The things we prefer not to think of

I come from a place in the world that does not like to think of itself as being in the world. Truth be told, it is not particularly interested in being part of this nation, but it puts up a good show of it, nonetheless. It sings the songs; it casts the votes; it genuflects before the flag and the troops. But typically we think we are out here on our own. This is the Wild West. Whatever we are, whatever we have, we did it ourselves. No one helped us. And, since no one helped us and look what we’ve accomplished, why should we help you? This is Iowa. This is the Midwest. A place where, if you strangled yourself with your own bootstraps most people probably wouldn’t give it a second thought. We are calm, if not demure. We spare ourselves the bother of getting involved. Until, of course, we don’t. Iowa is the first state in the United States to cast something like a vote in the presidential primaries, and this gives it something like influence, something like a reputation, at least as it comes to matters of state. During the primaries, Iowans do not vote, per se, but they do make their voices heard. They engage in a process that is called caucusing, which is insane. But I love it. This is what happens. Basically, everyone gets together in a room somewhere, on some evening. It is usually in the winter, well after the harvest, and late enough in the day that the dairy farmers can attend. In that room, they proceed to divide themselves up by political parties. The members of said political parties then begin to argue amongst themselves about which of the available candidates are preferable, and for what reasons. Different camps begin to take shape. The members of one camp begin to lobby the members of other camps, hoping to achieve something like a majority. Somewhere, along the way, the people in the room talk about the parties and about policy, about what the party should stand for, and what they want to see their elected officials do. Meanwhile, journalists from local and national media outlets stand by, monitoring the melee, shaking their heads in wonderment at the absurdity of it all, while still very carefully parsing the words of the old woman in Dubuque who thinks Donald Trump is a stone cold genius American patriot because he managed to convince an Australian to build a janky reality show around him and around the premise that he single handedly built the borough of Manhattan and that you too could have dinner at 21 if only you worked for him, never suspecting that 21 is an irrelevant gaucherie and no one eats there who really matters. Somehow, out of this mess, Iowans decide who they want to nominate to run for president of the United States. To be clear: The United States is a country that is only one of five that has the legal right, under international law, to control–and manufacture–nuclear weapons. (In total, at least nine countries do, but let's not get too worked up about that just now.) And yet, this is how our politics works. Yes. This is nonsense, but it makes for a fun night out. It makes for interesting bedfellows and arresting diversions. Once, when I was suffering through my first Democratic Party caucus in 1996, my grandmother proposed that support for an English-only amendment–to both the state and the federal constitution–be added to the party’s platform. It fell to a man we all called “Sleepy” to explain to her why this was unacceptable and unnecessary. My grandmother, whose grandparents did not speak English and whose mother had only a very elementary command of the language, did not look kindly on those immigrants from Central America who were mucking things up for those of us whose relatives arrived when they were supposed to, which was in the later years of the nineteenth century. Also, despite the fact that the Spanish-speaking immigrants who arrived in Iowa in the 1990s were largely people who had been displaced by US-stoked civil wars in Guatemala and El Salvador, she and everyone else called them “Mexicans,” because we could find Mexico on a map. The small places did not matter so much. Which, of course, says something about who we were, who we are, and how we think of ourselves. We are from a small place and we don't much matter. Somehow it always managed to escape our notice that we were deeply involved in the business of electing the leader of the ostensibly free world. A world that had once been very openly hostile to our relations, the Irish and the Middeleuropeans who got here too late and brought their superstitions and their Catholicism and their general quixoticism. We Midwesterners are not a people that appreciates irony. We did not understand that Lake Woebegone was a joke. So yeah. Iowa is in the world. We pretend not to notice it. Or we pretend to pretend. One is never entirely sure what exactly is going on here. Pretty much every generation of my family, on both sides, up to the present day, has had at least one member who fought in a foreign war. Until I went to Spain in the year 2000, this was pretty much the only way any of the members of my family ever left the country. My parents were 46 and 56 the first time they traveled by air, and that was just to come to New York, the place that I had lodged myself for much of my adult life. The world was always here. We just preferred not to think too hard about it. It was a problem for somebody else.