Ah, Midland.

I have lived here for almost 40 years. I will never be a Real Midlander, of course, as I was not born here. To be considered a Real Midlander, you have to 1) be born here and 2) graduate from high school here.  Unless, of course, you’re George W., and then you get a pass. Or if you’re someone else sufficiently famous that we think we can make money off you—then you can be A Real Midlander! We might even make a museum out of your fake Childhood Home—we’ll take whatever house you once lived in and gut it and make it over (money is not a consideration, as we have plenty!) in a pleasing, Weren’t the 1950’s Grand! sort of way. You know, pre-shag, pre-avocado-green appliances.

It’s Sunday, and I make my Usual Sunday Mistake of reading parts of the newspaper, reading the Letters to the Editor with the mistaken notion that I want to know what my fellow residents are thinking.

This is so untrue. I do NOT want to know what they are thinking. What they are thinking scares the crap out of me, not just because it’s so conservative as to be reactionary, but because it’s so religious and fundamentalist as to have no relationship whatsoever to that thing some of us humans call “logic.”

No, Midlanders are not a people overly blessed with an attachment to logic. They feel about logic like I feel about faith:  it’s a way of thinking that’s not going to do a whole lot to support my view of the world.

Here is a portion of the front page of Friday’s newspaper.

That big long story on the left is about how parents are so upset about Obama’s upcoming Address to the Nation’s Schoolchildren. Parents really ARE upset—the secretary at the high school where The EGE was subbing was complaining to him about all the calls she’s having to field from angry parents. The common phrase seems to be “socialist agenda.” Our governor, Governor Good-Hair, as Molly Ivins called him, said he wouldn’t urge parents to keep their kids home from school that day. By saying that, he is, of course, urging parents to do exactly that. They read that and go, “Gee, I hadn’t thought of that! Me and Junior can go dove huntin’. He don’t need so much schoolin’ anyway.” (Although, not being a Real Texan, since I have never gone hunting nor even remotely considered doing so, I don’t know when dove season actually starts). Then there’ll be herds of kids out of school on that day, and Gov. Good-Hair can run it and play it for all it’s worth. You watch.

But here’s where the illogic comes in: check out the story to the right. It’s about how Miss Texas came to talk to the school children, in assemblies, about persistence. She wore her little tiara and told them about how she had to really work with diet and exercise to be able to compete in the swimsuit portion of the Miss Texas Pageant. I’m guessing that the schools that had the assemblies didn’t allow the children to opt out if they were somehow opposed to Her Agenda. Whatever the hell that might have been. Hard to think of Agenda in relation to an adult who actually walks around wearing rhinestones on her head. Oh, sure:  I’d LOVE a tiara! In fact, I have several. When I wear them, however, I do not speak to groups of people in any sort of motivational capacity.

Talking about staying in school and getting an education = A Socialist Agenda.

Talking about persistence = So useful! Plus cute!

Now, if you live around here anywhere, I don’t need to point out our abysmal drop-out rate, nor do I need to remind you of the new study showing that Odessa, our sister city (20 miles to the west) has what is, in effect, the highest teenage pregnancy rate in the developed world. Yes:  it has the highest rate in Texas, which has among the highest rates in the US, which has the highest rate in the developed countries of the world. There are all kinds of ‘No child left behind” jokes to be made here, but I won’t, as I don’t think this is funny. The EGE taught health, which is all the sex ed kids get in Texas schools, and for at least the last decade, it’s been abstinence only—all you can tell the kids is Just Say No. So that means that all those kids who are now teenagers getting pregnant have had, as their only form of public school sex ed info, Just Say No. Appears to be working GREAT, doesn’t it? What is it they say about continuing to do the same thing even after you know it’s not working?

And then today I was totally gobsmacked (thanks for reminding me of that fabulous word!) to read a Letter to the Editor (yeah, yeah, I know:  I’ve got to give it up—because every Sunday I give in and read to find out what Midlanders are thinking, I get about halfway through and turn to my poor husband and go, “What the fuck am I doing living in this town with these people?”)

(And if you want to read the letters to the editor online, you follow the links and end up at My Open Forum, here, the name of which tells you ALL you need to know. I hooted when I got there, yes, I did. I may bookmark it, never mind that I won’t join or read the postings, just so I can go there and see the heading and snort happily to myself.)

Here’s a sample from last week:

Coup unlikely, it’s up to patriots to protect nation [we’ll ignore all the obvious concrete problems, shall we?]

There are those who imply the military would step in to defend the Constitution if our government represented a “clear and present danger to the U.S. Constitution.” As a retired Marine officer I doubt seriously if the active duty military would take such an action. That too would be in contradiction to the Constitution.
It is not the role of the military to change the civil government of the United States. That is the role of the American citizen. When all peaceful means have been exhausted, and a government has unconstitutionally empowered itself to prevent its removal, it is the role of the American patriot to rise up and throw off that government. The right of the patriotic citizen to overthrow a government that has usurped the power of the people is expressed in our Declaration of Independence and provided for in the Constitution.
I see the role of the military as refusing to obey an unconstitutional and unlawful order to prevent or arrest patriotic citizens who were exercising their right to change an unconstitutional government. I see the military using force only to prevent any other military forces from interfering with the citizen’s right restore the Constitution to its preeminent role in our nation.
Now, that is change you can believe in.
Carroll Cawyer
Read more: http://mywesttexas.com/articles/2009/08/31/news/opinion/doc4a9c331521d28026242206.txt#ixzz0QLHrNhab

This is the kind of shit we get regularly. I don’t know about you people, but it scares the crap out of me to think about people, maybe just blocks away, sitting hunched over their keyboard, muttering about the constitution, typing with the fingers of one hand while stroking their gun with the other. My god, I know where one of these people lives! “Unstable” doesn’t even begin to cover it.

And today I get this one, which isn’t yet online, so I’m going to quote only part of it. Lance Holland writes in response to someone from a couple weeks ago who asked “How Gullible does Obama think America is?” He writes, in part (and I’m using just parts of this, remember, but you can get the gist):

“Gullible enough to allow the Federal Government to kick God out of our public schools.

“Gullible enough to believe Bill Clinton when he said he didn’t have sex with that woman. (Still would be believing this if ‘that woman’ hadn’t kept a certain blue dress.)

“Gullible enough to allow debate on whether the second amendment allows us to own firearms.

“Gullible enough to elect as president a man whose resume would not have afforded him an interview at any of the Fortune 500 corporations.”

Who, pray tell, does he mean?  Because surely, given everything else he’s written in this letter, he’s not pointing out the gullibility of the American people in electing Bush II, who had been a spectacular failure at every business venture in which he’d been involved before deciding (or having it decided for him) that his good ol’ boy charm and fatuous country boy looks would be soothing enough to send him a long way along the Public Path.

[Personally, I see him doing really well as a televangelist and think he really missed his calling. Too bad for us. Too bad for the economy.]

So, yeah:  I’ve gotta find me a hobby for Sunday mornings. On the one hand, reading this mess o’ illogic and angry bitterness, much of which is not-nearly-well-enough-disguised astonishment that somehow the writer did, indeed, wake up to find himself living in a country with A Negro President, although how in God’s Name that happened on his watch is completely baffling to him—on the one hand, it’s entertaining. I snort a lot.  I read things out loud to my husband. I sometimes gnash my teeth:  there’re a couple of “writers” who so desperately need some remedial Freshman Comp help that I’m tempted to contact them and offer tutoring.

Not. I lied.

And I’m not saying that this is just about Midlanders. Oh, no—while this is the most conservative city of its size in the US, I know these people are by no means alone in their beliefs and convictions and unhappiness, and I know that there are some very sane and logical people here, also. I just wish the latter would write more letters to the editor about things like, oh, getting the bulbs in the street lights replaced, or urging the city to enforce the ordinance about picking up the feces you allow your dog to deposit in the street. You know, useful Letters to the Editor stuff that would help all of us. Plus would serve the added purpose of not making us seem like a collection of reactionary loons.

As it is, reading some of these things is entertaining in a pathetic and sad way, kind of like checking out the mutants at peopleofwalmart.com, right? You’re alternately amused and appalled:  it’s funny, but these creatures share much of your own DNA.

Holy crap.

I like to imagine I’m surrounded with kind, compassionate, creative, cheerful, logical people whose desire in life is that others also be kind, compassionate, creative, cheerful and logical. In My World, people would be spending their time pursuing some exciting passion—reading, singing, painting, writing, raising dogs, teaching kids, cutting hair—something they loved and that woke them up every morning filled with ideas and enthusiasm. They would be, dare I even say it? happy and loving people engaged in things that made the world a better place, if only in tiny, tiny little ways.

I do not want to think about all the people for whom this is not the case, the people who really are sitting hunched over their keyboards, a bible on one side, a gun on the other, a tight, bitter little knot for a heart.