Have you been to Bakersfield?\u00a0 Ask that of most people in California and they\u2019ll say, \u201cNo, but I\u2019ve been through it.\u201d\u00a0 They just kept on rolling over parched Central Valley earth en route to Los Angeles or the Bay Area.\u00a0 Why didn\u2019t they stop?\u00a0 Perhaps they were startled or saddened by the eternal glare from the dry and forlorn bed of the Kern River gasping under Highway 99.\u00a0 If they had gotten off the freeway and driven around, they would have seen a city of astonishing ugliness.\u00a0 Some of the filthiest air in the country shrouds vast stretches of barren land and oil wells and drab buildings new and old.\u00a0 This is a place where desperate people came more than a century ago and the people who\u2019ve come since \u2013 and I must candidly include myself \u2013 have also been desperate, either to take the good jobs they hadn\u2019t gotten in better places or to take any job to escape economic deprivation in foreign lands.\u00a0 One third of the adults in this area do not have a high school diploma.\u00a0 Twenty percent of the people live at or below the official poverty line.\u00a0 The crime rate is high and anti-crime rhetoric is hot.\u00a0 Churches are plentiful, congregations vast.<\/p>\n
Inevitably, many in distressed places talk a lot about moral values.\u00a0 They\u2019re convinced, or want to become so, that those who live in more scenic and culturally stimulating places are ethically inferior to themselves.\u00a0 In that regard, the front section of The Bakersfield Californian on November fourth provided a launch pad for some of the most fanatical and self-serving political statements one is ever likely to encounter.\u00a0 The primary stimulus for such piety, of course, was the victory of George W. Bush.\u00a0 Sixty-seven percent of the voters in Kern County backed the president.\u00a0 The rest of California stumbled, giving Bush only 44 percent of its support.\u00a0 This was not merely a presidential victory.\u00a0 For Bakersfield, and hundreds of socially similar communities nationwide, this was the ideal moment to pronounce moral values their number one concern, and thus gays must not be allowed to marry, abortions have to be banned, and stem cell research should be severely restricted. \u00a0Health care?\u00a0 That issue barely registered on their radar screens. \u00a0Terrorism, Iraq, and the economy were concerns, but not nearly as much as the wanton call for superior morality.<\/p>\n
A young teacher and youth pastor was roused to run for the high school board because some English teachers in the district had assigned the novel “The Bluest Eye” by Nobel laureate Toni Morrison.\u00a0 Earlier this year, groups of enraged parents tried to ban the book because of its depictions of sexual abuse.\u00a0 The superintendent of schools barely convinced the \u201cliberal\u201d school board not to bury the book by promising to offer it only to upper level and academically advanced students.\u00a0 The youth pastor could feel currents of righteous anger surging through his community, and built a campaign on the proposition that the school board should review all books on the reading list.\u00a0 Lots of people, even in the most evangelical communities, cherish their First Amendment rights, and they rebuked the young man, some leveling the unfair charge that he planned to be a book burner.\u00a0 In the immediate delirium of divine victory, the new board member told a radio talk show host that he really might start burning books.\u00a0 The next day he assured The Californian that wasn\u2019t going to happen and had never been part of his candidacy.\u00a0 He was only being \u201csarcastic\u201d to his detractors.\u00a0 They no longer mattered.\u00a0 There were more important issues.\u00a0 He was part of a vanguard that was establishing \u201cbasic moral sanity in our system of government and in our laws.\u201d\u00a0 Evidently, basic moral sanity had been absent before his election.<\/p>\n
An even more messianic figure was a councilwoman who crushed her less-pious opponent three to one.\u00a0 What has been this councilwoman\u2019s most publicized contribution to government?\u00a0 According to The California, it was her success in emblazoning \u201cIn God We Trust\u201d on a \u201cprominent place\u201d at city hall.\u00a0 That, unsurprisingly, is a mere warm up for this fount of righteousness.\u00a0 She and Bakersfield have a far greater duty.\u00a0 To The Californian she exclaimed that \u201cGod is blessing our country so we as Americans can be a light to the rest of the world.\u201d\u00a0 And she offered even more hope closer to home, noting that people in Bakersfield \u201cshould take on another challenge (and) be a light to the rest of California. ”<\/p>\n
Offering a light to others is often commendable.\u00a0 But try to remember that for some your light is a glare.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Have you been to Bakersfield?\u00a0 Ask that of most people in California and they\u2019ll say, \u201cNo, but I\u2019ve been through it.\u201d\u00a0 They just kept on rolling over parched Central Valley earth en route to Los Angeles or the Bay Area.\u00a0 Why didn\u2019t they stop?\u00a0 Perhaps they were startled or saddened by the eternal glare from…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,50,49],"tags":[],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"yoast_head":"\n