Pop 89: Follow Them Home

By Madonna Hamel

Why is it so hard for one group of people to believe another group when they claim to be hurting? Why are politicians, professionals and media pundits so deaf to people living in rural and factory towns crushed by deindustrialization and the monopolization of big agriculture when they holler: "Helloooo! We are bleeding and on fire!"?

Part of the problem lies in the presumption that the real reason people are upset is because of their own hard-held prejudices. The problem, the academics and legacy media celebs tell us, is really racial, gender or religious prejudice. And, anything else is just a cover.

There ARE racists and misogynists and unChristian Nationalists out there. I've encountered them. But every generation has its master narrative. And the biggest one, the most enduring, is the Dream. Sadly, not Martin Luther King's Dream of being judged by character not skin colour, but the $Dream of becoming a billionaire just like the men standing on the stage behind the president. 

The $Dream is so strong it even outweighs the fact of individual nightmares of losing a home due to unpaid mortgage or hospital or heating bills. The $Dream defines the Western world's measure of worth. And its function.

I've mentioned before that we can define a culture's collective purpose by noting the words used to describe the collective. Once upon a time we were souls, looking upward. Then we were citizens, looking at our countrymen. Then we became consumers, looking at the shelves. Now we are refered to as users, looking at screens to buy, spy, trash, troll and connect. Our job is to use or be used.

So maybe it's no surprise that the news, once meant to inform us, is now using us as pawns in mud-slinging contests. 

My friend George, a one-man newscaster and cameraman for many years, recently reminded me that the whole news industry changed when it went from being a service to a commodity. It had to turn a profit. 

Gone are the days when a news anchor just stuck to the facts. No helpful modifiers and descriptors like "horrible" or "devastating" were necessary when describing crashes or tornadoes; the public were capable of coming to their own conclusions

But then came the 1980s, we went from being citizens to consumers. And news "shows" became something we consumed, preloaded with opinions and rants, like tv snacks with plenty of additives. Now news is therapeutic, cathartic. Casters and viewers can let their vendettas fly.

And for all the championing a newscaster might do for the working poor, they really have no idea. Because they don't live like us. And they don't want to. 

I have a surefire test of a newscaster, professor or politician's grasp of reality: Follow them home. See where they live. If they live in a gated community, or a penthouse, or a five-bedroom-three-car-garage bungalow built for two, they haven't a clue about the people they report to and claim to represent.

Follow them home and you will see they do not drive a 15-year-old car or a truck held together with baler twine. They go to cocktail parties. They take cabs. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be.

You talk like a Commie, my neighbour laughs. I know. But I'm not; I'm using the language of Christ. Isn't it ironic how much they sound alike?

Don't worry. I have no intention of following any CNN or Fox or CBC news host home. I don't even follow them on Instagram. I can guess where they live. I agree with George, who, for sanity's sake, keeps coming to visit us in Val Marie because "it's better to follow the call of the land." 

So, skip their homes and just keep walking…past the suburban and urban silos of the select…past the shopping centres and their vast parking lots, past the overpasses and the off-ramps, past the strip malls, past the box stores and megachurches.

Keep walking past the backyards with abandoned toys and rusty car parts, past the storage units and rental facilities, past the dealerships and mini-golf courses and cineplexes. Past the airport, the hangers and plows, past the little lake close enough to town to afford a swim on a hot day after work. 

Now you're getting somewhere. Now you can breathe. Now the sounds of birds take over the sounds of cars. Now you might stop or at least slow the noise of worry, condemnation, scathing judgements and clever put-downs competing for attention in your head, the noise of the news which isn't news anymore but a litany of things to fear. 

Walking along the Frenchman River last night, enjoying a windless evening full of coyote calls and a violet sky of wavelet clouds stippled hot pink, I thought:

The land is the original strong silent type- it quietly stands firm while we let all our anxieties and energies release into it. Oh I know its not an "it", but a she - a mom, the ultimate den mother. Patient as she sits and watches us make a mess of things, over and over. Occasionally she gets very mad at our constant proddings and extracting. Then she gives us earthquakes and tornadoes. 

Once we stepped into the role of consumer, like we were draping our shoulders in ermine and crowns, ginned up on the princely proposition that the "customer is always right", it was only a matter of time before we'd concede to the idea that "every network has its price." Which is how we ended up with news anchors who unmoor us and take us out to sea on their private opinion yachts. 

So, turn off the news before "Give us more bread than we could spend in one lifetime, and while you're at it, give us more circuses, too!" replaces "Give us our daily bread." And give yourself back to the land.