Out here in the country, where most folks still make a living off the land in some fashion, there's a lot of impatience being expressed about city people.
A lot of urban and suburban Americans have no idea how their food is grown or what it takes to make a Happy Meal. It's just dumb to assume that produce is somehow grown by the grocer or that meat comes from a freezer, but that's the way some people think.
You can't have steaks without cows, stupid. And you can't grow crops without land and water and some protection against diseases and insects.
City people don't appreciate how hard it is to make a living as a farmer, or how few of their grocery dollars get back to the producer. Don't they realize that when your livelihood depends on the land you have a vested interest in taking good care of it? Farmers are the true environmentalists, stupid.
City people get all fussed up about pesticides or erosion or pollution and that often leads to more government regulations for rural folks. They keep pecking away at our rights to farm, to own a gun, and to do what we want on our own property.
These people need to be made to understand that rural America is the backbone of this country. The families that produce the food and cut the lumber and mine the minerals are critical to everyone else's well-being. Saving endangered species is stupid if it means losing jobs and families and communities.
Back in the city, where most of us live and work these days, there's anxiety about what's going on out in rural America. We hear about big corporations taking over the family farms and turning them into factories. We dream about spending some time in the country, but we worry that it's being trashed.
People who live out in the sticks have no idea how lucky they are to be away from the crowds and crime and carcinogens. It's naive, or just plain stupid, to think that our water will be clean and bridges won't collapse and food will be safe without some kind of government oversight and regulation.
You can't trust people to do the right thing, stupid. And when it comes to the safety of our homes and families and children, why take any more chances than we are already?
People living in the sticks think that gun control means taking away their hunting rifles. Don't they realize that it's the doped-up crack-dealing kid with an Uzi that's making us hysterical?
Farmers are always complaining about low prices, but what do they expect us to do about it? If we selected more expensive cuts of meat or ignored the sale items at the grocers would they get anything more from the middlemen? It's hard enough trying to find foods that aren't tainted or bioengineered or just plain unhealthy.
And ranchers seem to think they have some God-given right to be ranching, and the rest of us should do everything we can to support their private fiefdoms. Nobody owes you a living, stupid.
Never before in the history of this country have the boundaries between rural and urban been more clearly defined or equally divided. More Americans now live in urban areas, but the majority were born or raised or still have roots in America's rural traditions.
Making public policies that please both sides of this divide is a confounding task that rivals peace-making efforts in the Middle East. America's Jerusalem is its natural resources, the plains and mountains and waters and living things that make it sacred. Our weakest links and our strongest bonds lie within our common ground.