This commentary is by Mark D. Szuchman, who resides full-time in Andover. He is professor emeritus of Latin American history at Florida International University, a member of Florida’s State University System. He is a registered Democrat.
It is by now well-known that liberals in the U.S. find themselves divided over matters that used to uniformly characterize adherents to classical liberalism, but which now appear to be the province of, well, classical liberals, as distinguished from the censorious, hectoring actors who appear to believe that insults and untoward behaviors are the way to win over folks.
VTDigger’s commentary regarding the experiences of a liberal couple from Vermont transplanted to Florida provides an opportunity to illustrate this division.
Research in the behavioral sciences consistently points to two enduring facts. First, it’s very difficult, though not impossible, for folks to change their opinions, particularly heartfelt ones. The second, accepted for decades, is that positive feedback works better than negative. Every wise dog trainer knows this to be true.
Why is it, then, that in the commentary, the self-described “Vermont liberal” (VL) would slander an entire population — in this case, residents of the state of Florida? “Promoting violence is a way of life down here,” VL tells us. How are the perspectives of political liberalism advanced — if that’s a desired goal —when behaviors are explained by “an abundance of elderly whose brains are in various stages of wasting away”?
What do we do about the fact that the 2020 census reports the elderly (65+) in Florida as representing 21.3 percent of its population (second in the nation), and in Vermont, the figure is a very similar 20.6 percent (ranked fourth)?
Not so very long ago, segments of pseudo-scientific and political communities of Europe advocated social engineering measures designed to improve the “quality” of their populations. The Nazis borrowed and extended these ideas, finding logic and misusing notions regarding the elderly, who, as VL tells us in his commentary, experience that as “the curtain closes in the final act, so does the mind,” and that, therefore, “there’s no point in putting a pretty frame around (such) an ugly truth.” Words matter.
We further learn from VL that “Poor diet, lack of exercise, spotty health care at obscene cost, combined with a soupçon of existential grief, mostly exhibited on the second-childhood off-ramp of popularism (sic), brain atrophy, and dread of imminent death” is “enough to make anyone cranky.” And then, it hits us: VL is cranky! Crankiness, it appears, turns out to be a personal attribute, independent of regional experiences, ideological dispositions, or educational level. Or maybe crankiness is triggered by contact with Floridians.
My wife and I moved here over a decade ago from Florida, where we spent nearly 40 years. Moving to Vermont was a personal preference, wishing to return to the Northeast of our youth, not forced on us by external forces of the labor market or family exigencies. We wanted to live in a beautiful region, with great variety in weather and landscape.
But in addition, we have experienced being among — not shielded from — people with different political dispositions. And we have friends, close friends, with very different cultural and political perspectives than our own.
Perhaps the ratio of liberals to conservatives is today different in Vermont compared to Florida — these things change over time — but no one with listening skills who has lived here would deny that there are plenty of each. We find both in Vermont, as we did in Florida. Vermont, with a firearm ownership rate of 50.3 percent, ranks 15th in the nation. Florida ranks 41 with an ownership rate of 28.8 percent.
Remember when, during the Democratic primary debates in March 2016, Bernie Sanders demurred when challenged by Hillary Clinton to take on the gun lobby? Only the ignorant, or cranky people, would paint Vermonters as gun-toting radicals.
To the extent that stereotypes are somehow needed in our times, feel free to assign them: an urban couple, academic professionals. And in my case, from Latin American origins (and I really, really miss Florida’s ample Latin American cuisine).
But otherwise, these liberal transplants from Florida are doing just fine living full-time in very rural Vermont, mixing it up with conservatives, and never lamenting our decision.
