Small Town Values

I would like to write about "values" today. The desire arose because once again this election year, we are hearing the term "small town values" bandied about by the Republicans in the context that people who live in major metropolitan areas (presumably more liberal/Democratic) have lesser values than people who live in small towns. This notion is complete and utter bullshit, of course, and I just thought I'd share some anecdotal evidence to counter this claim.

I grew up in a suburban town of 8000 people. For the most part, it is an upper-middle class community, and as I was growing up there in the 70's and 80's, there were exactly two black families in the entire town. This wasn't by accident, either. If you've heard the term "white flight", that's pretty much the reason why Grafton is 99% white - these white families were literally escaping the city of Milwaukee and it's minority populations in the aftermath of desegregation, as dictated by the Supreme Court's 1954 Brown Vs. Board of Education ruling. Grafton was founded in the 1870's, but didn't see it's one major population "explosion" until the decade or so after that ruling, and this holds true for many small towns just like Grafton. I mention all this because this trend, this phenomenon, illustrates a very specific value - that many white people simply do not want to live, work, play, or go to school with non-white people.

Racism is a value.

That's the most pervasive value in Grafton, but it's not a value that's readily apparent on the surface. No, this sort of racism is a quiet kind, so subtle that plenty of small town people don't even realize they're practicing it, but it is there nonetheless. It's part of a larger mindset that shows itself more readily in other prejudices and opinions, many of which are easiest to identify in the halls of a typical small town high school, where cliques inform the dynamics of the entire school, and one's status is pretty much wholly determined by surface and appearances.

In high school, if you are fat, you are almost guaranteed to never be one of the "cool kids", and you will have to suffer countless slings and arrows of outright mockery and public humiliation. If you do not wear the most current and fashionable clothing and shoes, you will be ridiculed and reminded of those shortcomings ceaselessly. If you are gay, you will face all those slings and arrows, nevermind the steady, neverending beatdowns (or threats of beatdowns) from "the jocks". If you are a girl who is sexually active, you will be called a "slut" and a "whore", but if you are a girl who who isn't sexually active, you will be called a "dyke" by the very guy who want to sex you up. If you are academically gifted, you will be marginalized, mocked and perhaps even beat up with some regularity. Hopefully, you are not a fat homosexual who is academically gifted.

I mention these sorts of things because they point to an overriding set of values that are pervasive in small town America, a set of values that is best described as xenophobic, I suppose. If you do not "fit in", or are merely perceived to be "different", the chances are quite good that you will be ignored, marginalized, ostracized, and perhaps even the target of physical threats and violence itself.

(WHO IS BARACK OBAMA? McCain's campaign commercial asks countless times every day, and if you do not believe his campaign is deliberately feeding into the xenophobia and racism of the Republican base, you're probably a part of that base, a base that is becoming increasingly rabid with vocal hatred, if you've seen the YouTube videos of recent McCain-Palin rallies.)



It would easy to say that racism and xenophobia are interchangeable, but that isn't quite true, because I moved to a small unincorporated farming town of approximately 120 people, a place called Helenville, where I lived for about two years before coming to Madison. Now, I'm a white male, so you would think my presence in Helenville would not be an issue, but I was instantly perceived as an outsider, an "other", and during those two years, I couldn't seem to shake that stigma.

First of all, I have a Polish name, which proved to be troublesome to a community that was almost entirely German. I was even asked by one of the locals once, "So, are you one of those Polish Jews?"

I shit you not.

In this small, unincorporated town of 120 people, there are three churches, two taverns, a post office and a bank. God and alcohol rule Helenville, and as you can imagine, drunken fundamentalism was rampant. Even in the most innocuous of conversations, somehow topics such as "fags" and "baby killers" would get woven in. At first I would protest, exposing my liberal tendencies, and I believe these outspoken protestations were responsible for the locals never liking or accepting me. Like most small towns like this, word travelled fast, so after the very first of my protestations, I started noticing the dirty looks, and the way the locals basically shunned me. A friendly wave to neighbors as I walked to the post office would be met with cold indifference. If I entered one of the local taverns, all conversations would cease immediately and all eyes would turn to me. It was unnerving at first, but soon became laughable.

Like I said, gossip is quite prevalent in communities like this, so from time to time I would hear word of alcoholism, infidelity, domestic abuse, and even incest. It would seem every last person in town had their secrets, except that there were no secrets.

In that way, Helenville is no different than Grafton. I can tell you that on my own block in Grafton, we had a married woman having an affair with a married man who lived in the house behind hers. More than once, my friends and I saw him sneaking from his house to her house late at night (yeah, most of us had very liberal curfews), when her husband was out of town on business. Across the street we had a raging alcoholic that beat his children with regularity. These children would grow into teenagers who were exceedingly violent and hateful themselves. Meanwhile, up the street, there was a kid who took great pleasure in torturing and killing cats, and was so creepy in general, that none of the other kids in the neighborhood wanted anything to do with him. When my sister's cat, Tigger, suddenly disappeared, never to be seen again, we immediately suspected this kid. I assume this boy grew up to be a serial killer.

Alcoholism and drug abuse were also fairly rampant in Grafton. In fact, around 1982, two former Grafton high schoolers stabbed a third to death in his bedroom over a cocaine deal gone bad. Stabbed him more than two dozen times, in fact. In my own experiences, it was just as easy to procure any kind of drug imaginable as it was to go to one of the four liquor stores in our town to buy beer.

I guess I could go on and on with anecdotes about small town life, but I hope I've made my point.

And my point is this - conservative Republicans can talk about "small town values" all they want, but the fact of the matter is, small town values are no better than the values found in any large city. People are people, flaws and all, no matter where you live, and if anything, I would argue that people are worse in small towns, because there is the sheen of hypocrisy that covers everyone and everything. Many people in small towns are doing the exact same bad shit that people in the cities are doing, but they wrap themselves in scripture and the flag, and claim to be better than all the "fags" "niggers" and "commies" who are supposedly a blight on those cities and a threat to their "small town values" and America itself.

So, Sarah Palin can invoke "Joe Sixpack" all she wants, but know this - plenty of those Joe Sixpacks are alcoholics who routinely abuse their spouses and children, and then they go to church on Sunday where they're repeatedly told that it is the Godless liberals and secularists who are the problem with America.

Now I'm living in Madison, a progressive, liberal city which those same smalltown Joe Sixpacks like to say is "20 square miles surrounded by reality". If places like Helenville are "reality", I'd much rather stay here, safely ensconsed in our relative "insanity", thank you very much.

Hotcha! Hank