise. President Obama during his first Presidential campaign gave a speech as he sought the Democratic nomination for President (Iowa, 2007) in which he brilliantly explained the crisis in American farming and ranching. He identified Big Ag and Big Ag friendly policies as having a critical part in causing the crisis. He spoke of the need to return agriculture to family farmers. You can watch then Senator Obama proving he knew the causes of and cures for the deterioration in Rural America. Just read this article and click on the link. That speech was in 2007. It is 2022 and almost none of these things President Obama said should be done have been done. Nobody blamed President Obama, we all know the power of Big Ag and that President Obama inherited an economic shit show. We did agree that somebody needs to keep the Obama Promise. Senator Jon Tester is right when he says Rural America is drying up and something needs to be done. I and my Republican friends live that reality. The environmental crisis: global warming, drought, pollution, the loss of pollinators and soil erosion is combining with the grinding of independent agricultural businesses by the pernicious parasites of Big Ag to destroy Rural America and leave America just a few years away from not being able to feed itself. Truth be told, I couldn’t argue with my Republican friends that other than Senator Tester no Democratic politician seems to give a shit about Rural America never mind understanding rural issues. I couldn’t think of another Democrat that is identified as having rural roots, never mind one that has made saving Rural America their signature issue. As Dan said on our last night together, “Democrats have no credibility when they say we are voting against our self interest. If they don’t live here, among us, they know precisely nothing about our self interests. They just want to impose their self interests on us and we are just saying, fuck no.” This is where Sue cut in, “George, the problem I am having is you are not a typical Democrat. You don’t believe in top down solutions, big government, or revolutionary ideas. You hate government waste more than anybody I have ever met. You think small and local is the answer to everything. That and entrepreneurship. You can’t stand it when somebody denigrates rural America and rural Americans. We all think you are an Eisenhower Republican.” ”What Sue is trying to say is the only reason any of us are thinking of voting Democratic is because we hate Trump and his ass licking toadies and because we know you and other Democrats like you. The way we see it most rural Democratic candidates are nice enough people but they are puppet candidates spewing Democratic DC dogma,” Jeff interjected. “Like poor Governor Bullock. Sacrificed to the idiocy of the coastal elites.” ”I always hate it when some dipshit politician tells me about things I am an expert in and gets it all wrong,” Sara added. Sara and I have known each other since we were seven, a life time ago. She is the only full time scientist among us, though many of us have the education and dapple. “Republican politicians are so ridiculous and that’s the sane ones. Can’t they learn the basics of female anatomy and physiology? I would have started voting Democratic years ago if it wasn’t so obvious they want to…” And then she paused, looking for the right words. I joke and call Sara The Princess of Dark Money. At seventeen Sara ran away from home and for decades refused to speak to her family. Like me Sara built a successful ranch operation from nothing and she did it while being a Professor at a very highly respected university in Australia and a single mom. She somehow found time to also found a tech company that creates software to help with farm and ranch management. Meanwhile Sara’s parents who were wealthy and insane before Sara left home got super rich and utterly lost their minds. They have been major funders of all things right wing, fascist, and racist since Reagan. They literally believe Trump is God. They are the essence of Dark Money and its influence to distort public discourse. “…silence me and people like me,” Sara concluded. What she meant is that as a scientist who has simply followed the evidence she has been attacked relentlessly by the left. Sara is an evolutionary biologist who doesn’t believe the Theory of Evolution is anything but a flawed and discredited hypothesis. The way she sees it Democrats are ignorant Cherry pickers not the educated experts who follow the evidence that they claim to be. This means, Sara says, “there is a non trivial chance that the Democratic agenda is nothing more than muddle headed confirmation bias”. I think maybe I should say that I think Sara is wrong about the Theory of Evolution. I also think I can prove it to her if I can just get her to listen. Sara believes she is right and can prove it to me if she could just get me to listen. In the next part of this diary Sara and I travel together through rural America. We go ranch shopping in Wyoming, wander the Thunder Basin National Grasslands and then attend the National Association of Plant Breeders Conference in Ames, Iowa. Amazingly we manage not to kill each other though it was pretty tense once her best friend joined us in Cody, Wyoming. My idea of hell is taking a long road trip with Sara’s BFF, Mariah, who was my second wife, and has tried to kill me twice. 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