“Politically correct” is derived from the term, “correct
political orientation.” It was first delivered in a speech
by Chairman Mao tse Tung at the Yenan Rally in “Celebration
of International Labor Day” on May 1, 1939. It was used with
effectiveness by the Red Guard during the Chinese Cultural Revolution
in order to foster conformity in thought and speech.
It has been almost a year since our family fled northern California
for greener pastures. Our town of Sebastopol, a small bucolic community
north of San Francisco, was one of those sleepy hamlets lost to
a time when life was so much simpler. The Gravenstein apple was
Sebastopol’s claim to fame before the rise of vineyard acquisitions
took their toll.
It was once a place where barbershops brimmed with quirky locals.
Where frogs and worms mysteriously found their way into a little
boys pocket. It was a place of laughter, innocence and sometimes
profound sadness. Where right and wrong were more clearly defined.
A place where best friends stood by you through thick and thin.
It was a place where people spoke their minds clearly without fear
of reprisal. When did a way of life become so irrelevant and inconsequential?
When did we lose our way?
The new arrivals brought with them a disdain for traditions of
the past. It was a New Age that supplanted these quaint relics with
agenda driven ideology, an ideology that left many in the dust.
The apple orchards are mostly gone. A few holdouts remain. Our
town’s a different place now ... a very different place.
It’s become a guarded, introverted, intolerant world held
hostage to the insidious sway of political correctness. A place
where private conversations are no longer privy to public consumption.
A place where a land owner is threatened with imprisonment for cutting
down trees on his property.
It’s a place where a frantic dairy farmer and his sons desperately
gather up cattle, set free by local anarchists. Where flag holders
to memorialize the dead are filled in with cement. It’s a place
where neighbor is pitted against neighbor.
In our town, conformity is the convention of the day. Those who
misspeak are marginalized, and those who resist the opportunity
to repent are ostracized. As if there wasn’t enough of a regulatory
environment in the area of land management, extremist newcomers
from “The People’s Republic of Berkeley” (aptly nicknamed
Berserkley) add layers of inane rules and regulations to the growing
dismay of farmers and ranchers who settled this area.
One new law would have required a 24- hour written notification
to neighbors for anyone using the weed killer Roundup. This notification
encompassed the time of day and duration of the spray. In the end,
the law wasn’t implemented because it conflicted with federal
guidelines already on the books.
What’s most appalling is the arrogance of these individuals
who feel they are far more adept at governing the nuances of our
world than you and me. Your point of view is no longer needed in
a society that no longer understands it. The end result is a place
with very little personal freedom. A place where someone’s
always looking over your shoulder.
A friend of mine from Estonia lamented one day about his growing
despair. I was taken aback when he said that he had more freedom
under Soviet domination than living here. The previous day he was
accosted by a neighbor. She informed him that he could no longer
cut his grass because he was killing tiny bugs in the lawn. Even
minute life she said had the right to coexist. Unfortunately, bizarre
outcries such as this are commonplace. Even the swatting of flies
in public can invoke similar responses.
Mosquito abatement personnel striving to prevent the spread of
West Nile virus on rural farmland are continually harassed by incensed
locals. A family burning brush on their property are taken to court
when an oak sapling is discovered smoldering in the pile.
In the town of Napa a restaurateur’s home and business are
vandalized for serving foie gras on the menu. Radical extremists
smashed through the walls of the restaurant and then poured cement
down the drains, causing more than $100,000 in damage. They also
videotaped and threatened his children.
These acts are strangely reminiscent of tactics used by the Brown
Shirts against Jewish proprietors in Berlin during the rise of Adolph
Hitler.
Vaccines used to inoculate infants are shunned by a growing number
of mothers who see them as the harbingers of the destruction of
humankind.
One grows numb to thought processes more akin to a delirium of
thought where only the mentally ill must reside. The second coming
of the Dark Ages was upon us. I contemplated the horrifying aftereffects
of raising our son in a Stepford Zone. I wanted to limit his exposure
to locals I aptly nicknamed “The Amish with Volvos.” It
was time for us to leave this place before it consumed us. We were
at a crossroads and about to uproot our lives. Where would we go?
I have always held a passionate belief that somewhere in this land
existed a place that resisted the present and perpetuated the past.
I dreamt that I could find my old local place again the way it must
have existed decades ago.
In my dream I traveled the back roads of America in search of such
a place. I would decipher cryptic utterances at town hall meetings.
At the local diner over bacon and eggs, I was given seminars on
shearing sheep. Anywhere people congregated I’d be there taking
in some local color. In the Carolinas I stumbled upon a woman who
baked the finest pies outside of the Adirondacks. I learned of her
blue-ribbon glories and dismal setbacks due to faulty crust continuity.
In Vermont I traversed covered bridges, groaning from the weight
of vehicles, while I dreamt of places steeped in dreams.
In the end we settled upon a place that gave us the freedom to
breathe. It had taken us years of fits and starts and many more
ambling down dusty roads and backwaters.
I no longer suffer the consequences of speaking my mind. The basic
tenets of our new world are one of balance. It’s reminiscent
of walking into a room and opening a window that’s been shut
for a very long time.
Now and then I think about the desperate ones I left behind. The
friends, who for a variety of reasons are unable to leave. To this
day I cannot fathom how a people can exist inside a vacuum. A place
of such profound dysfunctionality defies human reason.
Paul Prete, a graduate of Rutgers
University, is beginning an import business in Asheville. He resides
in Fletcher with his wife and son.
Reply to wolfgang99@bellsouth.net.