Stephen Marche in the NY Times:
When I attended prepper conventions as research for my book, I found their visions of a collapsed American Republic suspiciously attractive: It’s a world where everybody grows his own food, gathers with family by candlelight, defends his property against various unpredictable threats and relies on his wits. Their preferred scenario resembled, more than anything, a sort of postapocalyptic “Little House on the Prairie.”I think this fantasy lies behind a lot of apocalyptic thinking; people want our system to fall because they imagine it would fall into a rural idyll rather than a real post-industrial wasteland.
LHOTP is also extremely popular among evangelical homesteaders and Quiverful types in general. This is particular disturbing as anyone who has read Caroline Frasier's Prairie Fires will know that Wilder's vision of a self sufficient American Pioneer family was a deliberately invented fantasy and a way to express her (and her daughter's) political beliefs. Those who read her books believing they are revealing the truth of the way America used to be are unknowingly buying into the fantasy and end up wondering why they can't make self sufficiency work. It's very sad.
ReplyDeleteThe problem with this line of thinking is that their actions belie their claims.
ReplyDeleteVirtually no preppers are devoting their time and resources to learning the skills for (and stockpiling necessary materials for) growing crops, or filtering water, or creating medicines, or fashioning their own clothing, or any of the things you would need to realistically live a simple "rural idyll" lifestyle.
What almost all preppers devote their energy to is amassing and training with guns, and next to nothing else - which suggests to me that what they really long for is the chance to enact violence on others, or obtain power over others through the threat of violence. And there IS a certain twisted logic to the idea - why learn productive skills to perform yourself when you can instead point at gun at someone else and command them to do it for you?
My sense is that preppers want a "rural idyll" in the same way that feudal lords did - they want to enjoy a monopoly on violence which allows them to live in comfort and ease while everyone else toils to profit them, or else.