Sitting on the front porch of our cabin in Virginia this weekend, I watched a fair number of vehicles go by. I can't think of a single country-looking male who was driving anything other than a pick up truck, or maybe a Jeep. Many of them went out of their way to be loud ones, with a big engine or big tires and now and then loud music.
I've written a number of times about how it seems that vehicle size and engine noise seem to be about projecting strength in a situation of actual perceived weakness. After all, everywhere in the country businesses are shutting down, country stores, garages, everything except for the inexorable Dollar General and its cousins. Country people are dying of this that and the other: chronic diseases, opioid overdoses and, most recently, COVID. It is only natural to rage against the dying of the light: big trucks, guns, American flags, Trump signs.
There was one seeming exception. Yesterday late in the day Mary, Jonathan, Sharon and I headed to a pretty serious hike to a stunning overlook 2,000 feet above Smith Mountain Lake. About 1,000 feet of net vertical change over 2.5 miles, on a service road up to and then along a ridge. At the parking lot there was one other car, a small dark car, probably a Nissan. Up on the ridge we came across a couple, both of them in long camo pants, him wearing a bright orange hunters vest, carrying a rifle slung over his shoulder. She was Black, he was white. According to the internet, it's not season to be hunting anything in Virginia, so all I can figure is that he was carrying his rifle to show his liberty or maybe for protection against... non gun-carrying liberals???
When we got back to our car, the small black one was gone. Maybe the gun was to protect him from mockery by his truck-driving peers.
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