The Flyover Country State of Mind
Resist those seeking to make you more dependent on the government
I was born in a small town.
Yes, that’s a line from a John Cougar Mellencamp song, but it’s also how I grew up.
I was 1 of 32 in my high school graduation class. When I went off to college, my hometown had lost hundreds of people from its heyday and comprised all of 800 residents. It has bounced back over the last few decades, boasting 1,100 residents now, and even a Dollar General.
As the small town I grew up in declined during my youth, most businesses moved out or closed. Farming was and continues to be a significant contributor to the local economy, but while this is lucrative for those involved, there’s not enough farmland for everyone. My parents, like many of my friends’ parents, had to drive more than 30 miles each way, 5 or 6 days per week to and from work. Some traveled further, and today, many residents continue to commute to where the jobs are.
Why not move?
Many families have long-established roots there. In the case of my family, those roots go back to the late 1800’s. Freedom of movement by car allowed my parents to balance work and life. My dad still lives in the same house my brothers and I grew up in. He graduated in 1960 from the same high school I did. His mom (my grandmother) graduated from that high school in the early 1920’s.
My point? Flyover Country people typically put down roots. They build their lives in these communities. They support their communities, by serving on the local volunteer fire board, by attending school and sporting events, and by supporting businesses that stay or open there.
Even now, in his 80’s, my dad serves as the Commander at the local American Legion. My dad, and other residents of my hometown, including many young families that have intentionally sought to live in a small town, have no desire to live in large urban areas or sacrifice their way of life to satisfy the aims of the MERC (managerial experts, ruling class).
You may be asking yourself what this has to do with government dependence.
It starts with the recently passed Infrastructure Bill and the Democratic Party’s obsession with implementing their vision of “infrastructure”.
Public Transportation = Government Dependence
I came across this tweet last week, leading up to Mayor Pete’s announcement and Joe Biden’s visit to Pittsburgh, both of them hawking their infrastructure plan.
Here is a direct link to the article: Road Transport Overhaul - Breitbart.
Last year, I wrote an article outlining how elements of the Infrastructure Bill negatively impact Flyover Country and the Flyover Country way of life here ("More Proof They Despise Flyover Country").
Since I wrote that post in August, YouTube took down an embedded video of Mayor Pete pretending to bike to work, when really his security detail had driven him to a spot a block away and unloaded a bike for him, while he strapped on a helmet. Then, he appears, pedaling his way to work, as if that’s how he travels.
Rules for thee, but not for me.
Additionally, a tweet I included in my August post showed a line of electric vehicles in British Columbia waiting for charging. The line stretched back quite a ways, demonstrating another tactic to restrict freedom to move. Given the geographic size of Flyover Country, the MERC seek to intentionally create “disproportionate impact” to use their “woke” terminology.
These tactics don’t affect politicians traveling around in limos and SUV’s with security details. It doesn’t restrict the freedom of movement of their staffers and other city-dwellers because they can Uber, bike, or take public transportation to travel the handful of blocks or the couple of miles it takes for them to go from home to work and back.
Public transportation doesn’t work in many parts of Flyover Country. While my dad has long since retired, the community I now call home (a moderately sized city) sits roughly 30 miles west of my hometown. Many of the young families and other residents who live in my hometown commute here to where the jobs are.
There is no light rail.
There are no buses.
They need to drive.
In a car.
Preferably one that doesn’t require frequent charging or $7 gas.
What the MERC desire, whether they’ll publicly admit it or not, is to force more people into urban areas, with little to no regard of the personal decisions they made to live where they do in Flyover Country.
If you won’t voluntarily move into a larger urban area, they’ll make it so expensive that middle class families will have no other choice. Here’s an excerpt from my August post on the Infrastructure Bill and something called “VMT”:
Hidden within this bill is a carveout of at least $50 million to study the viability of a “VMT”. What is “VMT”? It stands for “vehicle miles traveled”. The language in the bill allows Transportation Secretary Pet Buttigieg to award grants to local and/or regional entities that will pilot projects of this VMT tax.
According to the bill’s text, all drivers, whether the run of the mill soccer mom or an over the road (OTR) trucker (who might also be a soccer mom), would be asked to participate in the volunteer pilot with participants needed from all 50 states, D.C., and Puerto Rico. The Department of Transportation (DOT) would then calculate drivers’ payments of this VMT tax on a quarterly basis.
Just like Joe Biden’s Executive Order mandating that half of all new cars sold by 2030 must be electric, it’s about limiting your freedom of movement. Hard to pursue happiness when you can’t afford to drive your car. Even harder to pursue it when you can’t afford the electric cars they’re forcing on you.
Through an additional tax, because that’s what this “VMT” is, they want to penalize the small town resident commuting hundreds of miles per week to work or the farmer and rancher that has to travel thousands of miles a year inspecting crop and livestock.
They’ve Tried This Social Engineering in my New Community
As I mentioned, I live about 30 miles from my hometown now and have called this community my home since college. The county where I live is steeped in agriculture, and as you might suspect, this has historically lent itself to a more conservative viewpoint and support of the Republican Party.
Over the years, I’ve witnessed more progressive politicians attempt to advance their agenda, even though most don’t want it. They seek to turn a community of slightly over 100,000 into something resembling Brooklyn. They’ve created trails out of abandoned railroads. They’ve narrowed traffic lanes to add bike paths. They’ve invested tens of millions of dollars into public transportation serving the community. To clarify, this public transportation does not extend beyond the city limits to my hometown or any of the other outlying “rural” communities.
In short, I’ve watched over the last 20+ years, as they’ve grown our local government, and that expanding government attempts to force certain behaviors through social engineering like this.
Those public buses I mentioned? They run on fixed routes throughout the community, and they’re frequently empty. Yet, instead of acknowledging that this isn’t an effective use of tax dollars, they continue to expand the budget and push their public transit agenda, even though ridership dropped from 9,700 daily boardings on a typical weekday in October 2019 to around 6,500 daily boardings on a typical weekday in October 2021. The reported October 2021 Operating Expenses were just over $1.2 million.
My rough calculations work out to about $7.50 to transport 1 passenger.
That’s not a huge cost, but when only about 4% of the community is using it based on ridership, is this a prudent expense? Would a business owner spend that much money on 4% of their customer base?
Oh, did I forget to mention they recently went back to “free” bus rides?
Yeah, they’re not collecting fares right now.
Just another example of governments inability to create a cost-effective solutions to any problem they tackle or invest taxpayer money in economically responsible ways.
Additionally, recently, one of the city council members pushed developers to create new housing units as “infill”. Essentially, these progressive politicians desire developers to invest in aging parts of the community, instead of purchasing cheaper farmland on the outskirts to build new housing that increases the likelihood of a profit.
Our current house is in one of those subdivisions on the outskirts that was farmland until about 10 years ago. We enjoy that it’s just outside of town, with rural views. Yet, this same city council member described our subdivision as a “loser” for the city.
I guess he thinks that he serves the government and not his constituents.
While it’s a noble goal to repurpose aging parts of our community, we’re not Detroit, where our city footprint expanded beyond our means to support it. But just like our ongoing public transportation fiasco and trying to force less car usage, they seek to dictate to the market (the developer and the consumer) where they can build and buy housing.
You can also see how this push for developers to serve the government’s desires rather than the consumers seeks to engineer behavior, regardless of how costly it might be for the developer or how undesirable it might be for those seeking housing.
During the height of the pandemic, our local government used the pandemic to eliminate and scale back services like bulk trash pick-up (think leaves, an old sink, etc.). Yet, through friends, I’m aware of many city employees getting paid to be largely idle during that timeframe. Our taxes didn’t translate to more, better, or more efficient/effective services. Instead, to add insult to injury, they’ve submitted budgets in the last few weeks to add more staff to their payrolls.
More employees seeking to justify their existence will seek more of these forced solutions, ignorant of resident preferences, prevailing market forces, or economically sound usage of taxpayer money.
They’re Seeking to Eliminate the Behavior at the Source
Finally, if they fail to coerce Flyover Country residents to move out of small towns and rural subdivisions into larger urban areas, and if they can’t use local government to force residents and businesses to enact policies and make decisions that serve and benefit the government, they seek as a last (but probably their most effective) resort to choke off the supply of freedom loving residents.
I’m talking about our youth.
They’ll indoctrinate the coming generations to not view cars, driving, getting your license as a right of passage into adulthood, freedom, and independence. They’ll frame it as their moral obligation to avoid this, saving our planet from the “scourge of climate change” in the process, and instead experience freedom "digitally”.
We haven’t seen this as much with our 3 teen daughters, one of whom completed drivers’ training and got her permit last fall. They have told us of friends that aren’t taking drivers’ training or planning to get their license.
While Dave’s article above frames it in terms of seeking freedom online rather than on the road, let’s not kid ourselves that underlying the Infrastructure Bill, the social engineering, AND the apathy towards driving and getting a license, is a Green New Deal type agenda.
And John’s tweet captures it perfectly. Zero deaths from car accidents, just like “Zero COVID” is not realistic. It’s merely a vehicle (pun intended) to transfer wealth to the MERC and enact their climate change agenda.
Flyover Country is a place, like the small town I grew up in and still cherish, but it’s also a spirit and a mindset. It’s a desire to exercise your free will and your independence and to live life where you want, how you want, and on your terms. Whether you live in Florida (like it appears John and Dave do), San Francisco, or in the Midwest, you can still identify as Flyover Country.
So, on 2/2/22, let’s not double down on bad government policy and enable the status quo. Let’s find our Flyover Country spirit and recognize like the Canadian truckers, we too can remind the powers-that-be they serve us. We don’t serve the government.