Dixie Stampede

Thu Aug 6, 2009 5:51 am (PDT)
Yesterday my husband and I attended a show in Branson called Dolly Parton's Dixie Stampede.I expected some singing, maybe a comedy act and a horse show, but it was really a well-organized variety show featuring amazingly beautiful horses, cute little pigs, chickens and some really talented humans. I suppose to someone who can ride a horse, the experience wouldn't be quite as impessive, but I give credit where credit is due. Those riders, singers and actors must practice hours and hours to put on such an entertaining show. Most of them, of course, are young so I naturally want them to succeed. The boy who gave us our free Magnolia Blossom drink (cherry juice and fizz) in our souvenir Boot Mug (cheap plastic made in China) had just graduated from high school and will start college in a few weeks. I gave him a tip and wished him well.I've avoided Branson like the plague since it began to gobble up the natural environment 20 years ago and mutate into a grotesque caricature of everything that's destroying America as I knew it back in the early 70's. The first time we took our kids to Branson in 1972, there was just one traffic light in town and a handful of attractions. Life was slow and relaxed. The hills were still covered with trees instead of billboards.But my husband likes horses and I'm just easily impressed, so we decided to escape the 100 degree heat and go to a show. For two hours, we forgot how dangerously close our country is to becoming a fascist state, and we floated the river of make-believe like a junkie on a high. The settling of the West was a perfectly happy adventure with white-only jamborees and square dances. Beautiful Southern Belles moved daintily around the plantation gazebo singing about their carefree life. No mention of who was doing all the work so these "ladies" could pamper themselves.Seating in the arena is divided into North and South. I seriously did not know they were referring to the Civil War. I thought those were just different sides of the building. Having watched on TV recently all the bad behavior at town hall meetings, I was prepared to be outnumbered by Southerners who hate Obama, but "our side" was full of visitors from Pennsylvania, Indiana, Ohio, and Missouri. And "the North" won the pig race, the buckboard race and carried the day in the "pass the flag" contest. So my Yankee blood settled down to enjoy winning the war once more. The final act is a deafening blast with Dolly singing about how much she loves America on a 40 foot high movie screen and about 20 horses and riders decked out in stars and stripes carrying huge flags prancing around the arena. For a few brief moments, I understood the need to believe the fairy tale that everything is good and noble about our history and our place in the world. As my eyes filled with tears, I was carried back to my childhood when I was one of those believers too. I realize now how naive I was back then but also have to face the fact that I've probably not completely exorcised that core of optimism instilled in me by my parents. I used to tell my history students that every generation finds solutions to the problems they confront. I'd like to believe that now, but there seems to be a poison spreading throughout the body politic from which we may never recover.Charles Pierce in "Idiot America" explains that people just don't want to be bothered studying issues and using their brains to make an informed decision. I agree, but I think what's spreading throughout our society goes deeper than that. Being from "the North," I have never been in a position to know how much people in "the South" resent the federal government in general and the election of a black president in particular. In his biography, "Dreams from My Father," Obama tells about a conversation he had as a teenager with an older black man in Honolulu. He told him that whites will let blacks get only so far and then they will "yank the chain back." That may help explain the visceral reaction of so many white Americans to everything Obama is and stands for. We're seeing a convergence of two polluted streams of American culture merging to form a raging torrent. The Republicans and their corporate sponsors will do anything and pay any price to destroy a Democratic administration and Congress. At the same time, the whites who have no one else to call inferior except blacks are blinded by their own hatred and can't abide the fact that this mixed race president sincerely wants to help them. If you notice who rides around with the Confederate flag on their pick up trucks, it's not the middle class, successful whites. If you listen to which governors resent and want to turn down federal stimulus money, they are all below the Mason-Dixon line. Texas governor Rick Perry threatens secession and is cheered by people who don't realize how well off they are as Americans.Of course, entrenched and sometimes unrecognized racism isn't found only in the South. I lived in Cleveland shortly after the riots of the 60's, and hatred ran like a wall between black and white communities. But the fear of blacks and distrust of the federal government has a more visceral component in the South because of their unique history. I'm watching and learning as this chapter of American history unfolds. I won't be around to read what historians write 30 years from now, but I hope the chapter is headed "Barack Obama and the Restoration of Middle Class America."