Retreating to the Gentle Pursuits of Elitism

"We liberal elitists are now completely in the clear...Democrats can spend four years raising heirloom tomatoes, meditating, reading Jane Austen, traveling around the country, tasting artisan beers..."--Garrison Keillor, The Washington Post, November 9, 2016 

Since the election I've been feeling pretty guilty about being an elitist, which seems to include people who live on one of the coasts and have a college degree, although I know people in New Mexico and Montana who qualify, so the coast thing is not rigid. I also know very thoughtful, intelligent people who do not have a college degree and voted for Hillary.  Let's not lose our minds with generalities, pundits.

The narrative has been that we coastal-living, college-educated people who've been quietly going about our own lives, giving money to environmental causes, visiting museums, and reading books have been negligent for not picking up on the dilemmas of working-class Americans, who got even on Tuesday by electing That Near-Madman with Orange Skin and Surreal Hair.  It's all our fault.

I bought this for two days, beating myself up, wondering how I could have overlooked and underestimated this demographic; in fact, more than overlooked them,  actually felt disdain for them.   The tape in my head went like this:  Why don't they think more critically?  Can't they see the appalling contradictions and cruelty of what Trump says? Is their empathy on permanent vacation? Don't they have any respect for facts? 

Now I say to hell with guilt.  This morning  I read this piece by Garrison Keillor, published in yesterday's Washington Post, and I thought, fine.  I will retreat to quilting and gardening and listening to Mozart and reading Barbara Pym, all of which nourish my soul.  I'm not abandoning the working class, but I am saving my sanity and living my life according to my values. 

To that end, I'm not going to fly to the Rust Belt and listen to these people's stories, although I will read about them if they don't whine.  If they show up at the Berkeley Food Pantry, I'll listen and try to be kind and hand them off to a volunteer like my dear friend Anne, who went to Stanford and loves opera and manages a food donation program at her (very liberal) church that supplies a hell of a lot of poor people with cereal and canned tuna, which she lugs to the Pantry weekly.  She is not unaware, nor unkind, and she hails from the Midwest.

We'll go on doing our bit, and if in the meantime we're saving our sanity by collecting commemorative tea towels, making collages, watching PBS,  or even quilting, that's okay.

Still working on the election therapy quilt

I'm sorry working class people have felt left out, but as Keillor says, "resentment is no excuse for bald-faced stupidity."

There I go again, being an elitist.  But I dunno, maybe I'm right?

Good luck to all of them.  I mean that sincerely, even if I don't understand them.

And thanks, Garrison, for the validating "us" and to my stepdaughter, Julia, for bringing this article to my attention.

"...by 'us,' I mean librarians, children's authors, yoga practitioners, Unitarians, bird-watchers, people who make their own pasta, opera-goers, the grammar police, people who keep books on their shelves, that bunch."---Garrison Keillor