Blog 2934 – 12.11.2023

Old MacDonald

One of the saying to come out of World War One was captured in song, “How you gonna keep them down on the farm after they’ve seen Paree?” There is a great divide in this county in between Red and Blue states and even in all the states between rural and urban. By far the cities with their larger populations are progressive and the less populated though larger in area rural areas are more conservative.

The seeds of the War Between the States or the Civil War came from arguments over what constitutes states right versus federal or city rights. That states had a right to choose to perpetuate slavery and the Missouri Compromise and others to stave off war were all about continuing to allow the new states to decide this issue for themselves or letting the federal government mandate that slavery should be forbidden in new territories and eventually all across the nation.

I think it is telling that farm wages have never had to comply with minimum wages laws around the country. There are not just different customs but different rules for rural and urban life. The myriad of complicated and conflicting rules far from creating a more perfect union have instead perpetuated the great divide.

I heard a comedian recently say that one of biggest root causes of the problems in this country is our emphasis on more always more.

As we look at governments local, state, and federal so divided and so unwilling to compromise that they are paralyzed we wonder if civil war and unrest is inevitable.

The certain inalienable rights of life liberty and the pursuit of happiness must include allowing others to have access to those rights as well. Young men who left the farms to fight in France in World War One discovered that the city of Paris offered life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness unavailable on the farm. The myth of Green Acres saying good-bye to city life has helped create a growing place in between urban and rural – the suburbs, yet another compromise intended to stave off conflict. The Greeks tried city states and the Roman built their whole empire naming themselves and it after their biggest city. We have tried that too with New York, Chicago, Los Angeles etc.

Old MacDonald had a farm but children think of burgers, fries, chicken nuggets and Happy Meals we someone mentions MacDonalds today,

E I, E I, O.

Happy Veterans Day!

Your friend and fellow traveler,

David White

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1yhZhBXbItYfCcZM1PX5Jcxch5Kc8QVvc/view?usp=drivesdk

Old MacDonald

“How Ya Gonna Keep ‘Em Down on the Farm?” (Nora Bayes, 1919)