Cultures of law

Was thinking back to Mary's observation about warning signs about guns at houses in the country. In the city and suburbs -- at least the affluent parts -- people have security systems to protect property but basically everybody feels safe and is ~98% law-abiding. People drive 68 in 55 zones, maybe smoke a joint here or there, sometimes they drive after having 3 glasses of wine (but so much less than they used to -- and all the credit in the world to Nancy Reagan on that one). If you call 911, it comes.

Even tax compliance is high. Yes people who can afford them hire CPAs to get guidance on how to manage down their tax liability within the confines of the tax code, but egregious tax evasion is very much frowned on.

Out in the country, they don't have the luxury of trusting in the written law like we do. People have to protect themselves, hence the culture of the fetishization of guns, big trucks and other metal objects, male dominance, fences, etc. It used to be and to some extent is still subtended by a culture of churchgoing and the norms that come with this.

Of course, you have to fit in and play the country game. This is also the land of lynchings -- the historical scale and publicness of which is truly shocking (as I have been reminded recently listening to The Warmth of Other Suns). If you were gay or an ambitious woman (like my mom) or otherwise nonconforming the thing to do was get the hell out.

But the layer of superficial norms has been an important part of the placid exterior of the countryside, it's claim to some moral superiority. Trump and his demagogue predecessors have ripped the pleasant facade off of that, have made it OK to embrace one's savagery so long as it is supported by a culture of "work," which is equated with sweating and transforming matter, building and making physical things. How the preachers justify it I cannot tell you, though it's all ultimately about their way of life being threatened, I get that.

OK, I have digressed. Gotta get to work.