Guard Your Peace
Bracing for the fight ahead
Hi readers!
It’s been a week, hasn’t it? It can be difficult to remain focused and allow yourself to enjoy the little things about life as an arsonist burns the world around you.
This piece is my offering of help, coming from my experience living inside a culture hostile to me and my core values.
As some of you may know, I grew up in Memphis, Tennessee — the capitol city of the Deep South.
Granted, I GTFO as soon as I could — though my departure for the University of Missouri had more to do with my mom’s narcissism than it did with the South.
But I knew I wanted something different — and I just felt in my gut that most people didn’t live or think that way.
Because the Deep South is basically a third world country inside of the United States.
The only thing keeping it afloat1 are tax dollars from blue states and federal regulations that are the baseline for the entire country.
All states must follow federal regulations, but that doesn’t mean that they can’t go beyond them — like California’s emissions laws or New York’s minimum wage. In the South, it’s all the bare minimum.
Of course, there is wealth in gated2 communities, but many live at a level of poverty unseen in other parts of the country, animal welfare is horrific, education is a joke, and there’s a “slap some Flex Tape on it and see” attitude towards infrastructure.
If you’re wondering what Trump’s vision for America is, look no further than Mississippi.
There’s a thing I like to say about Deep Southern culture: “Not everyone is an asshole, but assholes have a lot of room to move.”
Basically, there is a high tolerance for cruelty.3
Cruelty to animals and cruelty to other humans.
That cruelty shows itself in the prevalence of dog fighting, treatment of minorities4 and women, and the tolerance of unthinkable poverty.
People just look the other way to folks living in shacks, children without shoes, and pregnant dogs running around.
Kind of like how people walked by heads on the city wall on their way to the market 400 years ago, like it was nothing.
Shit, the Klan was still lynching people until 1981!
There are kind, good people in the Deep South, but it can be difficult to survive with your soul intact inside a culture that allows this sort of thing — and demands a certain kind of conformity — to religion, gender, and race roles.
Those who keep their sense of self despite this constant onslaught are some of the best people you’ll ever meet.5 Sometimes I feel guilty for leaving and not helping them fight for a better Tennessee for everyone.
These sensitive and courageous souls are one of the reasons so much great art comes out of the South. When you feel from a young age that something is wrong with the world around you, but the adults seem ok with it and excuse it — artists are born.
The food is amazing, too. I miss it every day. But not enough to move back.
Virginia is too nice a place, and just Southern enough to feel like home.
Art and food are two of the ways to guard your peace as we all live through this MAGA nightmare — or as I call it “The South bleeding out” to stain the rest of the country.
I used to spend a lot of time reading about other places — another reason I was certain that people everywhere didn’t live like that.
Remind yourself constantly that there is beauty in the world, despite the darkness surrounding us all.
Put up a bird feeder. Tend your garden. Learn a new recipe. Spend time in nature.
The enormity of history has always been a comfort to me. Things come and go, pages turn. This too shall pass.
Most importantly — find your people. The ones who don’t enjoy cruelty. The ones who stand up for others. The ones unafraid to say that “this isn’t right.”6
Start a board game night. Have a dinner party. Plant some flowers at a city park. Do something to improve your community together.
Socialize. Have some fun. Remember to live.
It will strengthen your soul for the fight ahead. It’s gonna be a marathon, not a sprint. Because the forces we are fighting are the evil part of human nature, given fresh, new life — and power in our culture — by the devil in the White House.
I swore to myself when that monster returned to our lives that I wouldn’t let him take another 4 years of my life away.
Don’t let him do it to you either.
As Dumbledore says: “Happiness can be found, even in the darkest of times, if one only remembers to turn on the light.”
In that vein, here is one of the ways The Man and I guard our peace: we start every morning with a virtual vacation to Italy while we have our coffee:
This creator is an American living in Italy, who started this channel because his uncle asked him for a video he could watch on the treadmill — and now it’s his full time job.
These videos are ambient walks through beautiful and relaxing places — almost like sitting in a moving cafe that takes you on journeys through Italy.
BONUS: if you turn on the captions, he includes history facts! Enjoy!
Guy Fieri fans: don’t forget about the open thread for discussing Tournament of Champions VI! New episode on Sunday, Sunday, Sunday!
Cabbages and Kings — part of Curd Culture — is a reader supported publication. Thank you for supporting a cheese monger telling my story and sharing my love for Virginia’s history and wildlife.
As in, not a third-world country
Literally gated or walled off with heavy policing.
Jim Acosta had a wonderful episode with Rick Wilson and Molly Jong-Fast recently where he closed by discussing this topic.
Especially black people
See Parton, Dolly
Even the Trumpiest of Trump counties only goes 90/10. There are non-Trump fans in every part of America.
Thanks for the Prowalk tour site. Just the soother I’ll view at end of day✌🏻
I grew up in Massachusetts and spent a lot of time in California. I never imagined I would fall in love with Virginia. I had been taught things about Southern states. They are true and yet not true. But this place, this country, to me, is still worth fighting for.