Chapter 56: Townies Don’t Read

More than 40% of Americans over the age of 13 purchased a book in 2009.

     —R.R. Bowker LLC  

Which means that close to 60% of the population did not purchase a book in 2009 (the most recently available year for this study). And who would those non-buyers of books be? Any thoughts?

So: they don’t own a whole lot of books. Here’s a question: of those who own exactly one book, what book would that be? Could it be the very tome found in hotel-room night-table drawers?

Because those who don’t buy books are not experienced readers, because it’s likely that when they do read they don’t read “critically,” and because it’s probable that their exposure to books is limited to a single work that, not unlike A Million Little Pieces, presents itself as non-fiction but in fact is entirely a work of the imagination, these people have never learned to tell the difference between an accurate account and a fairy tale.

It helps explain their susceptibility to hayseed demagogues who forcefully spout their own “facts” as well as to earnestly clueless demagogues who are themselves such unskilled readers that they mistake laugh-out-loud-bad, ham-fisted, misanthropic, and entirely nonsensical works of fiction for the wisdom of the ages.

Ironically, it is the bookless class and their ignorant leaders who are most insistent on pulling the plug on public education so that they themselves can educate their kids. Just what the world needs: teachers who are not too good at reading books.

Chapter 55: Townies Are Stupid, Lazy, Selfish Little Bitches

I love the smell of emissions.

     —Sarah Palin

What do you call someone who believes that the moment he dies the world will cease to exist? That it doesn’t matter how big a mess she makes because she’s not the one who will have to clean it up? That, in fact, there’s no point in thinking about the chaos we’re creating because thinking is just too much work?

Sure, there are lots of things you could call such a person, but here’s a suggestion for a simple phrase that, arguably, includes all the others: “stupid fucking townie.” Or, to avoid the redundancy, just “townie.”

Chapter 54: Townie Are Desperate

Their world is ending. At least that’s the way they feel.

The “world” is always ending, of course, to be replaced by whatever comes next. LPs are replaced by 8-track tape which is replaced by the Compact Cassette which is replaced by the CD which is replaced by the MP3 which will surely be replaced by what — streaming brain implants? Working in a factory or on a farm is replaced by writing code or waiting tables or heavy lifting or unemployment. Feeling that you’re among the dominant class of people in your town, and your country, is replaced by the slowly dawning realization that the world is considerably bigger than your town, that there are other types of people out there, and that some of them who don’t look anything like you are smarter, better educated, more employable, and sexier than you.

Townies may be stupid, but they’re not entirely insentient. Like animals sensing incipient storms or earthquakes, they have a sense that their kind is not going to be here forever, that they’re 8-tracks in an MP3 world. This makes them nervous. Beyond nervous: desperate. And therefore willing to do anything — lie, cheat, fix elections, ignore facts — in an effort to survive another day.

One almost feels sorry for them. 

Chapter 53: Townies Want to Go Back in Time

They’re always jabbering on about how things are going downhill, about how things used to be better. The Golden Age they invariably point to, when things were allegedly better, is not very long ago — five, ten, fifteen years, a generation or two at most. There are three reasons for this. First, their knowledge of history is so sketchy that if they go back any further they get in trouble. Second, they don’t want to allege that things were better thousands of years ago because that could be before Adam and Eve, which is confusing and probably insulting to God. And third, even ignorant townies realize that if they were to cite, say, the 16th century as a better time, any non-townie pre-schooler could shred the theory simply by asking what kind of dentists they had back then.

So what do they mean when they say things used to be better? As is so often the case when townies talk, they’re being unconsciously autobiographical, projecting their little selves onto the silver screen of history and imagining that back in the past things were better for humanity because that’s when things were better for them: when they were teensy little children and didn’t have to think about anything hard. 

Now that was a Golden Age. 

Chapter 52: Townies Are Too Fat and Unhealthy to Remember Why They’re Fat and Unhealthy

One may infer that this is why they can’t remember that it was one of their own who started some unnecessary wars and broke the economy. 

Chapter 51: Townies Fear Evolution

Many non-townies believe that townies don’t accept evolution because being a townie is synonymous with being ignorant. While this is true, there’s another, equally important reason. (Which is to say townies’ rejection of evolution is overdetermined.) The theory of evolution is about one type of change over time: biological change. But it suggests other types of changes such as social evolution and personal evolution; it is a potent metaphor that, once allowed into one’s consciousness, causes one to think many thoughts. These are scary thoughts if one doesn’t enjoy thinking, changing, or thinking about changing. (This is the book to read.)

The theory of evolution describes how all life forms evolve. And it implies all kinds of other things, including that even the thinking of the denizens of Townieland may evolve. And this is highly upsetting to the denizens of Townieland: what if you found yourself thinking something you'd never thought before?!

A Brief Interregnum

Our gift to certain townie presidential candidates — they know who they are.

Chapter 50: Townies Can Be Tricked Into Accepting — Nay, Loving — Gay Marriage

Here’s how. We start a movement — that is, a “movement” — dedicated to the proposition that it is the right of every human being to marry a horse, a dog, a goldfish. We, the members of this factitious faction, will be wildly, passionately, insanely “devoted” to our “cause.” We will act as if we’re willing to die for it. We will figure out what it is that Rick Santorum considers to be the worst possible outcome of legislation favoring gay marriage and we will quadruple it. We will have fake internecine quarrels in which our fake radical contingent will insist on the right to marry inanimate objects —a beloved tree stump, a lusted-after blackboard eraser — while our fake conservative faction will be adamant that marriage must be reserved for carbon-based life forms. We will stir the social-media pot for all it’s worth. We’ll have lots of rallies in front of Fox News headquarters, and we won’t stop until they air footage of one of our members, a scantily-clad lady, making out with a toaster.

To our target audience — those who dwell in Townieland — gay marriage will suddenly appear to be a nice, quaint, family kind of value, something right out of the good old days.