After living in large cities all my adult life, in 2007 I
moved to El Dorado County in California.
Though the scenery is beautiful here on the western slopes of the
Sierra, the area is impoverished. Once a thriving logging area, it has been hit
hard by the recession and other factors. It is of course crowded with Trump
people.
One of the things I like about this area is the friendliness
of the people. My neighbors are always
helpful. Though I am not particularly extroverted or sociable, people often
chat with me in stores or on my walks. It’s a nice contrast to the behavior of
city dwellers.
Since the Trump campaign, though, much of the usual friendliness
has vanished. Like many other places, this area rapidly became segregated into
“red” and blue” areas. Being violet was just impossible. Furthermore, the reds
far outnumbered the blues. Young men drove around in pickups waving the
Confederate flag. Pro-Trump lawn signs appeared. I overhead snide comments
about Obama and about LGBTs. Though the election is over, the division has
remained.
It made me wonder, how do people become conservative or
liberal? My own history can provide some clues. Berrien County in Michigan,
where I was born in 1937, was and is still extremely conservative, much like El
Dorado County. It hardly seems credible now, but I don’t remember hearing about
the Holocaust during high school. It might have something to do with the county’s
large German population, or with anti-Semitism in general. Certainly Jews were considered
inferior in my home town. We saw Jews only in the summer, when Chicagoans came
to summer homes at the nearby lake. Like other “resorters,” they were tolerated
but not really welcomed. So, I grew up with an anti-Jewish attitude that now embarrasses
me.
Similarly, Joseph McCarthy was considered a hero. The
newspaper we all read was Col. McCormick’s Chicago
Tribune, which praised McCarthy and
right-wingers in general. When I voted for the first time in a presidential
election, it was for Barry Goldwater.
Religion, too, was conservative in Berrien County. There
were Catholics and traditional Protestants. (Today the county is even more conservative
in that regard. Evangelicals seem to have taken over.)
Still, today I am an unabashed Bay Area liberal, a Unitarian
and the widow of a Jew. My views on
politics and social issues are far to the left of center.
How did my transformation take place? If I had stayed at
home, as some of my high school classmates did, I might not have changed, at
least not to this extent. Instead, I went to college and then to grad school,
where I learned much about science, and especially about how to be skeptical
and analytical. I met liberal Jewish professors
and was exposed to their values and ideas. Though I went to a Baptist
college, the religion classes were nontraditional, and the Methodist church I
attended in the early sixties had a charismatic, liberal minister. Later, I
became a Unitarian.
In the workplace I
met a variety of people with different viewpoints. Though my formal education
was valuable, informal education was even more so. Living in a variety of
communities taught me about people at various socioeconomic levels and ethnicities.
So, my own history leads me to think that education and
broad experience are the answers to Trump thinking. Even in rural areas like
this one, children can be exposed to the ideas and values that will lead them
to become intelligent, ethical citizens.
It is also encouraging to see that since the election, closet
county liberals have come out in the open. A few weeks ago the nascent El
Dorado Progressives (EDP) group advertised an organizational meeting at a local
church, expecting 90 or so people to show up. I attended, and barely got in the
door. About a thousand angry citizens came to find out how they could resist
the coming autocracy. Since then, many of them have stormed into town hall
meetings held by our local Congressional representative, Tom McClintock, one of
the most conservative House members. There is hope for the future, even here in
Trump country.
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| Protestors at a McClintock Town Hall meeting. (Photo published in the Mountain Democrat.) |
