Conservatism and Small Towns
It seems strange when you give it some thought. Small towns, it is said, vote conservative, by which is usually meant Republican. Partly this is because of the ‘values voter’ (which will probably be the subject of another post), but also it is economic; people in conservative, small-town America, insofar as there is such a thing, are generally distrustful of ‘big government.’ Yet, looked at from a perspective of self-interest, it seems like it is the Democrats and their big-government style that are best for people in small towns. Small towns as a general rule are less prosperous, and both families and individuals tend to make less, simply because there is less opportunity; there’s not much in the way of career choices and advancement, not much of a market whose demands need to be met; and social services are limited for obvious reasons. Thus, big social programs such as Medicare, Social Security, welfare, and so on seem more likely to benefit a greater percentage of people there than in big cities or more populous areas generally, where there is both more upward mobility and more access to services. So why is big government an epithet in the very sorts of places where it would seem to be most needed? Up to this point in this blog we’ve dealt mostly in abstraction from the reality on the ground, talking about culture as from a distance. Now, we’ll see if we can’t learn anything practical from this. As you can probably guess, I think we can.
But back to our question, which is this: why are the types of persons who live in small towns generally distrustful of government, as opposed to people in cities? This is not a cultural fate etched into the populace, but does seem common enough to be significant and worth explaining, at least if all those red/blue vote maps that show up on election night are to be trusted. As our general rule, ‘the heartland’ is conservative (which, for the purposes of this article, is equivalent to ‘prefers smaller government, generally distrustful of bureaucracy,’ and so on), the more populous coasts liberal. Likewise, people in cities tend to be more liberal than people in small towns. Before we start, let’s recall what was asserted previously, that there is no really uniform American culture outside of some symbols and values understood in the vaguest sense. Within one country, there is a wide spectrum of values. Further, those clusters of values are not arbitrary. As noted, the issue here is that small towns in particular tend to distrust government, and big cities are more trusting, comparatively speaking. This is probably not without reason. So what’s the reason?
Let’s begin with some general observations. When conservative and liberal politicians alike (but mostly the former) try to appease anti-big-government people, among which small-town people are a large portion, there are consistent themes to how they work. The anti-incumbency theme in current political times tells us a lot. In particular, there are two themes that keep coming up: Wall Street versus Main Street and the Washington Insiders. Remember, we’re not interested inthe particular issues and facts at play in these cases; rather, what’s relevant to our question is the context, the ways in which these messages are presented and what they are supposed to appeal to. For instance, when stocks surge while unemployment continues to be low, it is said that Wall Street is gaining while Main Street is being left behind. Economic policies of the Obama administration are often being attacked as being too friendly to Wall Street, and therefore somehow against Main Street. The other title, the dreaded Washington Insider, is not something isolated to one party), and in particular has become a catch-all theme for the upcoming election. However, the language itself, along with the movement in general, is far more closely associated with conservatism (as, for instance, seen at http://www.prisonplanet.com/loophole-exempts-washington-insiders-from-obamacare-mandate.html), and when it goes against conservatives it is more often than not in the name of something more conservative. The fact that much of the discussion is about whether or not the Republican Party can incorporate this sentiment is telling as far as what side it falls on is concerned.
These two labels reflect current events, but are also instances of the general trend that was noted above. What these labels share is an image: the image of either the stock broker or the politician, distant from his or her constituents, off far away (this is important, we will see later) doing things that are anything but in our own interests. Granted, people come to distrust the government for many reasons. Often, those reasons are probably related to particular events in their lives. Or it may be more abstract, coming from the idea that the government is doing too much or too little. Still, this image always seems to resonate more with conservatives in general, and especially with small-town conservatives who don’t trust their government. What I assert is that growing up in a small community will make it more likely that you will distrust the national government. It doesn’t guarantee it, but it makes it more likely. This is not a drastically new proposition; the question is, what might be behind it?
The answer is distance, both figuratively and literally. In fact, it’s a part of the same phenomena in which people complain about the disappearance of “mom and pop” stores and their being replaced by large chain stores. In a small town, there isn’t much distance (again, figuratively and literally). Town councils are made up of people you are familiar with. Local businesses are run by people who you have known for all of your life. You are always at a short remove from the people who are acting at these cases; no one with a position of prominence in a small community has any anonymity of the sort that an unknown city controller or district manager for a grocery chain has, in the sense of lacking personal connections to customers or constituents. The most substantial consequence of this is that the integrity of the person in charge is on the line in every decision he or she makes. You know the ability of the person who makes the product, as you know how much integrity the person who makes decisions has. With this knowledge of what a person can do and their immediate recognition of you as an individual there comes trust, and these informal trust-relationships are an important component to the way life in small towns works. After all, you know everyone. These relationships are important for getting things done neatly and effectively, and do work. One need not live in a small town to recognize this: just like you would be willing to let an able friend hang on to your car for a while if she says she can fix it, leaving a car with a local businessman who runs a tiny shop and who you see every day is not an issue. Certainly, it’s not an issue compared to bringing your car to get fixed at a large market auto center in the middle of the city, where you have to be vigilant to make sure everything goes okay and that you don’t get overcharged. That is in large part because of the sense that the people at the large auto center feel no personal accountability to you: you don’t know them, you aren’t important to them beyond being a customer. In this vein, you often see mottos such as Big Enough to Serve You, Small Enough to Know You, and Small Enough to Care, Big Enough to Serve. These mottos unwittingly recognize a conflict that is central to our discussion here: even when the large, faceless corporations offer us convenience and a lower price, we are inclined to trust the smaller company ran by someone we trust.
As business, so politics. I noted in passing that the idea that politicians are far away from us is important. The reason is, for a small-town mindset, the same as that which highlights the difference between the local manager and the guy sent in by Wal-Mart to manage the new Supercenter. Trust relationships are important for the conduct of business of any kind in a small town; the facelessness of more bureaucratic, corporate, large-scale operations, something familiar to the citizen of a city of ten million, is almost offensive to someone whose daily life depends on trust and familiarity. If you’ve grown up in a context where local familiarity is absent from the basic conduct of daily life, then having a familiar face isn’t a necessary or even important feature; other factors which were present in the small-town case as well, but not completely central, come to the fore. On the other hand, if trust and direct contact is central to daily goings-on, it will influence the way you see politics. In that sense, it’s hard to get much bigger than a group of people, many appointed, way off away from you (out of sight, out of contact, out of range of accountability - this is where distance comes in) using your money to finance some big program explained in a thousand page bill. You don’t know whether to trust such people, because you have no idea what sort of people they are, and this is vital information in a context where the informal rules of interpersonal relationships often take priority over the exacting enforcement of compulsory laws (after all, these guys are the ones making the laws). Big government, as a distant, unaccountable entity made up of people who have no reason to care about you or listen to your opinion, are inherently less trustworthy than the local candidate who’s helped you personally, because of distance. This is why, for instance, a black man in an area broadly considered racist can become an important local political figure, not because of a sudden change of belief of the people, but because he knows the way people think. ““James Fields,” you will hear whites explain again and again, “is one of us.”” James Fields could succeed as a black man where Obama couldn’t because Fields, unlike Obama, is not an abstraction to the people he has worked with since he was young. “Fields has no office in Cullman — he comes to you. Most of the county seems to know his cellphone number, with a result that, like an old-time family doctor thrust into the wireless age, Fields’s days unfold from house call to house call.” James Fields is a man who’s proven himself to the people, something which has the potential to overcome powerful barriers. In short, if politicians want to avoid the supposed anti-incumbent, anti-establishment wave that’s coming, and if big-government Democrats want to show that they “understand the American people,” that they “get it,” they need to be out there with the people, not just giving speeches but putting their face and integrity into the hands of those whose trust (and vote) they want, providing not just a name but a person.
But back to our question, which is this: why are the types of persons who live in small towns generally distrustful of government, as opposed to people in cities? This is not a cultural fate etched into the populace, but does seem common enough to be significant and worth explaining, at least if all those red/blue vote maps that show up on election night are to be trusted. As our general rule, ‘the heartland’ is conservative (which, for the purposes of this article, is equivalent to ‘prefers smaller government, generally distrustful of bureaucracy,’ and so on), the more populous coasts liberal. Likewise, people in cities tend to be more liberal than people in small towns. Before we start, let’s recall what was asserted previously, that there is no really uniform American culture outside of some symbols and values understood in the vaguest sense. Within one country, there is a wide spectrum of values. Further, those clusters of values are not arbitrary. As noted, the issue here is that small towns in particular tend to distrust government, and big cities are more trusting, comparatively speaking. This is probably not without reason. So what’s the reason?
Let’s begin with some general observations. When conservative and liberal politicians alike (but mostly the former) try to appease anti-big-government people, among which small-town people are a large portion, there are consistent themes to how they work. The anti-incumbency theme in current political times tells us a lot. In particular, there are two themes that keep coming up: Wall Street versus Main Street and the Washington Insiders. Remember, we’re not interested inthe particular issues and facts at play in these cases; rather, what’s relevant to our question is the context, the ways in which these messages are presented and what they are supposed to appeal to. For instance, when stocks surge while unemployment continues to be low, it is said that Wall Street is gaining while Main Street is being left behind. Economic policies of the Obama administration are often being attacked as being too friendly to Wall Street, and therefore somehow against Main Street. The other title, the dreaded Washington Insider, is not something isolated to one party), and in particular has become a catch-all theme for the upcoming election. However, the language itself, along with the movement in general, is far more closely associated with conservatism (as, for instance, seen at http://www.prisonplanet.com/loophole-exempts-washington-insiders-from-obamacare-mandate.html), and when it goes against conservatives it is more often than not in the name of something more conservative. The fact that much of the discussion is about whether or not the Republican Party can incorporate this sentiment is telling as far as what side it falls on is concerned.
These two labels reflect current events, but are also instances of the general trend that was noted above. What these labels share is an image: the image of either the stock broker or the politician, distant from his or her constituents, off far away (this is important, we will see later) doing things that are anything but in our own interests. Granted, people come to distrust the government for many reasons. Often, those reasons are probably related to particular events in their lives. Or it may be more abstract, coming from the idea that the government is doing too much or too little. Still, this image always seems to resonate more with conservatives in general, and especially with small-town conservatives who don’t trust their government. What I assert is that growing up in a small community will make it more likely that you will distrust the national government. It doesn’t guarantee it, but it makes it more likely. This is not a drastically new proposition; the question is, what might be behind it?
The answer is distance, both figuratively and literally. In fact, it’s a part of the same phenomena in which people complain about the disappearance of “mom and pop” stores and their being replaced by large chain stores. In a small town, there isn’t much distance (again, figuratively and literally). Town councils are made up of people you are familiar with. Local businesses are run by people who you have known for all of your life. You are always at a short remove from the people who are acting at these cases; no one with a position of prominence in a small community has any anonymity of the sort that an unknown city controller or district manager for a grocery chain has, in the sense of lacking personal connections to customers or constituents. The most substantial consequence of this is that the integrity of the person in charge is on the line in every decision he or she makes. You know the ability of the person who makes the product, as you know how much integrity the person who makes decisions has. With this knowledge of what a person can do and their immediate recognition of you as an individual there comes trust, and these informal trust-relationships are an important component to the way life in small towns works. After all, you know everyone. These relationships are important for getting things done neatly and effectively, and do work. One need not live in a small town to recognize this: just like you would be willing to let an able friend hang on to your car for a while if she says she can fix it, leaving a car with a local businessman who runs a tiny shop and who you see every day is not an issue. Certainly, it’s not an issue compared to bringing your car to get fixed at a large market auto center in the middle of the city, where you have to be vigilant to make sure everything goes okay and that you don’t get overcharged. That is in large part because of the sense that the people at the large auto center feel no personal accountability to you: you don’t know them, you aren’t important to them beyond being a customer. In this vein, you often see mottos such as Big Enough to Serve You, Small Enough to Know You, and Small Enough to Care, Big Enough to Serve. These mottos unwittingly recognize a conflict that is central to our discussion here: even when the large, faceless corporations offer us convenience and a lower price, we are inclined to trust the smaller company ran by someone we trust.
As business, so politics. I noted in passing that the idea that politicians are far away from us is important. The reason is, for a small-town mindset, the same as that which highlights the difference between the local manager and the guy sent in by Wal-Mart to manage the new Supercenter. Trust relationships are important for the conduct of business of any kind in a small town; the facelessness of more bureaucratic, corporate, large-scale operations, something familiar to the citizen of a city of ten million, is almost offensive to someone whose daily life depends on trust and familiarity. If you’ve grown up in a context where local familiarity is absent from the basic conduct of daily life, then having a familiar face isn’t a necessary or even important feature; other factors which were present in the small-town case as well, but not completely central, come to the fore. On the other hand, if trust and direct contact is central to daily goings-on, it will influence the way you see politics. In that sense, it’s hard to get much bigger than a group of people, many appointed, way off away from you (out of sight, out of contact, out of range of accountability - this is where distance comes in) using your money to finance some big program explained in a thousand page bill. You don’t know whether to trust such people, because you have no idea what sort of people they are, and this is vital information in a context where the informal rules of interpersonal relationships often take priority over the exacting enforcement of compulsory laws (after all, these guys are the ones making the laws). Big government, as a distant, unaccountable entity made up of people who have no reason to care about you or listen to your opinion, are inherently less trustworthy than the local candidate who’s helped you personally, because of distance. This is why, for instance, a black man in an area broadly considered racist can become an important local political figure, not because of a sudden change of belief of the people, but because he knows the way people think. ““James Fields,” you will hear whites explain again and again, “is one of us.”” James Fields could succeed as a black man where Obama couldn’t because Fields, unlike Obama, is not an abstraction to the people he has worked with since he was young. “Fields has no office in Cullman — he comes to you. Most of the county seems to know his cellphone number, with a result that, like an old-time family doctor thrust into the wireless age, Fields’s days unfold from house call to house call.” James Fields is a man who’s proven himself to the people, something which has the potential to overcome powerful barriers. In short, if politicians want to avoid the supposed anti-incumbent, anti-establishment wave that’s coming, and if big-government Democrats want to show that they “understand the American people,” that they “get it,” they need to be out there with the people, not just giving speeches but putting their face and integrity into the hands of those whose trust (and vote) they want, providing not just a name but a person.
posted by Derek at 11:47 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home