Crossing the Red State, Blue State Divide

Perhaps you read this article in the New York Times today and got a little frightened as you choked down your oatmeal.

Before I put on my small-town, middle America hat and do some culture translating for you, let me say this:

The militaristic training of teenagers is not something I would want my child doing

Both my voting record and lifestyle choices are likely to put me to the far-middle-left on the political spectrum in this country

My problem with this article is that it does not put these clubs and participants into the proper context. This is written by a horrified outsider (for a horrified outsider audience) who has probably never genuinely interacted as equals with people who serve in the military, work in law enforcement, and/or own guns and use them responsibly.

It starts benignly enough…

The Explorers program, a coeducational affiliate of the Boy Scouts of America that began 60 years ago, is training thousands of young people in skills used to confront terrorism, illegal immigration and escalating border violence — an intense ratcheting up of one of the group’s missions to prepare youths for more traditional jobs as police officers and firefighters.

The training, which leaders say is not intended to be applied outside the simulated Explorer setting, can involve chasing down illegal border crossers as well as more dangerous situations that include facing down terrorists and taking out “active shooters,” like those who bring gunfire and death to college campuses. In a simulation here of a raid on a marijuana field, several Explorers were instructed on how to quiet an obstreperous lookout.

and then turns into a mocking, horrified liberal screed-sheet that sounds a whole lot more like Fox News Channel’s little brother than I am comfortable with.

The kids who participate are troubled deviants!

Cathy Noriego, also 16, said she was attracted by the guns. “I like shooting them,” Cathy said. “I like the sound they make. It gets me excited.”

The adults who oversee the programs (local law enforcement officials, btw) might be more likely to abuse children!

There have been numerous cases over the last three decades in which police officers supervising Explorers have been charged, in civil and criminal cases, with sexually abusing them. Several years ago, two University of Nebraska criminal justice professors published a study that found at least a dozen cases of sexual abuse involving police officers over the last decade. Adult Explorer leaders are now required to take an online training program on sexual misconduct

They are all possibly racist and definitely stupid!

In a competition in Arizona that he did not oversee, Deputy Lowenthal said, one role-player wore traditional Arab dress. “If we’re looking at 9/11 and what a Middle Eastern terrorist would be like,” he said, “then maybe your role-player would look like that. I don’t know, would you call that politically incorrect?”

I guarantee you that if this article was researched and written by a reporter from Omaha or Tulsa or Cheyenne, the article would have been proportionally flipped to emphasize the following:

The law enforcement programs are highly decentralized, and each post is run in a way that reflects the culture of its sponsoring agency and region. Most have weekly meetings in which the children work on their law-enforcement techniques in preparing for competitions. Weekends are often spent on service projects.

This article is an easy way for me to demonstrate the cultural rifts within American society. I challenge all of you big city planners to at least consider “yes, but will it fly in Omaha?” once this week. (And yes, there are some really cool, smart people who choose to live out there for many, many different reasons.) Seek out a colleague who comes from that part of the world and ask them how their best friend from grade school would react to something. Try it on, see how it feels!

My advice: Treat your “average middle American consumer” with respect. They know when you are mocking them. And if they don’t toss a snide reply back at you immediately, this isn’t lack of intelligence. It’s more likely that they are assuming that they misheard or misunderstood you since people with manners and intelligence wouldn’t behave so rudely.