Dear Editor,
You are spot on in your assumption that this is definitely an example of the urban/rural divide but likewise it is also very much about class distinction and the ever widening gap of economic disparity.
It’s about a world where increasingly we equate one’s self-worth to one’s net-worth. As such it portends a much deeper problem within our society, both city and country.
Most economists are full of dire predictions for the times ahead. Low wages coupled with costs that are escalating beyond the reach for most Canadians, poverty and homelessness, the decline of the resource-based sector especially impacting rural communities, and the never ending carnival of American politics and their socioeconomic impacts on the lives of Canadians are all congealing into a tense ball of stress and uncertainty for all but the richest of us.
Rural people are more equipped to deal with these times as were their predecessors during the last great depression. They are much more self-reliant and if they do happen to have a plot of land to call their own they can ride out the dark days ahead much better than their urban counterparts.
Many of us have little doubt as to what the very near future holds. To that end some folks are digging in, eliminating their debt, simplifying their lives, streamlining their possessions and learning self-reliant skills.
For many of these people owning land, any land, is the primary prerequisite. If once achieved however there is often little left for infrastructure, especially of the urban, code-adhering variety necessitated by city-based government.
Besides the goal is not a more indebted lifestyle, shackled to the failing system that many perceive as in its death throes. It is more about minimization and sustainability.
Not only do governments not understand the impetus that motivates such people but they absolutely fear such a show of independence.
After all they are all about keeping everyone plugged in, distracted, entertained and utterly tied to the system by that umbilical cord of taxes and wages, debt and servitude. Is it little wonder then that those of us who break free from that illusory matrix present such a threat to the establishment?
Living in an RV! That has to be the epitome of abandonment, of freedom, of saying screw you I don’t want your failing system and I don’t need you!
So governments do the only thing they know how and that is harassment, fines, notices and threats of eviction, forced conformity through intimidation!
But it isn’t working anymore. The oligarchs have insured that their obscene wealth has so eroded the rest of the system so that it is now visibly and very clearly failing the greater majority and no amount of head-in-the-sand denial or conservative aggressiveness is going to change what’s coming.
There are simply just far too many whom the system has failed and who are looking for the only viable options to this insanity.
We need to oppose this Orwellian madness, become communities once again where we take charge of our own destinies, reassert our right to self-determination and help one another – because sadly no one else, certainly not government, is going to do it for us and if that means living in an RV well. To quote the unofficial motto of our group, B.C. Rural Rights Association, “Respect our existence or expect our resistance!”
Tom Coles
Clearwater, BC
