Posted on 02/02/2021 6:21:51 AM PST by Kaslin
RANSON, West Virginia -- Drive along U.S. 11 in Pennsylvania, Maryland, and here in West Virginia and you are pretty much roaming through the more conservative enclaves of the region.
The road, one of the first north-south routes in the country, takes the traveler through places such as Chambersburg, Shippensburg, and Carlisle, Hagerstown and Martinsburg.
The offramps wind down to treasures such as those here in Ranson.
Drive too fast and you miss meeting some really great people or seeing some beautiful places, some gorgeous preservation projects that have brought homes and businesses back to life, some of which reflect beauty even in decay.
Fly over the states or use an interstate and you are likely to never know who the people who live along U.S. 11 are and what they care about. That's okay. People really don't like feeling like a specimen, but if you are going to write about them, you should probably have a conversation or two.
And just stop and sit a spell.
Do that and you will probably learn a few things about them that might dispel some assumptions that exist, such as: Not all people who live in rural areas are Republicans. You often find a healthy mix of Democrats, Republicans and independents who believe the most important election day is the one for mayor, sheriff, county commissioner, school board or state legislator.
More often than not, you will find that they are not as obsessed with politics in the way social media would have people believe, and that they are capable of having conversations with people who have different points of view and conduct their lives way outside the boundaries of the stereotypes those who don't know a thing about them imagine.
They have long figured out two things about the people who write about them in a story or reference them on social media: Nuance is dead, and it is much easier to make a monster out of someone you don't understand than to try to make an honest attempt to understand them.
Last week, there was a column in the Washington Post about how conservatives feel in the light of the news that President Joe Biden's administration revived an effort to replace the image of Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill with Harriet Tubman.
The column declared, "Many conservatives will find the new Tubman bill distressing, even if they could barely tell you the first thing about Jackson."
There is so much to unpack here, beginning with where the "many conservatives" come from, because I was hard-pressed to find "many conservatives" who found the news distressing.
I was also hard-pressed to find "many conservatives" who didn't know about who Jackson was, his presidential failures and successes, his role as a general, and the painful legacies of the Trail of Tears and slave ownership.
All you have to do is ask. All you need to do is listen.
In fact, had the columnist asked what truly distresses them right now, you'd find that it's the coronavirus and the toll it has taken on not just the people who have lost family members but the mental health of children, seniors, mothers and fathers.
So does the uncertainty of their jobs, their small businesses, their shuttered communities.
So does having not hugged someone in nearly a year.
Tubman? Hardly. Talk to a conservative and they will tell you unequivocally that it is hard for them not to admire a gun-toting woman of faith who risked her life to free slaves.
Perhaps the columnist made the "many conservatives" assumption from scrolling through Twitter. But Twitter is not really the place to find a good cross section of everyday people.
In mid-October, the Pew Research Center released a comprehensive study on Twitter use, and in many ways, its conclusion should shake any person who uses the social media platform as a guide to the pulse of what America thinks.
In short, "just 10% of users produced 92% of all tweets from U.S. adults," with an eye-popping 69% of those "highly prolific users" identifying as Democrats.
That pretty much kills the idea that Twitter thought or distress represents public thought or distress.
Going even more granular, the survey found those Democrats who are on Twitter are much further left than Democrats who are not.
It is a reminder for reporters to shy away from using Twitter as an indication for public perspectives.
So, just because everyone on Twitter says conservatives are mad about Tubman and don't know who Jackson is, be a wee bit skeptical, because your words continue a narrative that may not be true.
There is a line in the J.D. Vance book "Hillbilly Elegy" that says, "Where we come from is who we are, but we choose everyday who we become."
All people out here want is to be able to tell the story of where they've come from and who they've become, not for someone to write the story of who they think they've become.
Ok you’re right
“ Subliminally maintaining the fiction that conservatives are incredibly racist...”
Yep. Although there is at least one on the thread, but I assume (for the moment) it’s out of ignorance.
He still founded the Democrat party, which has been nothing more than a criminal organization since it’s founding.
Its
Replacing a Democrat with a Republican. Oh the irony
I’m on Hwy 11 all the time. Christiansburg to Pulaski.
I’m in favor of replacing the slave-abusing Jackson who founded the Democrat party with Tubman, a radical, gun-toting, deeply religious, Republican insurgent.
_____________________________________________________
Andrew Jackson has about as much to do with the modern Democrat Party as I do. And substituting Jackson with Tubman is nothing more than a bow down to the critical race theory rabble-rousers.
Tubman can be given her own currency to grace, but this for this move to be celebrated by “Conservatives” shows just how short-sighted (and capable of mental gymnastics) the political Right can be.
No wonder we can’t win elections and hold power for any decent period of time, we don’t even know how to help ourselves.
“Give her one of her own.
Three dollar bill.”
That’s reserved for Obama!
Pandering to what they perceive to be their base. Put black folks on the money and everything will be just fine.
I’ve heard this type of article “Yokels in the Mist”. Don’t scare the native performing his pickup truck dominance display. Try to respond to his call with the universal sign of friendship: “Can I get me a huntin’ license here?” It’s like anything west of the Hudon or Potomac are Terra Incognita to them.
Jackson should stay on the front of the $20.
If Tubman belongs on the $20, then she can be on the back.
Removing an American President, for an obscure member of the underground railroad is ridiculous.
This was an Obama Treasury Department proposal BTW.
Martinsburg is a pit unless you like being carjacked at Home Depot. The people I know in the panhandle make the extra time to shop at Leesburg or Winchester. Martinsburg is like little Baltimore.
Tubman was an Angela Davis type of coward who was all in when it came to ‘conspiring’ to raid the Harpers Ferry armory but who was nowhere to be found when the murderous John Brown and his cronies were taken under fire by Colonel Lee and a few Marines. If the present day race hustling commies want to desecrate our currency with the image of a black terrorist - put Nat Turner’s image on an alternate sawbuck. He wasn’t a coward, not by any stretch. Put a nice portrait of the cowardly terrorist Tubman in the national gallery or some such.
I don’t care about the $20 bill. I do care about fair elections, free speech, and the constitution. Pick the right hills to die on, fighting against putting a black woman’s picture on money, which will 100% degenerate into a brawl over wither the right is a bunch of racist woman haters, isn’t the one.
***...replace the image of Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill with Harriet Tubman. ***
And what have they got against Jackson? He hated the British, saved New Orleans from invasion, after the war of 1812 was over. News traveled slow in those days.
Drove out the South Eastern slave owning tribes to Oklahoma, in violation of the SCOTUS ruling, where the tribes later had to put down slave rebellions.
https://www.okhistory.org/publications/enc/entry.php?entry=SL002
Nothing against Harriet Tubman, but did she really do enough to merit being on our money? I’m sure if you look there are others who did the same on the Underground Railroad. Why no mention of them?
Hey, I like that! You realize about twenty years ago there was an anti-handgun attempt to show Tubman carrying a rifle when she always carried a revolver.
It is a gross perversion of the 1st Amendment. It's known as the "diner story" by journolists, and it's dread for every one of them. They were everywhere in 2016.
In a "diner story", NPR chief f@g Ari Shapiro said he had to visit a "dive bar" in Toledo to find Trump voters who hated immigrants (and of course chose a Trump woman to denigrate):
SHAPIRO: We met Sharon Ostrowski at a dive bar called Lil Sheba.SHARON OSTROWSKI: The only thing that bothers me is why we got to change the way we live to suit other people that come to our country. We shouldn't have to give up our things we like to suit - if they're coming here, they need to adapt to our way. You know, we can't have nativity scenes - I mean, all that stuff. They get offended. Well, then what are you in our country for?
Salena Zito is a wonderful chronicler of non-coastal, non-celebrity Americans. I always love her articles.
The image on that proposed bill looks like Disney Studios or Marvel Comics did it. She was an intelligent, serious-minded, tough cookie who led a life of great hardship and danger with the courage of a soldier, and her actual face is a testament.
Here she was as a young woman:
And as a very old woman:
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