The Uintas and the Intellectual Redneck

 

Richard decided to go fishing on Monday. He thought it’d clear his head. He backed out of the driveway and his truck lumbered along Mirror Lake highway, heading east over the pass. He turned right at the Christmas Meadows trailhead where he knew there was a campground and a calm bend of the Stillwater Fork. The drive took forty or so minutes, but Richard already felt better as the clear, sharp wind whipped against him, his army-green bandana barely keeping the hair out of his eyes.

He thought of how his father would often return from such trips: “I was up at deer crick to go fishin,” he’d say, drunk and angry and even more miserable than when he left. Richard’s back ached for a pill, but he tried to ignore the pain. He was trying to taper back the pills and besides, his prescription had run out.

On the radio was a report by a volcanologist Richard listened to with mild interest: “When you’re on the edge of an active volcano,” the woman said, “you have to keep in mind that it could explode at any minute. But it’s important to know that if the volcano explodes, you actually want to stare straight at it to avoid any of the plumes hitting you. It seems counterintuitive, but you don’t want to run, turn away, or crouch down. You want to stare up, so you can see what’s coming at you.”

Richard parked, grabbed his tackle box, fly rod, waders, mesh hat, and a six-pack. He proceeded to walk down a short hill to the stream. He cracked open a beer and began tying on the fly, a wooly mammoth. Then he waded into the water and began to fish.

Nothing was biting. Of course. He tried not to lose his temper as the hours clicked by. He was cursed. Life pushed against him as if he were a block of cheese and life a grater.

Last year Richard had taken a college course at SLCC (Salt Lake Community College), his last effort to make a new start in life. Though he had initially signed up for business classes the year before, a philosophy class had piqued his interest, and so every Thursday night he’d drive his truck down from Kamas, stop for a burger or some Mexican food at Kimball Junction, and proceed to Salt Lake to attend a class titled “Philosophy of Postmodernism.”

Richard had always considered himself an “intellectual redneck,” and though he had never admitted this to anyone but people online, he had found the beginning of the Ted Kaczynski’s manifesto, Industrial Society and Its Future, surprisingly interesting. Richard remembered that it was a woman right here in Utah, in a Salt Lake City parking lot, who had actually caught the first sight of the infamous Unabomber in 1987. Kaczynski was wearing aviator sunglasses and a hoodie, placing some sort of wooden object under a car when the woman, through an SLC window, spotted him. The woman’s boss went to investigate. The small bomb exploded—lacerating the man’s face, arm, and legs. Kaczynski then went into hiding for six years because he feared he had been spotted. Industrial Society and Its Future, for some strange reason, had made Richard want to learn more about society and philosophy. Some of the manifesto was a bit over the top—fear based, maybe slightly prejudiced or even racist, and reductionist, but there was one line in particular that stood out to him, something about how primitive man was better satisfied with life than modern man was. Less stress and frustration.

While Richard didn’t believe it justified Kaczynski’s actions, he could see where the man was coming from. And this man had done something about it! This whole dive into Ted Kaczynski and his philosophy had introduced Richard to some other men online who thought similarly—men from Oregon, Idaho, and even Utah. He followed some of them on Reddit or Twitter and was, for a brief second, considering going to one of their physical meet-ups. Their message, for a period of a couple months, made sense to Richard.

As much as Kaczynski thought industrialism had created problems for society, these men and online groups made convincing arguments for how immigration had created similar problems for society. Some of them were fairly tame, talking about how America was a melting pot, but a pot that you needed to mix new ingredients into slowly so as to not disturb the balance, and these days the mixing was just too fast, white European culture was necessary to maintain, etc. Richard felt like he had found a bond with these people, many of whom had similar frustrations as him—men who had lost their place in society, many of them divorced or unemployed, surpassed on the social ladder by women and minorities, alienated, lacking community, silenced by fake news media and the constant demands for more diversity and political correctness.

It all fell apart, however, after a couple months. All roads and sub-threads and conversation eventually moved in one direction—the direction of white supremacy, hate, Nazism. And, as an intellectual redneck, Richard knew this led to nowhere good. He stopped participating. What was the end game? That somehow America would be become or “return” to an all-white nation with the white man on top? And somehow everyone else would submit or go away? No way. Didn’t we fight a war about this already? Richard couldn’t quite make the next leap.

Though Richard was twice the age of pretty much everyone else in the SLCC class—kids with their fashionable black glasses and messenger bags and brown boots—he had enjoyed “Philosophy of Postmodernism” thoroughly, even if half of it was over his head. What also stuck out to him, predating Kaczynski, was a section on Michael Foucault and his idea of “shock.” Foucault talked about how, as far as Richard could remember, two elements of modern life—the cinema and crowds—introduced an element of “shock” to the human brain due to their rapid succession of images and stimuli.

Richard found the idea fascinating. Just imagine what Foucault would think now! How many rapid successions of images and stimuli (and the expectation to keep up with it all) now dominated modern society. Think of the movies, television, social media, and 24-hour news channels! This, coupled with the bank lines, traffic, and grocery store parking lot altercations, and no wonder American society was so fucked up, ready to explode!

By merely existing in modern life, we were all victims of daily shock and trauma. And what did society offer in return? Consumerism. False hopes from politicians. The denigration of religion. Nothing, essentially. Society as a whole had no offer of meaning to the individual. The bonds of society itself were collapsing. So why were people so surprised then, when a mass shooting, terrorist attack, or suicide occurred? Richard, frankly, was surprised they did not happen more frequently.

In the seventies you had cults and serial killers. Now it was all mass shooters, online propagandists, and trolls hiding under anonymity. Social media was the new cult. Richard thought he would destroy the Internet if he could, but he had no idea how to go about such a task. Yet people needed meaning. In this vacuum of meaning and morality, terror reigned, truth was twisted, and a theology of the self towered over the collective.

Richard wanted to awaken everyone from their gluttonous slumber.

Around three the sun disappeared and the air thickened with ash and Richard packed up. He’d caught one small trout. That was it. He drove back on Highway 150, past Mirror Lake, past Bald Mountain, and back to his lone driveway and decomposing A-frame house. He thought once again of burning the whole thing down. Setting off west to the Pacific, homeless and happy. Instead, he made a fire outside when evening came and continued drinking. The nights were getting chillier and he almost needed a flannel.

Once he was good and drunk Richard stuck his hand in the flame. He left it sitting there to see how long he could take the pain. When the skin started to boil and blister, he let out a small grunt.

Richard walked inside to place some burn ointment over his knuckles and fingers, and then began to wrap his left hand in gauze. He could feel a withdrawal setting in. Damnit, he should have planned ahead for this. He started to get antsy, anxious. If there was just one more pill somewhere, that was all he would need. Just one more.

Richard rustled around his house for any remaining pills. He emptied kitchen drawers and his measly medicine cabinet. Threw everything out from an old backpack. Nothing. Fuck! He took a deep breath to calm down. He’d be better for it in the long run. He could still drink, after all. He found some aspirin instead and swallowed several of them, collapsing on the couch to pass out. A crescent moon shone bright outside the kitchen window.