Dispatch: Center Turning Against Bush's War
In Kansas, inside the centermost bar in America, there is talk about their dying prairie, there is fear of Wal-Mart, and there is diminishing support for the war in Iraq.
By Stewart Nusbaumer
Smith Center, Kansas--On the open prairie, bars do not hide nor do they disguise. The directness of the people and the isolation of the land mean that after a drink or two you know the town’s entire story. That’s what happened to me in this small Kansas town, but I wasn’t happy with the story.
“We went something like fourteen or fifteen good years,” says Big Joe who at around 6’4” and over 300 pounds justifies the name big. “Then the last four years have been real bad. Now we’re on the verge of losing this crop.”
“It used to be,” says Old-Timer, who is wearing a long-sleeve neatly pressed starched white shirt, “that you’d go down these roads and there were farms everywhere. Now you have to go for miles and miles sometimes to find a house.”
This is a typical Kansas bar--empty pool tables in the back, drained beer bottles on tables in the front, animal heads on the wall, heavy eyes at the bar, and dark. Real dark, until you get used to the darkness. There is Big Joe who owns Pooche’s Bar, and there is Old-Timer: “I used to do everything, but now I do nothing.” Mechanic, the town’s air-conditioning mechanic, jumps into the discussion occasionally, but he mostly grumbles about having too much work which is a strange grumble in a town with so little work. Catatonic is a few stools down, he lifts his drink approximately every 4 minutes, but never says anything.
Although typical, Pooche’s is also unique. It is America’s centermost bar. This is the bar that is closest to the geographical center of the continental United States, which is sixteen miles east of here. The drinkers in Pooche’s, then, are America’s centermost drinkers. They need to be taken seriously, if you take America seriously.
Fiddling with a straw, Big Joe says slowly: “Four years ago Smith Center had three new car dealerships, today it has none. Last year we had two grocery stores, now we have only one.” Pushing his glasses up his broad nose, Big Joe suddenly wraps his mammoth hand around the tiny cocktail glass and heaves half his drink down.
“Smith Center used to have many farm stores,” Old-Timer is saying. He doesn’t remember exactly how many, but he does remember that “now we got only two.” Old-Timer takes a sip from his beer, and then glances up at the television. “Yeah, used to be a lot more here.”
Since 1950, Smith County--Smith Center is the county seat--has lost half of its population. If this pace continues, by the middle of the 21st century there will be no one drinking in Pooche’s because there will be no one living in the county. Much of the Great Plains has the same story of depopulation and shrinking bars.
In the Christian Science Monitor, Laurent Belsie writes: “The region is losing so many rural people that 261 Plains counties hold fewer than six residents per square mile (an old census yardstick for ‘frontier’). That represents more than one-eighth of the contiguous U.S.--an area larger than France and Germany, but more sparsely populated than any nation on earth. You’d have to travel to places like the North Pole or Greenland to find fewer people per square mile.”
So the story in Pooche’s is being retold in bars throughout the Great Plains: the town is going down. The story in my New York City bar, The Night Café, is George Bush has to go down. Back in Ohio at my friend’s bar, Presti's, the story was the jobs are gone. In the bars of America, our country seems to be going or gone.
The following week in California, I would not hear that the California Dream is going or gone--probably because Californians can hardly remember the Dream. But here on the American prairie, with empty space expanding and residents with pioneer lineage, they remember. They remember the history of the difficult frontier, they remember the stories of the tenacious settlements, and they remember the promise of the American Dream. They remember what their forefathers struggled for and what they themselves hoped for. Maybe Californians are fortunate not to remember.
Water and More
At the bottom of the problem here, like problems all over the West, is that of water. An extended drought and explosive growth further west is sucking up the valuable liquid. When water becomes scarce, the economy suffers, and when the economy suffers people leave. Simple and true.
“Hundreds of small towns are disappearing from the map,” writes Laurent Belsie, “the lack of local jobs and the allure of cities are sucking young people out like a prairie twister.
There is more to this story, however, than water scarcity--economic decline--rural towns abandoned--urban attraction. There is U.S. government policy favoring big business and Sun Belt communities, and penalizing small farmers and northern states. There is federal policy and political indifference allowing for massive immigration both legal and illegal that decreases workers’ wages and agriculture prices. There are many reasons for the decline of our prairie towns, but there is only one solution: government action.
The Bush Administration, however, is preoccupied with cutting taxes for the wealthy and liberating oil for the crony industry, so there is no public program to save the American heartland like in the 1960s when Democrats attacked the problems of poverty and backwardness in Appalachia. Rejuvenation in America for Americans is just not important to the Bush Administration.
Big Joe and Old Timer are discussing whether Smith County has the oldest population in the entire country, or in only Kansas. They agree the county is old, and getting older. “When we’re gone, “Old-Timer asks me, then what?”
“It will come back,” I lie without hesitation.
“I don’t think so.” He looks into his beer, “No, I don’t think so.”
It is difficult to get a lie past these people.
Left behind in the exodus to urban areas is a rural population heavy with retirees and those edging close to retirement. There are not only fewer business customers, there are also fewer skilled workers. So while Carter Center shrinks, Mechanic’s business is thriving--“Wish I could get some time off,” he complains, with his relaxed, broad smile. But even his success is part of the depopulation and decline of our Great Plains.
“We’re holding the town together,” Big Joe says as he picks up his glass, noticing it’s empty, he waves it in the air for a refill. Then he adds, “Well, we’re trying.” Old-Timer gives him a quick glance, but says nothing. Mechanic takes a sip from his beer, and says nothing. Catatonic stares straight ahead.
Wal-Mart Culture
“You know we’re a hundred miles from a Wal-Mart,” Mechanic waits for my reply.
“A hundred miles from Wal-Mart, is that really possible?”
Soon, in the Grand Canyon, I would hear a Ranger tell an astonished audience of American tourists: “We are 136 miles from a Wal-Mart.” Towns used to be markers of reference, now it seems to be Wal-Mart stores.
The local newspaper, The Smith Country Pioneer, recently lambasted Wal-Mart for underpaying its workers which taxpayers must then subsidize with government programs such as free school lunches, low-income tax credits and deductions, health care subsidies, and low- income energy assistance. According to a government study, it costs taxpayers $2000 for each Wal-Mart employee.
“It is ironic that Wal-Mart has ‘outsourced’ many of the manufacturing jobs by buying merchandise in China,” the editorial says, “at the same time that we’re subsidizing the low wages in America.” It then goes on to question whether federal help should go to employees of one of America’s most profitable corporations.
Although “a hundred miles from a Wal-Mart,” the postmodern world of imported goods and low worker wages, corporate mega-power and diminished national sovereignty is certainly on their minds. They know Wal-Mart culture is the alternative to what is dying here.
“Our kids will probably be working in some Wal-Mart,” Mechanic says, his smile not so bright this time.
What is happening here is more than the hollowing out of our heartland, there is the eradication of an America. The eradication of an America that has existed since nearly the beginning of this nation, that was an important building block for our national identity. What is being eradicated is an America that is an alternative to the postmodern craziness that enshrines materialism as god and commercialism as king, an America where people still wave at passing cars and smile at strangers.
We are losing the confidence that our towns can do just fine without a Wal-Mart, that our economy can function without a flood of imported labor and the constant outsourcing of jobs overseas. Neither Bill Clinton nor George Bush understand this America.
As the farmland returns to wild grassland in our very heartland, we are forgetting more and more who they are. And when a people forget who they are, bad things always happen. They can have the highest incarceration rate in the world, they can have the highest mental illness percentage in the world, they can have the highest divorce rate in the world. And these confused, poor people can allow a dangerous simpleton to become their president. Bad things happen when a people forget who they are.
Iraq
“Iraq is the central front on the war on Terrorism,” a While House spokesman is saying on television. The channel is quickly changed, to a rodeo.
“Any rodeos around here?”
“No, not really,” Mechanic smiles. “We’re plowboys, not cowboys.”
I can’t keep my mind on the rodeo, it backtracks to the White House spokesperson, to the war on terrorism, and then to Iraq--triples are grease lighting to the mind.
“Going into Iraq sounded good in beginning,” Big Joe says. “To get bin Laden and all that, but it would have helped if they had found those weapons of mass destruction.”
“So how do people feel about the war now?” I press.
“Well, people around here like doing things fast, get it done. This is going to drag on too long for people around here.”
“That’s right,” Old-Timer chimes in. “If we go in, then get it over with and then out.”
“But that’s not happening,” I point out.
“People around here don’t like what’s happening,” Big Joe adds quietly, and waves his glass for another refill.
A recent CBS News Poll said 61 percent of Americans now disapprove of the way Bush is handling the war in Iraq, and only 34 percent approve. Certainly a turn around from a year ago when more than 66 percent of Americans favored Bush’s handling of the Iraq war. Today CNN said Bush’s positive ratings on the war have dropped 13 percent in just the last three months. According to Bill Schidner of CNN, “For the first time a majority of Americans are saying it was a mistake to send troops into Iraq. This might be a turning point,” he makes references to the Tet Offensive in Vietnam.
“A lot of people here been changing their thinking,” says Big Joe. “But we don‘t talk about it that much.”
What I learned at the centermost bar in America was basic and straightforward, just like the people. Their economy is precarious, and they are paying close attention to their precarious economy. There is talk about prices going up, wages not, gas prices skyrocketing, and opportunities leaving. And I learned the war in Iraq is unpopular in this conservative mid-America town, yet they are not paying close attention to the war and there is little talk about this crisis. But you can pull the skepticism out of them: their growing frustration and their deepening concern that U.S. troops are slipping into another bloody quagmire.
Sometimes the most important thing one can learn is what you already know. These people are good and hard working yet their communities are struggling--some are dying. But the Bush Administration is indifferent, focused on trying to save itself in Iraq rather than Americans in the heartland. And these good, sensible people do not understand the war in Iraq, so their support for the war they do not understand is diminishing.
On the other hand, when you do not see what someone else is saying, then you know they are lying. The Bush Administration claims the heart of America is in its political back pocket, but the religious fundamentalists in the South are not the heart of America; they are fringe, and here in the Plains support for Bush is soft and getting softer. The Republicans may very well carry the Plains states in this election, but the future is beginning to be less certain. The Administration proclaims Americans will stay the bloody course in Iraq, but the centralists in the center of America are turning against the Iraq War.
In Pooche’s, the centermost bar in America, the message is clear: it is time to leave Iraq before there is no town to support Pooche's.
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