Hunting Season

   I spent a couple hours driving around the forest today looking at the hunters as they finish up black bear and small game season and prepare for the deer season that starts tomorrow in Pennsylvania. In the coming weeks the local newspaper will have pictures of  hunters holding the carcasses, so it is a  poular activity for many people in Warren County and a rite of passage for their children. This is an area of the country that Clinton labeled the home of "deplorables" and which Obama characterized as "clinging to their bibles and guns" -both descriptions that have a measure of truth but which are so stereotypical that it is no wonder the people here felt offended to the point of voting for Trump. The voter registration locally is 2 to 1 Republican, and no amount of discussion will get the latter to understand the attitudes of the East coast any more than most people in that part of the country understand pictures of dead deer in a newspaper article.
   I know a married couple here who changed churches ( Episcopalian to Catholic ) because the former was going to allow female pastors and homosexuals to join the church. The husband  commented that "women working outside the house contributed to the downfall of society." A friend of this couple subscribed to the conspiracy theories that Michelle Obama was a man and that Hillary Clinton had a sex trafficking ring. Hard to have an intelligent conversation with such people, but I assure you that they do exist and are totally serious about their views. Counterarguments such as Catholic priests were abusing children- a much more serious truth than being female or homosexual-  do not seem to matter to such people. That is, No amount of facts or logic will dissuade them from their preferred attitude. Because I have lived in both places and have heard both sides, I generally find some attitudes around here despicable and not well reasoned, but I also know that these people are not evil monsters; they simply have conservative, often Christian based views that are hypocritical if examined too closely-which often they are not.
    The hunters who are gathering tonight in the many small camps that dot the forest will drink and talk in anticipation of the hunt, and for many of them that will be the best part of the weekend. They will mock the hypocrisy of anti- hunting critics who eat meat, and cherish the freezer of venison they obtain if they are successful. It really is different worlds within one country, but the humanity is the same. Everyone laughs and cries and gets sick and has children and argues politics; we simply experience it in different places....But there is no doubt that there are irreconcilable differences, such as the violent racism supported by some people, that must be suppressed by strict laws if our democratic society is to survive. I truly believe that some form of national service after high school-a year or two where people from across the nation got together to do work for the public good-would go a long way to healing our divisions.