Selling Out the Cheap Seats
Tonight we are watching Seabiscuit, which is one of the great inspirational movies. It always leaves me with a lump in my throat, especially when the Depression-era narrative is explaining the backdrop of the socioeconomic lay of the land across America in the 1930’s. Seabiscuit raced from 1935 to 1940, when the weariness of the Great Depression had worn down the common folk of America. Seabiscuit was a horse of the people. He was the little guy who needed a second chance. He became a symbol of the downtrodden American worker who was ready and able, but just needed to be given an opportunity. Ordinary people who wanted some inspiration, but couldn’t afford the price of a ticket in the grandstands, came out in droves to see Seabiscuit run, and did so from the track infield, most often referred to as the cheap seats.
This morning, Kim and I went out to Valley Center to go to a local popular attraction called Bates Nut Farm. We had heard of the place repeatedly over the last few years and decided to check it out. If we had been smart about it, we would have tried this on a weekday rather than a Saturday morning, but ultimately, I am glad we saw the place in full swing. We arrived before 9am at the front gate and there was already a line of cars waiting to get in. By the time we got to the parking field, there were over 1,000 cars already parked with families of all shapes and sizes walking from their cars to the attraction area. There is nothing fancy about Bates Nut Farm. Parking was only $8 and its fair to say we were all in the cheap seats there. It is as rooted in Americana as any place you can imagine. It is located in the heart of the rural community of Valley Center, which while being in San Diego County is as far from being a posh spot like Mission Bay, Point Loma, LaJolla, or Ranch Santa Fe as a place can be. Valley Center is in the land of the pickup truck. It is a real ranch community not like the Fairbanks Ranch in Del Mar.
Strangely enough, Fairbanks Ranch was the home of fabled silent movie stars Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford. Fairbanks made his movie mark as Robin Hood and Zorro, both fabled crusaders for the underdog, and thus he named his ranch Rancho Zorro. Both Fairbanks and Pickford, despite their wealth and fame as actors were known for being stars of the people in the same way that Seabiscuit was so popular with the regular folks. It was somehow emblematic of the difficult times of the 1930s that people of substance made a point of helping others both get a leg up and feel better about themselves so they could regain their dignity and confidence in the face of such hard times. This was the beginning of the era of liberal democracy that made America so great and propelled it to victory in WWII and world dominance thereafter.
We are once again faced with the sort of difficult environment that faced the world in the 1930s. It does not take a genius to recognize the Strauss-Howe generational cycle they call a Saeculum or Fourth Turning that comes around about every 80-90 years in human history. That cycle, which matches a typical human lifespan, is the rhythm of socioeconomic reality and tone. America went from Revolution to Civil War and from Civil War to Great Depression and from Great Depression to whatever we want to call our current era. The turning points are defined by great upheaval, but even more, they are defined by great breaches in humanity. Tyranny, slavery, fascism and now, what… extreme nationalism combined with money culture?
As I walked around Bates Nut Farm I saw way too many MAGA hats among the otherwise friendly family scenes. At one point Kim and I overheard the pumpkin patch sales clerks talking about whether vaping was allowed on premises. Rather than talk about the second-hand harm that vaping might do or the bad example it might set, the young clerks resolved that vaping was just another form of natural selection. That was their way of saying that people stupid enough to vape were simply too stupid to concern oneself about and probably deserved, in an evolutionary sense, to fall by the wayside. This is a harsh and dehumanizing perspective on the world that is, unfortunately, all too consistent with the MAGA hats the clerks were wearing. Where was the compassion of the helping hand or the sense that we should all look out for one another in this world? Where is the sentiment that propelled Seabiscuit, Zorro or Robin Hood to heraldic greatness?
I am American and and I love America, but the America I love is the America of 1935-1940 when we recognized the value of collective effort and the goodness in our fellow man rather than the frailties and stupidity of the masses. They are two sides of the same coin and are not dissimilar realities, but simply dissimilar perspectives on the same reality. Under one approach, we care about ourselves and under the other we care about us all. Under one we can do more alone and under the other we can accomplish more together. I just watched the Ken Burns documentary on The U.S. and the Holocaust, and it is clear that not even in those wondrous pre-WWII years did we necessarily think humanely enough about all our fellow men. We steadfastly refused to engage in the war while the Fascist machine overran Europe and Russia (not to mention China and the rest of Southeast Asia) and then we continued to ignore the evidence of atrocities being turned into genocide. Self-interest and fear are always harder to overcome than they should be and the blind eye is often the first eye to be turned. But it does turn and we did and do most often come to our humanity before all is lost. Those are our finest hours and the hours that make us America in a way that a MAGA hat can never do.
I look at all the regular folks at Bates Nut Farm trying to give their families some good healthy memories and I wonder which of them cares enough about one another to avoid the hatred the wells up during these times of Saeculum and Fourth Turning. In the absence of a MAGA hat, it is very difficult to tell for sure. And they all look like good God-fearing family folk, so all I can do is hope for the best and show them all whatever kindness I can muster in hopes that one act of kindness might help induce another and that we will all collectively pay it forward to get past this turning of inhumanity that wants to grip us in its midst. We may not be able to fill the bleachers with the righteous, but perhaps if we start by selling out the cheap seats in the infield, those ordinary people will inspire us all to the greatness of a new turning.