Discuss: One Nation Under Elvis

Todd Musser contradicts himself. At one end of his binary spectrum he seems to know what is entailed in as “open-minded, free thinking society” and on the other he condemns those who don’t seem to see eye to eye with his ideology. This seems hardly open minded or free-thinking.

Part of the problem with the all-too-prevalent Enlightenment-era perspective (a la Musser) is that it presupposes that rational thought will bring about only one conclusion. That is, all rational people will find only one rational way to live, all others are subject to irrationality. This simply is not so.

There are multiple conceptions of what the good life is and what such a life should entail. Different conceptions of a good life imply incommensurable standards by which we judge and act in life. No way of life I’ve come across has yet proven to me beyond a doubt to be the uniquely rational manner in which all people should live.

It is obvious that Musser believes his way of life to be equivalent to, or an approximation of, the good life par excellence. However, in invoking ambiguous terminology such as “free thinking” and “open mindedness”, he betrays his own bigotry and self-contradiction when using them as weapons against those who may not have the opportunities or even the desire to leave rural America as he did.

As a final note to Musser, I must remind him that during the greater part of the history of Country Music, which arose mainly in Southern culture, Southerners were mostly Democrat. It was the political class that changed directions, not so much the people in the rural South. Rural people seem to have much the same about them now as when I grew up around them.

Allen, I appreciate your constuctive and at times, not so constructive criticisms. Where would we be without debate?

You seem to have taken my few, short points to a philosophical extreme. I never made a claim regarding what it means to be open-minded, and free thinking. I simply used terminology that the majority of the people I know are familiar with.

My first point dealt with Elvis. He made a few good songs, but leaving everything else aside it’s pretty hard to respect somebody who left this world the way he did.

My next point was of listening to more country music. I enjoy country music. I remember listening to “El Paso” from Marty Robbins with my grandpa at 4 years old. However, as I said, the majority of country music is listened to by and targeted toward a certain part of our population. The majority of my loved ones still fit the model of a rural American citizen and many of them listen to country music. I must remind you that I was not being condescending toward a group of people. I was stating what I feel to be a fairly obvious fact.

With regards to my “own bigotry and self-contradiction when using them as weapons,” well, that’s just completely insane. Again, you seemed to have taken my few, short points to an extreme. I don’t quite see how my points were used as weapons, but obviously you took them personally.

I don’t care about what kind of people listen to country in the south. I made a statement about the majority of country music, and it was an opinion. But, if you read reviews and do some research, you may or may not find that country music appeals to republican (the word is used only for a lack of better term) values and ethics. Which, depending on who you talk to have gotten our country into a lot of trouble and which have caused an unspeakable amount of harm to other people throughout the world.

I’m not saying republicans are bad and democrats are good. For at the national level, it doesn’t really matter. They all do horrible things.

I didn’t claim anything about a right way to live, or the “good life.” And I surely wouldn’t limit myself with a label like “Enlightenment-era.” I’ll leave the labeling to you.

Todd, I would wager it is precisely because there is too little debate that we are where we are in regard to the crises facing our planet. But, so it goes in behemoth nation-states, I suppose…

First, there is no “philosophical extreme” in my post. My point is, that you are using terms you seem to believe are self-evident in their definition, and hence have the same meaning for that “majority” to whom you appeal. The terms are not self-evident, but highly ambiguous and, if I’m not mistaken, fraught in our day with ideological pitfalls.  I don’t believe that to be “open-minded” is to believe a certain set of precepts (Classical) Liberal or otherwise, but is a particular attitude one can at times achieve, but is highly contingent upon many things in one’s environment as well as one’s own emotive state. All in all, it is a relative state of being and really undefinable.

Given that you seem to believe, by your own argument, that “open-mindedness” entails closing off to other ways of life that don’t suit your model of a “free-thinking society” seems to be self-contradictory. You have to be closed to be open? This makes no sense and is reason why I tend not to use those terms.  It alienates from the get-go and forestalls any debate with its inherently condescending tone. In this way, you set your point of view up as a threat to another’s way of life and it will never be accepted worth hearing, much less valid. 

As to claims of the good, or “good life”, you don’t have to raise it directly in any given argument. It is there inherently whenever there are axiological considerations. They underlie every question of value. You so much as admit this in saying: “...appeals to republican values and ethics.” You are weighing someone else’s valuation of what is good against your own valuation. However, the attempt to ignore the incommensurability of differing conceptions of what is good is a product of the Enlightenment, with its quest for universal rationality and the singularity of moral good that was presupposed to be the result of “true” rationality. All rational people were supposed to reach the same conclusion if their reasoning was “correct”. Ideologies that attempt to represent themselves as the model for “the open society” seem always contingent upon articles of faith in such universal claims and mostly I find them not only inherently totalitarian, but also that they are reflective of no historical earthly community of which I am aware.

My point is, that there are differing and irreconcilable conceptions of the good, and all our values are based upon those concepts. You have them, I have them, and “hard line conservative republicans “ have them. In this we are all similar. To understand this pluralism from the outset seems to me a place much more conducive for political discourse than hostility, condescension and self-contradicting ideological posturing.

Thank you for a wonderful article.  The first part, on music, explained why I have been saying I love country music written prior to 1980, and exposed me to much more to listen to.  The second part explained why the group I lead in central Iowa has to work so hard to bring farm boys and girls into fellowship with sustainalble-minded folks.  I’ll send people from both sides to this article to help them understand each other and their common concerns.
Randy Gabrielse

I am a Wyoming native whose family hasn’t sold the ranch yet.  I think you guys made some good points in this article.  Longtime western reidents usually don’t resent environmentalism, we resent certain environmentalists who don’t respect our way of life & think they know how to ‘fix’ things when they don’t even have to live here or raise their kids here.  Lots of guys with rifles in their pickups are also concerned about the prevalence of 4wheelers near wilderness areas or oil & gas drilling in wildlife habitat.  Hunters were some of the first conservationists! 

By the way, give John Anderson’s ‘Seminole Wind’ a listen.  It’s an oldie, but it might change the way you think ‘rednecks’ feel about environmental issues.

Rebecca Solnit points out that the seeds of class divide in American environmentalistm were sowed as far back as John Muir. As a result, it may take a while before we can bridge the gap between low-income rural workers and middle-class environmentalists.

But one brand-new movement might offer guidance on how to bridge that gap: the local food movement. Only a few years old, this burgeoning movement has recognized (thankfully, early on) that low-income people risk being severely deprived of the healthy food that wealthier people can enjoy. As a result, many folks at food & farming conferences are talking passionately about how to make local, organic food accessible to low-income people. It is a tough challenge, because it involves everything from changing economic policy to altering transportation patterns. But if we can bridge the class divide around food, it means we will have rallied upper- and lower-income people around a common goal—the breakdown of the corporate stranglehold on food—and environmentalists might be able to use our strategies to join with rural folks to break down the corporate stranglehold on nature.

HI Rebecca.

I sure miss Bill Rosse. He was a fine man. One of the best.

I read this wonderful article last night after watching a film that very much touches on the class/social divides in the environmental movement. The movie is “The Real Dirt on Farmer John”. It is a story about a man, Farmer John, and the life-cycle of the mid-western family farm that he inherited.  Farmer John is seemingly full of contradictions.  He loves dirt and tractors, but he also loves glamor and artistic expression. The farm goes through several different metamorphoses,as done farmer John.  Originally a soybean, wheat, and corn farm, it is now a model for Community Supported Agriculture (CSA). By understanding that all types of people - rural and urban, black and white, college-educated and farm/street-educated - Farmer John has bridged the gap that Rebecca Solnit talk about in this article. If we could all be so comfortable holding a pitchfork in overalls and a furry boa, this land that we call home might be a little healthier.