The subtitle of this academic study is “Rural Consciousness in Wisconsin & the Rise of Scott Walker.” Professor Katherine Cramer visited rural groups in extra-urban parts of Wisconsin for five years to see how people perceived the government in Madison and if it was serving their needs.
What she uncovered is a vast resentment of country folk towards their urban counterparts: rural dwellers believed their tax dollars were siphoned off to pay for government employees in the cities who in turn created regulations which strangled enjoyment of country life, e.g., fishing and hunting, among other things.
Cramer warns those of us whose opinions differ not to consider rural inhabitants ignorant, but to consider they have perceptions upon which their opinions are formed and these perceptions are formed as a result of their rural residency. I am tempted to apply the very strictures several of her interviewees use throughout her period of study: if I believe it, true or not, doesn’t that make it valid?
I thought country people were to be admired for their down-home values and common sense. If you could only get a copy of this book to read one of the final sets of reactions to the recall vote of Walker in 2012 which Cramer painfully transcribed, starting about page 196, it is the short course to understanding the rest of the book.
This was a difficult book for me to read because it was so infuriating. The country folk she spoke with met in small groups, one of which was a group of businessmen who met every day in the middle of the morning for a game of dice--'just for an hour or so,' they defended it.
I’m sorry, but anyone who then tells me that they do not consider other people know the meaning of hard work sounds positively ludicrous. I’m not here to judge them, and couldn’t care less what they do with the most productive hours of the day, but they really shouldn’t be pointing any fingers.
It turns out from my reading of these “meetings” is that people sit around and voluably winge for an hour or so, complaining about this and that, what they don’t have and what they wish they did have. Taxes come in for a large percentage of the discussion points and since I come from a state known for high taxes, Taxachusetts, I am wondering what on earth their property taxes could be that they so cramp their style, what with all that “hard work” they keep on about.
The groups internally trade inaccuracies and then promulgate them around town. It is terribly frustrating to hear them talk about how the government (Fish & Game) might come in and look in their freezers for all the fish they stocked there, proof of their illegal overfishing. No, I don’t understand, even after reading these five years of interviews, what these people want. They want less regulation they say, even saying they’d prefer drunk driving and pollution controls be rolled back.
I give Professor Cramer credit for being able to stick it out. She was prepared when the state went belly-up for old Scott Walker, enemy No. 1 of public employee unions. Some of the comments about how there were people being paid excessive overtime sounds much like what I read in the Boston Globe this week, with some public employees making hundreds of thousands of dollars in excessive overtime charges.
It happens. It doesn’t happen everywhere and it doesn’t happen all the time. (It happens, I might add, with people who think they are smart when they are not.) The crime has been exposed, the people will pay it back and then go to jail. That doesn’t mean we have to throw out the system we set up to ensure fairness. Cramer concludes her study with these ideas that sound remarkably familiar in today’s political commentary:
“One can view as misinformation or ignorance the perceptions among rural folks that they are victims of distributive injustice, but the conclusion that people vote the way they do because they are stupid is itself pretty shallow. It overlooks that much of political understanding is not about facts; it is about how we see those facts.”Indeed. Well, these folks may not be stupid, but they are sure acting like it. Rural consciousness indeed. If you don’t go looking for the truth, you may not stumble upon it.
Cramer's research wasn't wasted, though it made me plenty steamed. Clearly these folks had opinions, but those opinions, I believe, could be changed if someone actually engaged them with a few factoids. The mere fact they did not run Cramer out of town on a rail means they just want to be listened to...at some point, there is no reason to presume they wouldn't listen to someone else with a good argument.
Also, the fact they were meeting at all and were, to however small a degree, interested in local goings on, e.g., regulations, taxes, etc. means they are fertile ground for new ideas. They can at least conceive of public policy. Give them the kit & caboodle of figuring out fairness & I think we would be surprised if those old progressive notions don't come floating to the surface.
What politicians and educators have to do is get out more--go to the hinterland and bring a few good ideas, some failed policies, and a few debunked lies to show side-by-side. I think there is possibility that these folks will rise to the challenge, now that we know they have nothing but perceptions to back up their feelings of resentment. They obviously like getting together to talk things out. Give 'em the numbers--and, by the way, give us their numbers!
Cramer did not give us the actual facts re taxes, etc. That would have helped us to figure out if these folks just can't do math or if they actually have grievance. She did mention something about the cost of sewer (which in my town is calculated as twice the price of water). There, for a family of two, the bill was something in the vicinity of $53/month. The majority of folks have incomes of $11K/yr. This is income, mind you, not including savings or property. If those country folk had a look at what city folk with that kind of income had to deal with, they might not be so full of anger.
Here is an excerpt of Coleen Marlo reading the audiobook:
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