On the walls of the combination Subway/Mobil Station in Randolph are black-and-white photos of area farms from the early 1900’s. One of them, a classic dairy farm on a ridiculously steep hillside in Barnet, is where I bought my first Percheron mare some 20 years ago. The Spartan subsistence of Old Vermont reflected in that display of photos contrasts dramatically with the bustling consumerism over which it presides.
This is an example of what author Wendell Berry terms “exploitive regionalism,” which in Vermont’s case also includes nostalgic images of horse-drawn wagons at sugar houses, dairy cows grazing placidly on pristine meadows, or bountiful hunts at deer camp. Marketing Vermont as quaint and traditional has long been the lure that attracts development and undermines its local communities. Mr. Berry has also described the tension between those who nurture the land (“nesters”) and those who exploit an area’s natural resources (“boomers”); the effort to preserve local culture he calls “nativism.”
As VPR dispatches reporters to unearth what it is that makes the NEK “different” from the rest of Vermont, it is reminiscent of Pilgrims sending out emissaries to Native tribes to study them. Most of Vermont has been culturally absorbed by the southern invaders. But Route 91 did not reach over Sheffield Heights until the 1970’s: the Kingdom was last to fall to the gentrifying influx of the denizens of flatland. That’s why it is unrecognizable to the newcomers: why VPR views it as some mysterious lost Amazonian tribe, clinging to its redneck ways.
Lately the invaders have been taking umbrage at the resentment of the dwindling remnant of Vermont locals. They are as mystified as the VPR investigators. Apparently if anyone criticizes the corrupting influences of flatlanders, they are “being divisive” toward “fellow Vermonters.” But what is really occurring is the last echoes of “local” voices are being tamped down: nativism – a good thing – is being portrayed by our regional exploiters as an innate evil, standing in the way of their “enlightened progress.” Like Christian missionaries, they would convert us to their civilized ways. But most of us “true Vermonters” would prefer to stay native.
And so Ruth Hardy complains (“Examining Gender and Politics in Vermont,” April 5, 2018) that only two of our legislators are “women of color:” as if demographic “diversity” that does not mirror our population is a “value” that we must embrace – we, the only state to elect a black man to Congress prior to the Civil War. Another vtdigger commentary (“Vermont — The Mississippi of the North?,” April 13, 2018) compares Vermont to Mississippi, because we are not sufficiently enlightened to have sent a woman to Congress yet – though we voted overwhelmingly for Hillary, and (as the commentary notes) elected the first female lieutenant governor in the country, a Republican, back in 1955 (without white Liberal immigrants from the south enlightening us). Seven Days chastises us with cover photos of a black woman in shackles to expose our backward injustices (in the opinion of BLM, the leader of which just moved here). There is a cacophony of condemnations of Vermonters, a barrage of rebukes against locals — but shouts of foul if Vermonters utter a word of protest.
Senator John Rodgers drew fire for speaking the simple truth that Vermont has been transformed by those who moved here and changed its values instead of embracing them. In a vtdigger article (“John Rodgers Doesn’t Speak For Us,” April 10, 2018), Laura Wilson stated that “We do not engage in polarizing, ugly attacks on each other based on where we were born….” and condemned Senator Rodgers as “divisive.” But Senator Rodgers has spoken a very simple nativist truth, easily comprehended in the NEK even as the flocks of transplants scratch their coifed heads. Apparently it is OK to wage an “ugly, polarizing attack” on our culture and freedoms; just not to defend them, even as modestly as did John Rodgers. Ravenous locusts gnaw on the very culture they came here to enjoy: only the stumps remain.
In a recent Seven Days article (“The Octopus Defense,” 4/11/18), writer John Walters criticized Brattleboro attorney James Valente because he “…drew distinctions between native Vermonters and those who moved here. The former support gun rights and traditional Vermont culture, in his view, while the latter want to change Vermont to their own tastes.” Mr. Walters perverts nativism by concluding (errantly): “So you’re not a “Vermonter” unless you were born here? That’s harsh.” But it is those values (not birthplace) that define a Vermonter, and many who were born here wish to sell out or grovel to corporate “investors” to rival the flatlander class.
Mr. Walters unwittingly demonstrates his lack of insight into this issue in his closing, where he complains against “The separation of Vermonters into two camps: natives, and outsiders who just don’t understand….[But] those who have chosen to make Vermont their home are legitimate participants in its culture and politics. ETHAN ALLEN, for example. Born and raised in Connecticut.” With this triumphant note, Mr. Walters sounds his folly, and that of the other invaders who bootstrap their way along by saying “We moved here, and our flatlander worldview came with us to legitimately destroy your culture!” Ethan Allen, born in Connecticut, who would publicly strip naked and challenge a man to fisticuffs, who lived off the land, fought in wars and was held captive in a British prison – are those the redneck values that Mr. Walters respects, and offers to bring with him from flatland? I think not. No, Mr. Walters seeks to invoke Ethan Allen’s un-chosen birthplace as justification for the imposition of alien values on Vermonters – not Mr. Allen’s chosen “culture and politics,” which seeded the values Mr. Walters now seeks to “legitimately” degrade.
Nativism for Native Americans is politically correct; nativism for Yankee Vermonters is treated with hostility, for it holds up a mirror to the exploitive regionalism of our paternalistic foreign occupiers. Flatlanders do not accept having their values and “culture” criticized – they are much too occupied condemning and critiquing ours. I’d rather be a redneck than a Red Coat, wherever I was born.
(previously published at vtdigger.com)
John Klar 