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The election having passed, it is of course time for punditry, analysis and recriminations.
Not that I have any feeling for the pulse of the electorate, even on local elections.
For instance, I thought the bond issue for a new middle school would be a squeaker, and that it might well pass because mid-term elections have a low turnout and supporters, who were better organized than the opposition, would be sure to vote. Instead, our turnout was about 75 percent and the issue failed 2-1.
My informal yard-sign poll indicated that the sheriff's race, a deliciously nasty campaign of rumors and innuendo between Ronny Bergmann and Dave Bowers, would be quite close. Bergmann won by a 2-1 margin.
We enjoyed a much cleaner campaign for a county commission seat, and again I expected a close vote. Again, I was wrong, another 2-1 margin.
But it was the tenor, not the contents nor the tactics, of some of these campaigns that bothered me.
One candidate for sheriff kept informing us that we had
a potential youth gang problem
in Chaffee County,
that you could find gang colors and graffiti even in our
pristine mountain Mayberrys.
I suspect that there is some federal grant money
available for law enforcement in any jurisdiction which can
raise the dreaded specter of youth gangs,
and that
the candidate merely wanted to be sure his department got
its share or more of that pork. Even if pork is the noble
cause, such campaign rhetoric tends to subvert the
family values
that all candidates feel compelled to
praise.
The teenagers hanging out on the street corner are no longer your children or their friends, no longer the clerks in our stores and the laborers on the summer crews, no longer fellow residents -- our political discourse has defined them as dangerous threats to all that we hold dear, and we're supposed to protect ourselves from them by electing the people who know how to keep those punks in their place.
This demonizing of youngsters appeared in another local campaign. The major part of the failed school-bond issue would have built a new middle school.
As it is, Salida's junior and senior high schools are at different ends of the block, but they do share a campus.
Our school superintendent argued that it was important to pass the middle-school bond issue so that innocent junior-high students could be isolated from the worldly and pernicious influences of the senior-high students.
Are high-school students indeed so wicked that they must be segregated from their own brothers and sisters if public order is to be preserved? Were Martha and I supposed to provide separate meals and activities at home when we had one of each? And just how do we prevent a wholesome 13-year-old from turning into a jaded, gang-ready 14-year-old? This process appears to occur by some sort of alchemy. They don't trust parents to prevent it, and the schools seem to be at a loss for methods, since their answer is not to reduce or eliminate such evil influences, but to isolate them.
This notion of protecting us from youngsters and youngsters from us and youngsters from each other has some other odd consequences. For instance, we might enjoy a pleasant family outing if our children could go along to hear a band. But bands generally play in bars, where you've got to be 21 to get in, even if you're not drinking. The publican could lose his license, even if they're drinking only soda water or ginger ale.
So the kids complain that there's nothing to do, which leaves them with the prospect of hanging out on street corners, which makes them into bad influences on younger children, who might then join youth gangs, which a clever candidate will turn into political capital.
The process is clear. The question is why? This being America, someone must profit from this process of alienating us from our own families, but who?
Hmmm. If you're Sony, you can sell a lot more compact disks and audio gear if every member of the household must have his or her own assortment and a stereo system to play them on.
Meanwhile, we aging Baby Boomers often listen to
classic rock
stations, rather than listen to
anything new -- heaven forbid that we ever get as disturbed
by hip-hop or the Crash Test Dummies as our parents were by
acid rock or the Rolling Stones.
Or you could gain some shelf space for your soft-drink
company if you could manage more market segmentation, say
with an OK Cola
that targets alienated youth
who wouldn't be caught dead drinking some old-fogy brand of
flavored water.
Look elsewhere into the pop culture fabricated by American marketing, be it the promotion of clothes or computer software, and you find the same trends.
Americans might say they want close families doing
things together, but that arrangement offers neither
markets nor scare votes. Just watch the new Republican
majority in Congress; they'll preach family values,
but they'll practice the corporate values that divide
households.
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