Article by Derek Hunter in Townhall
Out in Real America
The thing about living in a bubble is the air gets really thin really fast. Yes, liberals lead insulated lives in echo chambers of their own making – social media has made such lives incredibly easy to construct and execute. But they aren't alone. It's not just easy for them, it's easy for us, too, if we allow it to be.
I'm not throwing stones, I'm just as guilty as anyone. I no longer live minutes outside Washington, D.C., but the D.C. bubble is more a state of mind than it is a geography lesson. You create your own bubble, or at least can, no matter where you live. Getting outside of it, outside of your comfort zone and outside of yourself, is wildly important, if only for a while, to get a sense of what the rest of the world is thinking.
I'm spending this week in America. While I no longer live within walking distance from D.C., an hour's drive is not exactly another planet. And I work there, no matter where my physical being might be. But Michigan, the state of my birth, is as far away from Washington, D.C., as any mind can get. My taxes and life now say I'm a Marylander, but I'll always be a child of Michigan.
In Michigan, January 6th is one of 365 days on a calendar. In the conversations I've had with family and friends, it has never come up. They do ask about the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago, but not to the point that they're losing sleep over it. What the media obsesses about is not a factor at all.
What does matter is what the media doesn't cover. My dad lives in the northern lower peninsula, and this area is experiencing a strange time. I picked us up some KFC for dinner Monday and saw a sign you don't often see when a place is hiring (and it seems like every place is hiring up here). They offered "next day pay."
The starting pay on the window sign was $13 an hour and they'd pay you the day after you worked. Normally, a sign offering almost twice the minimum wage for entry-level work would only be up for half a day, this one had been there a while. The Wendy's next door offered the same benefits for $14 an hour. One McDonald's is hiring for up to $18, another is drive-thru only because it can't find enough people to work to open the inside.
The social hub of the small town my dad lives in the woods around is closed two days per week because they can't get enough people to wait tables to stay open seven days. On the days it is open, it is packed. The food is great, the place has been a goldmine. But what's the point of owning a goldmine if you can't get anyone to dig it out, no matter the pay? It's for sale and has been for a while now.
What is damaging rural America? It's tough to say because there's not one thing. There was a lot of COVID relief money thrown around the country, and while we urban dwellers didn't have our lives changed by whatever checks the feds sent to our mailboxes, that money goes a lot further in places elites only pretend to care about.
There's also something else happening here that I can't put my finger on just yet – where are the kids getting their first jobs? Those fast food places are the launching pads for everyone, or at least used to be. How can they not find anyone, especially at that pay, to take those gigs?
Where are those kids getting their money from? They aren't all sitting at home playing video games, are they? There's something going on out here I haven't figured out yet, and it doesn't seem as though the establishment is even aware of it.
In real America, the places the establishment's only interactions with are emptying their private plane's chemical toilet on from 30,000 feet, something is happening no one seems to be aware of or care about. If you know what it is, I'd love to hear it. If you don't, I suspect you'll be looking now too. The real question is: will the politicians look? More importantly, whatever the answer is, will they listen?
https://townhall.com/columnists/derekhunter/2022/08/16/out-in-real-america-n2611751
