This post was sent to Redding Searchlight blogs that Bruce Ross
(editor) posted today. It concerns an article from Forbes magazine about the
rural populations take on Green or Environmental issues as opposed to the urban
and suburban take.
http://blogs.redding.com/bross/archives/2012/03/quote-of-the-da-141.html
This is my response: It might be informative to illustrate what the rural areas mean to America. It means: Food, energy, minerals, recreation, timber and every other commodity necessary to live in the cities and suburbs. So to characterize us folks as insensitive to “green” or environmental causes is just stupid. We live here and we don’t want to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs.
To be clear, most of the companies that plunder and monopolize the assets and resources of the rural areas are owned, by virtue of stocks, by those nice politically correct folks living in the high rent districts from Nob Hill to Manhattan. And that includes the giant corporate farms in middle America. However, the folks that work for these folks live in the rural areas.
So we need to get the seating assignment straight before we start eating the guests.
Now to be clear, intelligence aside, what rural folks lack in a Harvard education, they more than make up for with common sense, rationality and basic survival instincts. Ergo, you don’t see rural folks driving their families in a snow storm on dirt roads around a closed interstate, and end up in a snow bank, losing their appendages to frostbite.
We also know that when the economic roof collapses, we will fish, hunt and barter for necessities with our neighbors to survive, even if we have to bury a few Fish and Game cops naïve enough to believe food is not a necessity.
We also know that we are but tools for corporate greed, the necessary evil between cost and profit and seasonal providers of essential services. Spring, Summer and early Fall rural folks are the Urbanite’s best friends. But when the first snowflake falls, they forget us like a crazy uncle at Christmas Card time.
That we don’t get too caught up in the stereotypical BS, those of us in the rural areas, may have been born at night, but it wasn’t last night. So when we see articles where those really smart, high paid Forbes columnists characterizing us as rural or urban, you will forgive us when we say, “We are still Americans”, and we are smart enough not to take our resources for granted and are definately smart enough not to move to the Burbs or the cities.
http://blogs.redding.com/bross/archives/2012/03/quote-of-the-da-141.html
This is my response: It might be informative to illustrate what the rural areas mean to America. It means: Food, energy, minerals, recreation, timber and every other commodity necessary to live in the cities and suburbs. So to characterize us folks as insensitive to “green” or environmental causes is just stupid. We live here and we don’t want to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs.
To be clear, most of the companies that plunder and monopolize the assets and resources of the rural areas are owned, by virtue of stocks, by those nice politically correct folks living in the high rent districts from Nob Hill to Manhattan. And that includes the giant corporate farms in middle America. However, the folks that work for these folks live in the rural areas.
So we need to get the seating assignment straight before we start eating the guests.
Now to be clear, intelligence aside, what rural folks lack in a Harvard education, they more than make up for with common sense, rationality and basic survival instincts. Ergo, you don’t see rural folks driving their families in a snow storm on dirt roads around a closed interstate, and end up in a snow bank, losing their appendages to frostbite.
We also know that when the economic roof collapses, we will fish, hunt and barter for necessities with our neighbors to survive, even if we have to bury a few Fish and Game cops naïve enough to believe food is not a necessity.
We also know that we are but tools for corporate greed, the necessary evil between cost and profit and seasonal providers of essential services. Spring, Summer and early Fall rural folks are the Urbanite’s best friends. But when the first snowflake falls, they forget us like a crazy uncle at Christmas Card time.
That we don’t get too caught up in the stereotypical BS, those of us in the rural areas, may have been born at night, but it wasn’t last night. So when we see articles where those really smart, high paid Forbes columnists characterizing us as rural or urban, you will forgive us when we say, “We are still Americans”, and we are smart enough not to take our resources for granted and are definately smart enough not to move to the Burbs or the cities.
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