Beers in motion are not on a political spectrum

At the Third Annual High Desert Low Speed Mixer and Brunch, throwing the political spectrum into the campfire.

I was inspired to follow the recent posts by Pat Kruis and Leo M. Schuman about finding our connections.

I would say that Old Truck Good Coffee is hitting on all cylinders right now. Its a great time to ask for you to consider to upgrade to a paid subscription.

For the third annual High Desert Low Speed Mixer and Brunch, I had a blessed number of people at my house in the high desert of North Central Oregon. To my knowledge, no political fracas occurred. Perhaps this is the sort of mixer to pull America back from the brink.

The mixer part of the weekend is a morning run where participants¹ get paired off with another person for a short leg in our beautiful desert meadow. I provide poor directions and distractions so that people get a little lost sometimes and have to work together to get back home where the chilaquiles are cooking up.

Other than the little run, we cleared some brush for my neighbor, played with dogs, cooked, ate, and talked.

After three years the logistics are less challenging, but my primary concern is the primary reason that I set this up; my invites go to friends of mixed political stripes.

I did send out one email prior to the event reminding people to use their best judgement to not be a part of the two stage rocket of political dispute:

1. Avoid saying things that might trigger someone else.

2. If someone does say something that triggers you, wait a beat and think what response (if any) is going to be productive.

Three of us were hauling my neighbor’s brush to the dump. We drove past an overlook of the river with the mountains behind it. We had just found yet another agreement across our divides; that Coors tastes best at 30 miles per hour.

James then confused me. He said, “you know, Joel, you live the life of a conservative.”

I was befuddled. I made babbling noises for a minute. James lives in a fancy part of Idaho part of the time and San Antonio part of the time. He works in banking. He is a thoughtful guy about a lot of things but we don’t align either politically or in the way we spend our days. Mostly, pickleball and grandkids. I want neither of these things.

I live in a pretty rural area — though to be clear not an agricultural community. My home is in a place developed in the 1980s on a historic ranch. It is largely retired people. Registered Democrats are a small percentage of voters, true. So are natives; most of my neighbors moved from cities.

Do I live the life of a conservative? I never thought of it that way. I live the life of my family, which is a mixed, politically moderate group. I live where I like to fish and where I can be with family that anchors me. I live on the land that I was formed upon. That is not intentionally a political act.

I asked James what he meant but did not get anything that clarified. “You live free out here,” was something to do with it.

While the Republican Party has embraced the idea that rural is inherently Republican (and the voter registration demographics of the last three decades bear that out) it was not historically true.

The shift of the working class and rural people towards the Republican party is within my memory. That is a small slice of our shared 250 years. There is nothing about living in a rural area or having a particular lifestyle that makes you of one political stripe or another.

Rural areas in America gave birth to the Grange. Folks working the extraction economies of rural Montana, West Virginia, and California were the strong spine and legs that moved America’s labor movement forward. They would not be considered conservative in their own time or in ours.

From what I understand about the people of those movements, I imagine that those families also cleared brush for their neighbors and would enjoy nice beverage while in motion on occasion.

I have come to reject the “spectrum” metaphor of our politics. We are all more complex, more beautiful than a dot placed on a line that blends from blue to red, from left to right.

Metaphors like that are more powerful than people imagine. Putting people on this spectrum allows you one calculation: how far away are we from each other?

James works for a bank. He is highly mobile. His family structure is not a simple nuclear sort. He loves close family members who are gay.

Are these supposed to describe a liberal lifestyle, even though he votes Republican? We have had wonderful conversations, driving down the road blasting Whitney Houston, about what matters in our lives. He has offered me valuable advice. Except pickleball and progeny, his world makes as much sense to me as my own. The distance between us is close to zero.

There is no spectrum.

Luke was the third person riding with us. He also votes Republican. There is no simple way to describe Luke (like everyone else) but for brevity I will say that he carries forward the redneck he was raised in.

A while later, having a beer that we consumed while sitting in one place, he called back to our conversation on the way to the dump.

“You know,” Luke said, “I don’t think we should think of the Republican Party as a lifestyle brand,”

“That’s smart,” I said, “Democrats neither.”

1. Attendance at the HDLS does not require running. One can take a walk or simply sip coffee and pet dogs.