Editor’s note: This commentary is by Nate Denny, a former woodworker and teacher from Northfield.
Recently a friend posted on Front Porch Forum a complaint about garbage tossed out of vehicles onto the side of the road opposite his property. He lives in a zoning-free town blighted by unlicensed junkyards on both sides of Main Street. He is exasperated by the anti-social behavior of his neighbors but knows that his pleas will go unheeded. The junkyard enthusiasts’ response is that they represent what remains of individual liberty in what has become a socialist nightmare polluted more by political correctness and nanny-state regulation than by fast food bags and beer cans. Property is cheap here, but no one builds in the center of town where a significant proportion of houses are mouldering. Much larger homes with timber-framed barns, horse paddocks and five-star chicken coops are sprouting on the hillsides, however, out of sight and sound of the battle for the soul of Vermont simmering in the valley below.
The conflict raises a fundamental question: Who represents the future? Does over-investment in people and public institutions, including an enforceable set of zoning regulations, crowd out individual ambition and private enterprise? On the other hand, how much freedom is owed to those whose behavior undermines the health and welfare of a community attempting to be an attractive place to live? Opinion makers have framed this as a rural vs. urban conflict, tradition vs. progress or wholesome simplicity vs. multi-cultural experimentation and it is clear which side a significant subset of young Vermont men have chosen, judging by their jacked-up trucks straight out of “Mad Max,” extravagant facial hair, backwoodsman attire, and fascination with weapons and pseudo-military training. The hillsides ring out with the sound of their unregulated firing ranges where these merry men practice defending forest glades and storming the castles of the corrupt. Disdaining the worlds of office cubicles, higher education and professional work, all of which would require years of education and well-tuned social skills, many of these boys on the cusp of manhood are choosing a future that rejects the tedious work and diplomacy of inclusiveness. They think, maybe even hope, that “it” will all come crashing down when “the s*** hits the fan,” and then, once more, their survival skills will be needed and admired and rewarded.
Those who carry on the traditions of a simpler time (including collecting junk cars on what would otherwise be a front lawn) feel themselves to be the victims of an elitist class of Vermonters, well-educated and therefore addle-pated, who believe they know better how to educate children, eat healthy food and recycle but couldn’t pull anyone out of a ditch or gut a deer. These two groups despise one another, but at least the more atavistic Vermonters are prepared for the apocalypse that is always just around the corner. They insist that the cadre of hair-splitting humanities majors that dominate the Legislature wouldn’t have a clue how to survive without food delivery so they are looking forward to the implosion of the modern world. After generations of serving in the military, volunteering for the fire department and pulling people out of ditches, they understand that the United States have been hollowed out by the elites representing both major political parties, so they seem to take a perverse pride in sabotaging the efforts to beautify main streets throughout Vermont. It is their beer cans you see in ditches when you go for walks on back roads. This is their inarticulate protest, their expression of disdain for an ersatz, fairy-tale Vermont, dominated by commentary-writing, hobbyist farmers playing at homesteading and posting their property to keep the deer safe and the deplorables out.
