Take Your Snooty Nose Elsewhere

My View by Jim Yacavone

Fannin County is a rural area according to the U.S. Census, and that makes the residents of Fannin County a dwindling minority in this country. According to the 2010 Census, only 19.3 percent of the population in this country lives in rural areas.  

That’s too bad. I believe the nation would be a better place if more Americans lived in the rural areas and small towns. Fannin County is a good example of why. In my experience most people in Fannin County are decent, friendly, honest, smart and hard-working. They value community and family, believe in our country and possess the traditional values that made America great. Most importantly, they lack the cynicism, coldness, and isolation that pervades urban America.

Urban dwellers tend to view people in rural areas as unsophisticated and uneducated rubes. This belief had its start in a bygone era when rural Americans were much more isolated than they are today. But that was 100 years ago in the age of steam trains and the telegraph. After World War II the isolation of rural America was largely a thing of the past.

Today I can hop in my car and be in downtown Atlanta in two hours. I have access to the same movies, books, and newspapers that urban residents have. Many rural school districts turn out better educated students than urban ones. In this age of the internet and mass media, country folk are no more isolated from world events, modern culture and contemporary ideas than people in urban areas. Just because they don’t embrace the same ideas and behavior doesn’t mean they’re backward. It simply means they have chosen a different way. Personally, I think it means that they’re smarter.

It is also hogwash that people living in urban areas are more sophis­ticated than people living in rural areas. I can’t prove it but I suspect that the small percentage of people who appreciate so-called “high brow” art and culture is the same in urban areas as in rural areas. Most people in the city do not listen to classical music, attend the ballet or read poetry. Nah, they watch wrestling, football and reality TV, eat barbeque and drink domestic beer and root for their home teams just like folks in rural areas.

Sophistication is a bogus concept anyway. According to the dictionary, sophistication refers to character, ideas, tastes and ways that result from education and worldly experience. In other words, sophisti­ca­tion is simply a lifestyle, not a superior level of existence.

But consider the second­ary definitions of the word: (a) a change from the natural charac­ter or simplicity; (b) complexity, as in design or organiza­tion; (c) impairment or debasement, as of purity or genuineness; and (d) the use of sophistry as in a sophism, quibble or a fallacious argument? So if I have this right, being sophisticated means you’ve changed from your normal character, abandoned simplicity for complexity, are impaired or debased in purity and genuineness, make false arguments and quibble a lot. It sounds to me like sophis­ticated people are not much fun to be around.

So if you’re from somewhere else and think you’re better than the good folks of Fannin County, you’re wrong. Just keep on driving and look for your little slice of heaven elsewhere.

That’s my view. What’s yours?