Eleven Rival Regional Cultures in Book Six: Trying to Hold On 2019

From ” American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures in North America,” by award-winning author Colin Woodard.

The following is not targeted at anyone individually either in real life or in my digital spaces; but it is a topic often worthy of reflecting upon. I can’t remember the exact line from Colin Quinn’s latest Netflix special “Red State Blue State” but he discusses the value of the European Model and how the United States made a mistake by being One Nation. Something along the lines of “Europe understood that every 700 miles or so, you need a new country. Because people change, the experiences change, the culture changes.” And this is something that I think is pretty damned true in a lot of ways. Fundamentally, I think humans tend to think of their life as “default” (in some ways at the very least) and we try to understand the world through our own lens. Which can be… quite… lacking in some ways if we really consider it. I first really grasped this concept when I came to be diagnosed with a pain condition. You see, until my diagnosis… I thought everyone felt the way I did and was just handling it a lot better! Honestly. I thought every other human was experiencing constant physical pain and I was the weak one that wasn’t handling it as well as other people. Which is also why it took me a long time to discuss it with a doctor. Now, true, there are a lot of things I can go into as to why I felt that way… but let’s ignore that for now. The truth is… for a few months of near complete immobility, I didn’t see a doctor because I thought I was just being weaker than other people in pain. When I was diagnosed, I realized that I was wrong. It wasn’t that everyone else was managing the struggle better; it is that everyone else didn’t have my particular struggle. At first, I was mad. If people aren’t battling constant pain all the time, why are they so cruel and mean and angry and hurtful and hateful? You mean you can wake up, walk around without pain, and you still opt for being the worst version of yourself?! But then I came to understand that my original thought was spiritually correct if factually incorrect. People may not be walking around with intense constant pain in their legs… but everyone is walking around with intense constant pain in their lives. Maybe a bad breakup, the death of a child, the layoffs at work, the poverty, the infertility, the physical disability.... everyone is walking around in some form of pain. Or as my prosebox quote goes: “Each person feels pain in his own way, each has his own scars.” Haruki Murakami

However understanding people, in their pain and in their turmoil still involved understanding how very different people were from each other and around the city, state, country, continent, and world. And we see the fruits of those who refuse to do so constantly. Whether it is a person struggling to make ends meet who spends his free time complaining about families trying to escape poverty; or when the wealthy freak out about class warfare when a single mother asks for a living wage… the world is full of folks who either can’t or won’t consider that for as alike as we all are, there are differences worth noting. One of those big ones I’ve taken to understanding (which is why I wanted to do my Law School career in a different state) is that States are very different and the cultural impacts of that really cannot be overstated.
The largest city in Iowa is about 257,000 people. Spiraling out, checking on our neighbors…
Minnesota: about 500,000
Wisconsin: about 600,000
Illinois: 2.7 million
Missouri: about 500,000 (arguably, there’s an asterisk)
Kansas: about 400,000
Nebraska: about 400,000
South Dakota: about 175,000

Iowa ranks 30th as far as population by state and 36th as far as population density. In many states in the United States “small town” means between 50,000 and 75,000. In Iowa, small town means “under 2,000”. Hell, I’m considered to live in “a large small town” being in a town of 5,000.

I only mention this because… we do sincerely have considerably different “nations” in this country and one way of understanding that is to assess Population Totals and Population Density. Another way? Population Demographics and Political Population Concerns. And what has Iowa been absolutely panicked about for the last thirty years? Iowa’s aging population. Current projections show that in over 89% of Iowa Counties, the median age is approaching or exceeding 50 years of age. As younger generations flee to the few big cities or simply leave the State all together, Iowa’s 99 Counties are hemorrhaging youth. Even our education statistics back this up as current statistics point to less than 20% of the State has a College diploma. Which, of course, may account for the fact that Iowa’s median salary is around $37,000. And what happens when you have vast farm land, little education, and too many people in poverty conditions? One of the worst Meth problems in the country. Our system presently has 3 or 4 generations of meth users either in jail, seeking treatment, or both. The book Methland is about my wife’s hometown. A full gram of 97% pure methamphetamine sells for under $100 in this state as an average price. And painfully, the smaller the town… the more prevalent alcoholism and meth use are.

Now… take ALL of that information… and add it to the following. I think it was the short-lived Ernie Hudson series “10-8: Officers on Duty” where Ernie Hudson is telling the Rookie “Cops only marry two kinds of people. Other cops and ex-strippers.” The rookie stupidly asks, “Which one is your wife?” But the point stays the same. Prosecutors don’t often get to meet the Chemists, the Scientists, the CEOs, the amazing people that make the world a better place every day with their hard work. Prosecutors get to meet other attorneys, judges, over-worked DHS workers, and the worst of humanity. The drug dealers, the child abusers, the rapists.

So… that’s what I was talking about the other day. I’m not in LA (4 million) or DFW (6.8 million) or New York (8.6 million). I’m in a 570 square mile County of 17,000 people where I spend at least 50 hours a week dealing with “Special Victims Crimes and Criminals.” And where my boss (criminally) and I (in Juvenile court) deal with an abundant plethora of Methamphetamine Abusers.

TL;DR

One can always say “there are other fish in the sea” but to the pond-dwellers, the “sea” is a small enclosed body of water filled with pond scum.

A dirt road runs between two cornfields in Adair, Iowa, in April. (Joshua Lott/For The Washington Post)

This is my reality.