I was saddened by your May 17 article (“The reluctant citizens: Bruised and bitter”) describing some who reside in rural America and the hostility they feel toward the federal government and how that relates to acts of violence.
As a city girl who got to go to “the country” in the summer and who went to college in a rural community, I have always considered rural America as a repository of what is right about America, and I am sure there are many other Americans who feel this way. I see neighborliness and hard work, a clear view of what is real, the planting of seeds to grow the food to feed so much of the world, all without self-aggrandizement but with humility.
The May 17 story did not paint a new picture, but it added to that picture. I am sorry that people are losing their farms, that they are being disappointed in the expectation of their lifetimes, but they are not alone. A woman works to support her family and home because her husband is sick or unemployed or absent–that may not be the life she envisioned for herself. Workers in the steel and heavy-implements industries cannot hope to live as their fathers and mothers did before them–those jobs aren’t there. The kids who play ball to get a break and make a new life–the majority of them are disappointed.
Life for many people is “no crystal stair,” as the poet Langston Hughes put it. The changing world economy, with machines that do jobs faster and cheaper than people can, is changing opportunities, and that is something we cannot control.
But there are things we can control. We control who we are and how we face life. The nobility and integrity that lie in each of us are things that cannot be taken away.
If you want change, work for it positively. Vote in elections. Look at the results of the last election–that is change. If you think government is too big and remote, vote for those who will make it smaller. If you feel unheard, write and talk, but please do it constructively. If you feel isolated or unneeded, volunteer or offer to help.
There is a special class of people in America, and you don’t have to be born to it or admitted to it. Anyone can belong.
We know who these people are; we have seen them in our daily lives. The young father with a promising future who becomes disabled, the aunt with cancer who is worried about you, the widow across the alley who lost her only son in Pearl Harbor–those who persist with grace despite the disappointments life has given them.
These people form an “aristocracy” . . . and all of us need to summon within ourselves the strength to hold on to our personal nobility in the face of adversity, irrespective of where we live or how that adversity presents itself.
