My neighbors hunt. These so-called “country bumpkins” can survive in the forest, hills, lakes, and rivers here in Indiana. They understand the world of nature, its vicissitudes and barbarism. Appreciating its transcendent beauty and cadences, they also accept its fierce cruelties.

These country bumpkins do not worship nature. Rather, they seek reconciliation with it, desiring that their loved ones may endure and be protected. They admire the natural world, its towering majesty and microscopic complexity, but their admiration is a realistic appraisal of nature and its vagaries.

It is these country bumpkins, these hicks and rubes, that society refers to as “deplorables,” the ones clinging to their Bibles and guns. But what many don’t realize is that when push comes to shove, it is these deplorables that will win the day as society declines.

Coming from the Bronx, I was acquainted with riding the subway or bus or navigating the busy and often treacherous streets of New York. I learned to survive in the city, but I knew nothing of hunting, fishing, or surviving in nature, for coastal elites have disdain for those schooled in such things.

Coastal elites assume that food, water, and other necessities and amenities just appear. They lack awareness of the complex grids, structures, and platforms that maintain their comforts. They don’t understand the sources of electricity which power their computers and air-conditioning, nor the gasoline that fuels their cars. Furthermore, they do not appreciate those who make these daily, secular miracles of electronic civilization possible. The country bumpkins, however, do understand these things.

Many Hoosiers preserve food. Some steam or pressure can, dehydrate, pickle, freeze-dry, smoke, or salt items. Because they’re farming experts, they know how to cope with caterpillars, aphids, and cutworms, while also guarding against hedgehogs, fungi, and lack of rain.

Some of these country bumpkins have gas tanks and generators. They have water filters, propane stoves, purifying tablets, first-aid kits, pickup trucks, drills, hammers, and wrenches. They can repair a car, a machine, or a leaking pipe. And yes, they also know how to install Wi-Fi, use computers, navigate the internet, and operate smartphones.

These country bumpkin neighbors of mine have guns and ammunition. Defenders of the Second Amendment, many are veterans, well-trained individuals who serve in the national guard or law enforcement. They have shotguns, bolt action rifles, AR-10s, and other semi-automatics. They own handguns and an array of ammunition, including expanding, home defense rounds.

These country bumpkins use their knowledge of firearms to hunt duck, quail, and deer. They have night vision devices, tree stands, bows, arrows, camouflage, trail cameras, scents, GPS devices, and two-way radios. Floating down a river or walking the fields, they recognize the rhythms of the animals they track and pursue, their migration and trail patterns, driven by the weather, mating seasons, and food sources.

Some love to fish. Equipped with bait, rods, reels, nets, and spears, they cast for bluegill, catfish, and carp.

In essence, these country bumpkins know and can navigate a completely different world from the city dwellers who look down on them.

City dwellers only know how to get their food from a grocery store or online ordering service. They are ignorant of nature, although some worship it in a paganistic way, but would abhor it if they actually had to live in it.

Global warming concerns these city dwellers, though none would change their lifestyle to reduce their carbon footprint. They are uninformed of historical climate patterns: the solar cycles that drive the weather, the ice ages and interglacial periods that occurred well before the industrial age. They blindly accept the panicked predictions of global climate models, not bothering to investigate whether they are flawed.

Hunters, fishermen, food preservers, and preppers do not idolize the environment. They just respect it. Such people, often blue-collar workers—the farmers, oil workers, mechanics, and coal miners—make the lives of the urbanites possible. They provide them with power, goods, food, and water that they may live and sneer.

These metropolitans, gentry liberals, and globalists dwell in leftist coastal ecosystems, having their opinions confirmed daily by everyone around them. Predictable and conformist, they hilariously imagine themselves wild and free, and look down at those who know so much of nature and can live and flourish in the wild.

But if the power grid went down from a solar event or an EMP (electromagnetic pulse) device, or if the economy collapsed, the denizens of flyover country would survive. The sophisticated urbanites? Not so much.

They would soon realize that their clever turns of phrase, condescending smirks, allegiance to “diversity,” abortion, and rejection of God would mean nothing before the fury of nature and nature’s God. Their fatal conceits would vanish in terrified moments as nature delivered its cruel blows. Their high-minded rhetoric, progressive orthodoxy, navel-gazing, and self-absorption would dissolve before the acid rain of Gaia’s indifferent wrath. The financiers, media types, and hip Marxist professors would not do well. The anointed ones, the ruling class, and other pompous visionaries would descend to savagery in a war of all against all.

But the country bumpkins would get by. Some may not even blink an eye, for they already anticipated this and spent their lives preparing.

In the COVID age, with the economy and other societal fixtures crumbling, the rootless cosmopolitans may want to reconsider their contempt for country bumpkins. What is certain is that our elites, cloistered in liberal ghettoes amongst fellow members of the chattering class, would not survive without the welders, assembly line workers, and equipment operators. They should thank those whom they refer to as hicks, rubes, and deplorables.

But don’t hold your breath.

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Image Credit: Picryl