Why Can't We Just Listen

Telling them their concerns instead of listening to their concerns

I was well into adulthood before I realized not everyone who reads sees pictures or movies in their heads. It was around that same time that I found out not everyone hears their own voice speaking ideas and thoughts at every moment of the day.

I had no idea that folks walk around without internal monologues. If I am accidently diagnosing myself with something — so be it. I wouldn’t cure it if I could because I think it is the reason I can be productive.

Words bombard me and ideas want to develop and writing wants to be done and solving my state’s issues are always at hand running circles through my brain. Stream of consciousness is a style of writing because it is a style of thinking.

Rambling thoughts that only come together with more thought. I write the words down to get them out of my brain.

Words. Words. Words.

I love them. I study them. I collect them.

It’s funny that my love of words and vocabulary didn’t impact my diction. I have read beautiful poetry for decades, but I write in a Midwestern vernacular. I had capstone courses in college studying Shakespeare and Chaucer, and yet I write in a plain manner. Colloquial. Even simple to some.

Ignorant to others…

Rural Iowa. Photo via the University of Iowa.

I recently spoke to a crowd of 40-50 in a tiny town in Iowa…I think the population was fewer than 200 residents. It was fun, and someone who reads my essays brought an entire cooler full of Diet Coke. I spoke for about 30 minutes and then opened it up for Q&A.

That’s when the trouble started.

A question about school funding in Missouri came up. I answered with the facts about our problem with defunding that started two decades ago with the GOP supermajority. I also said that schools in Northwest Missouri are not fully funded and that local wind farms paying taxes into local school districts is a lifesaver — that many small districts without access to those tax dollars are forced to go to four-day school weeks.

After I made that statement, I heard a loud huff from the audience and I saw a man stand up, interrupting my sentence. I prepared myself for whatever was coming my way, because I could plainly see he was angry. He walked to the back of the room to leave, and then thought better of it, and turned around and said, “I want to say something: I am taking up signatures for a petition to keep the windmills out.”

He had several things to say to me…he was furious. He got everything off his chest and I calmly replied that I respected his opinion and nothing I could say would change his mind and I was glad he came anyway.

He left without another word, but he was calmer. Collected.

I taught middle and high school for 16 years, so I am not really rattled by anyone addressing me in anger — all those years taught me to de-escalate and keep my head.

A few days after the Iowa meeting, I read a story in The Atlantic in which a national reporter followed Missouri GOP Congressman Mark Alford around his district for 15 town halls. Alford is one of only a handful of Republican Congresspeople still doing town halls…and for good reason. His constituents are metaphorically kicking his ass at each meeting.

They are angry.

The Atlantic reporter was quite surprised to find that most of the voters in his district were asking about Medicaid cuts and not the Epstein files, though.

I am not surprised.

Why? Because I travel the Heartland and listen to voters. They don’t even talk about the Epstein list other than to say they are positively sure Trump is on it — they talk about the price of beef and their electric bills and hospitals at risk of closure and the loss of healthcare.

They talk about their kids and grandkids suffering in this economy. Their kids can’t afford rent or childcare and finding a job is becoming a real problem.

And therein lies the problem with a lot of Democrats — they tell voters what they should be concerned about. They don’t bother to listen to what they are concerned about. We are trying to force a narrative on people who only need to look around or check their bank account to see what concerns them.

Some seem to think they are smarter than voters, and you can see how that has turned out.

As I retold this story on BlueSky — a supposed safe space for lefties — someone asked what Iowa voters say when I visit them. I told them there are a lot of folks in rural Iowa concerned with water quality and school vouchers and windmills right now.

I was immediately berated by a fellow progressive for using the word “windmill.”

Now, I know the proper name for a windmill. It’s a wind turbine. That said, when I wash dishes, I am looking at these huge machines while their blades whirl. I am surrounded by wind farms. I am intimately familiar with them.

At night, from my pasture, it looks like aliens are landing because the red lights that warn aircraft of the windmill positions — they all blink on and off simultaneously. Red lights in the black night sky look creepy until you get used to it.

One man who follows me on BlueSky said:

It's hard to have a meaningful discourse about a topic when you can't even use correct terminology.

That’s like acting like we can’t talk about carbonated beverages because I say “pop” and he says “soda.”

Another man called me “ignorant” for using the term, but he must have been embarrassed and deleted the post because I can no longer find it. Or maybe he blocked me.

At any rate, I don’t care. Both comments were designed to be demeaning and condescending, but I kept my head.

I call wind turbines “windmills” because that is the colloquial term in my neck of the woods. If I asked my neighbor about a turbine, she’d ask if I meant a windmill. When one of the local boys gets a job at a wind farm, he’ll tell everyone he knows that he got a job with the windmills.

Poking fun at the terms I use won’t win me over. Neither will acting like you know better than me about the things I deal with on a daily basis.

The men beating me over the head online about my language reminded me of that Atlantic story: Many of my fellow Democrats aren’t listening, and some are putting words in voters mouths. Not listening to their words.

They will tell people how to feel and how to speak and what to be concerned about, and when these voters don’t vote for Democrats, because no one actually listened to them, the party and the strategists will scratch their heads and proclaim that rural folks are obviously racist. Stupid. Simple. Low-IQ voters.

That they vote against their self-interest. That they are ignorant, and one can’t carry on a conversation with a rural person because they lack the correct terminology and the correct voting issues. The issues the Democrats told them they are supposed to be concerned about.

Rinse. Repeat.

Words. Words. Words.

They matter.

And so do the folks we need to reach out to if we plan to win the next election.

Listen to them.

~Jess