"Michael M. Butler" wrote:
>
> "Michael S. Lorrey" wrote:
>
> > I do not see
> > much difficulty for residents of rural areas to distinguish.
> <snip>
> > have found that its far easier for rural resident
> > A from Montana to trust rural resident B from New Hampshire than for
> > city resident A from one side of Boston to trust city resident B from
> > the other side of Boston. Could it simply be that the shared values of
> > city dwellers are values of distrust of the individual in favor of
> > bureaucratic authority?
>
> Quite possibly. Could it also be that the Montanan and Hampshirite share
> more common values, or think they do? Sure. I know what you are driving
> at, but note that you said "easier". Not "a slam dunk".
Frankly most people I know don't know jack about cattle ranching or
mining. Pretty different cultures. I've also found that rural people
will tend to trust a 'city slicker' if they don't fit in previously
formed categories that equal 'con artist', while few city people would
distrust a rural person at all, though they may have prejudices about
them being quaint, simple, etc..
>
> > I do freak petty socio/communo-fascists all the time.
>
> OK, let's take two extreme examples of individualism, then something
> that happened to me a couple years back:
>
> 1) Flash or print a concealed weapon in New Mexico, one of those rural
> places you and I both tend to like. Get arrested. Resist arrest and
> escape, claiming that your constitutional rights are being violated.
> Return to your home. Wait for the SWAT team and negotiators. I am not
> saying it's right, I am saying it happens; at some point, if you act
> "weird" enough, you will be presumed to be a danger to others and you
> will be called a wacko. Even in Ojai.
Resisting arrest and escape are dumb ideas in any event, and will get
you negative attention no matter where you go. Best to just sit it out
and kick their asses in the courtroom.
A few months after the Carl Drega shooting spree in northern NH a few
years ago, a local was living temporarily on the Vermont side of the
river due to a marital dispute, and was seeking to renew his vehicle
registration at the City Hall here in Lebanon. The local clerk refused
to let him renew his registration because his only mailing address at
this point was in Vermont and was being highly uncooperative. His
response was,"You people need to start being responsive to citizens, or
there will be more incidents like that one up north."
The clerk freaked and claimed that he made a death threat and called the
cops on him. When they tracked him down and arrested him, he was in
posession of a revolver that he legally owned. A recently passed gun
control law that had slipped in somewhere made it a crime to be in
posession of a gun when you are being arrested, which is obviously an
unconstitutional circumstance to be in. He fought the charges on the
death threat, and got them dismissed, then got the illegal posession law
overturned by the State Supreme Court as unconstitutional.
>
> 2) After getting all proper permits for a public event from your local
> socio/communo-fascists, undertake to perform a blood animal sacrifice of
> some medium-sized animal in your local (small) town square. Invite the
> media. Invoke Cthulhu, and call for the destruction of all that
> Christians value. Paint your self with and drink the blood, and offer it
> to children to do the same. Still covered in blood, go to various
> merchants offering the blood for wholesale as a miracle cure for
> Christianity. Wait for results. You might not be committed, but I
> ga-ron-tee that the word "crazy" will be applied by some people.
>
> You were just being an individual; in the latter case, it was just
> performance art. What is their problem?
Well, if you were in fact violating local health ordinances, anybody
would have a problem with your behavior then. If, however, you were
performing it completely Kosher(TM), then nobody could rightly say much
agin' it.
>
> I agree that is seems to be harder to freak country folk, at least
> superficially: "Oh, that's just Jeb. Don't mind ol' Jeb, he just got
> some WAYS about him." These people are talking about someone they have
> known from birth.
>
> You say you wouldn't do either of those things? Hey! Hel-looooo, shared
> values!
Read my trip report from last July on my Montana trip to the Rainbow
Gathering. Don't know if I included in the report, but one day a few of
us went into town on some errands and stopped at some taco joint for
lunch and to read the papers. Front page news was about the gathering,
and how local folks found them to be quite nice people if a little odd,
oddly dressed and a bit dirty, quite the contrary to all the scare
stories the Forest Service had tried to freak people out with prior to
anyone showing up. Of course, when an extra couple hundred thousand
bucks a day is being funnelled into your local economy, I'm sure people
will overlook lots of things, though I will say the national media makes
a far worse impression when they show up up here in New Hampshire for
the presidential debates and the primaries...
>
> 3) But if you walk into a small community diner as a total unknown,
> wearing no pants and a parka that doesn't quite cover what other people
> wish it did, after being up in the hill country where there ain't nobody
> to care and you plumb forgot, plus you thought you *were* figleafed,
> expect to be treated as a potential loony. I speak from personal
> experience. Luckily, I was able to get congruent quickly enough that I
> was just invited to never return to that establishment. By about three
> CHiPpies. And the waitress did not look happy, either.
>
> But hell, Mount Shasta Village is just as bad as NYC, right?
You shocked em cause they couldn't decide if they were in a restaurant
or a livestock auction... ;-P
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Mon May 28 2001 - 09:50:33 MDT