Contemporary America is a system of domestic imperialism aimed at strip-mining human capital out of the provinces for the benefit of the metropolitan hubs.
The culture broadcasts the message that only a life lived selling off one’s human capital in a metropolitan hub is one worth living.
The result is that provincials who recognize that they do not possess the right kind of human capital demanded by the metropolitan hubs recognize also that their lives are not ones worth living, at least in the terms of contemporary American culture.
Therefore, instead of living lives, many of them turn to drink, drugs, sex, consumerism, etc — the bread and circuses of the contemporary American domestic imperialist system.
If there was anywhere left for American provincials and others left behind by the domestic imperial system to emigrate to — in the way that their ancestors could emigrate from wherever they were to the U.S. or to Canada or to Australia or to New Zealand or to Argentina — it would behoove them to do so.
Barring that, the least that they can do is to take it easy with bread and circuses and to do what little they can to at least gum up — or rather f*ck up — the works of the domestic imperialist system to the limited extent that they can.
If nothing else, they cheer from the sidelines, over bowls of popcorn, as the latest iteration of the domestic imperialist system comes crashing down and as its latest emperor gets his jug-ears boxed good and hard by a reality that cannot be teleprompted away.

Interesting assessment of the problem. Any solutions?

Rodney,
For a start, support counter-cultural currents that teach children to recognize that there are lives worth living available to them that consist of things other than selling off their human capital in metropolitan hubs.

Rodney,
PS: In addition to going easy on the bread and circuses, keeping off the kool-aid altogether would help.

Crustacean,
Thank you for adding illustration to the author’s point that teenagers (and I would add people in general) often do not deal with boredom creatively.
You say “Contemporary America,” yet corporations and others have always been a part of the landscape. It was the “Virginia Company” in England that funded the earliest settlement at Jamestown as they dreamed of profit (among other goals). There have always been those that would use others for personal gains. This truth, however, has not stopped millions of Americans from making a good life for themselves. Among immigrants we are still the most desired nation to come to to make a better life. Statistically, immigrants have a far greater percentage of self-made millionaires each year, despite those that would abuse and mistreat them. This is certainly not the result of better training or more opportunity, therefore it must be a matter of perspective and creative initiative. They see opportunity where you apparently see limitations. They see possibilities where you apparently see misfortunes.
Is it really any harder today to overcome the challenges of society you speak of than it was for our founding fathers to fight for freedom and create and entirely new system of Government. Is it really any harder today to overcome oppression than it was for those who marched in Selma or Montgomery. As Robert Greenleaf has so adequately stated (and I paraphrase) The system is not the problem. The problem is people that see the need for change and do nothing.
Your writing is articulate and heartfelt. I hope you will use some of that talent to create something for yourself and others.

“Methland” by Nick Reding (methlandbook.com) has some insights on this topic.
Best,
Mike

they cheer from the sidelines, over bowls of popcorn, as the latest iteration of the domestic imperialist system comes crashing down
Like Palestinians on 9/11.
If there isn’t enough cultural vitality, individual opportunity, or diversity of goods and services available in some random small town, it is the fault of that small town’s planners and developers–not the inhabitants of some random big city hundreds of miles away.

I don’t know why this is considered a small town issue. Plenty of teenagers in big metro areas use alcohol and other drugs. With all the electronic gadgets there is more to keep people from being bored then in the past.
I think you should consider that before the great depression it was considered normal for people to join the workforce and become adults while they were teens. Now teens are largely kept out of the adult world and spend most of their time with other teens. By delaying entry into the adult world they are kept immature even if they want to be responsible.

It has less to do with boredom, than escape. Here in NY, my son goes to one of the top, selective schools in the city. As the years have progressed, he’s astounded by how many of his classmates are doing drugs. Boredom would be a godsend for these kids. The pressures put on them by the expectations of the school (and society that tells them “Harvard or bust”) have driven them to find an outlet, any outlet that lets them forget for a moment. It is heartbreaking that the only way these kids can escape from the adults’ version of success, hoisted onto KIDS is to …. take drugs.

Is this what Sarah Palin called “Real America”?

But I’m wondering if contemporary pop culture and electronic media played a role in creating a more general dissatisfaction with small-town life … and if teenagers there deal with boredom and anxiety not creatively, but by medicating it.
I wonder, actually, whether you father’s perception of life in small-town America was accurate. People have been rebelling against life in rural and small-town America for the whole of the 20th Century. The join the military, get pregnant, or go to college to escape their rural lives. From the stories my mother tells–and she is probably your dad’s age–drinking and carousing were much more prevelant in her small-town life in the 1940s and ’50s than they were in mine in suburban America of 1980s.

The alternative to drinking by the riverside, taken up by many, is immersion in a church, most likely an evangelical church. For many kids in rural or small town areas, it provides more than enough social programming and takes them away from bad influences.
The problem is that in many cases, it’s a total solution – you either drink the kool-aid or you don’t. My impression is that if you go one one field trip or to one “coffee house,” you either dive in or are pestered ad infinitum. Plus, it’s hard to have evangelical friends if you aren’t one because 1) you’re presumed to be a bad influence by evangelical parents; and 2) that missionary zeal to save souls can make you seem more like another pelt to be bagged for Jesus than an actual buddy.
I suggest sports and lots of them, from ping pong to little league to pick-up touch football on the weekends. There ought to be something for everyone, and it’s something to do.

Crustacean, your 11:47 post is one of the most insightful things I’ve read in a long time.
Rodney, I think what Crustacean gets here is that there’s no motivation for small-town kids to exploit their own human capital in the pursuit of a good life. Why? For one thing, because the domestic imperialist system they’re stuck in has already decided they have nothing to offer, and even if they try to play by that system’s rules (e.g., college, move to a city, get a job etc.) the deck is stacked against them by the system’s preference for kids who went to the *right* college and didn’t have to take time off to earn money as they went, etc.
But another, more serious problem is that there’s little definition of what a “good life” is. The life dangled out to these kids is one of sophisticated materialism–better houses, better clothes (at least by name brand status), more elite shopping and restaurants, etc. It seems unbelievably far away and unattainable to them–but at the same time it doesn’t inspire them to action. They aren’t being promised more freedom, for instance, but significantly less. They aren’t following an ideal or pursuing a dream, unless that dream is one of unbridled materialism–and who was ever inspired to heroic levels of change and ambition by the promise of unbridled materialism? Do we even admire that sort of person?

TTT,
Let me humbly submit that there is at least a *little* bit of difference between cheering on the political failings of a hostile and hubristic mandarin caste, one of whose major projects is the strip-mining or clear-cutting of their own country of its human capital, and cheering on the murder of 3,000 random people, few it any of whom had anything whatsoever to do with goings on in Israel or Palestine.
Let me also humbly submit that “if there isn’t enough cultural vitality, individual opportunity, or diversity of goods and services available in some random [big city], it is the fault of that [big city's] planners and developers–not the inhabitants of some random [small town] [or exurb] [or suburb] hundreds [or however many] miles away.”
In any case, planning for the country as a whole is presently being conducted by those who never tire of reminding everyone of their big-city cultural credentials, though not many people in small towns or exurbs and fewer and fewer every day in exurbs and even big cities themselves share your conviction that the results of said planning are turning out especially well, and certainly no better than things turned out when the power of planning was in less urban and less urbane hands.

I agree with the above opinions. I live in a small town. As parents and adults we have to take an active role in finding things to do with our children in order to keep their minds occupied. We usually take our kids and their friends out on the weekends or plan get togethers at our home.
Whether your town is big or small, as parents we need to be more involved in our kids lives, even when they don’t make it easy on us.

Thanks for the interesting insights. I should say — confess? — that even though I went off to a boarding school where I suddenly had lots more friends, and interesting things to do, I started drinking in earnest there (and even got caught once, and sent home for a week). Why? It wasn’t boredom. It was teenage anxiety. I couldn’t have the girl I wanted. I hated myself. I this, I that — normal teenage stuff, but when booze was available, that meant escape. In college, where there was no penalty to be paid for drinking (and the drinking age in Louisiana at that time was 18), I drank like a fish because that’s what everybody else was doing, and (more to the point) because it helped me get over my intense social anxiety about talking to girls in whom I was romantically interested. No boredom there — just escape from myself and my morbid self-consciousness.
Perhaps that’s the human condition. We know from historical records that Americans in the colonial and early American period drank vast quantities of booze. Were they bored?
Maybe the heavier rates of use of drugs and alcohol among small-town teenagers, versus big-city teens, has to do with peer pressure and lack of other alternatives. That is, if you live in a big city, and feel disinclined to join the binge-drinking (or drug-using) culture in your school, you probably have other social alternatives open to you — alternatives that small-town kids don’t. That’s just a guess.

In my rural hometown in the 1980′s, pot use and binge drinking were pretty common amongst the teenagers. I really don’t think it much to do with boredom. I can’t imagine we were that different from teenagers in the city I’ve known.
What’s interesting is that I went to school with the kids of my dads high school buddies, and heard a lot of stories about the partying that crew did back in the early 60′s. It wasn’t really that different from us in the 80′s.

I grew up in a small town in Kansas in the same time frame of the late 70′s and early 80′s, and there was a lot of drinking, partying, drug use (pot and speed mostly) and sex. I was in a fundamentalist church at that time, and did not participate in any of this, or in any school dances, but wasn’t an outcast because of it. I was also not part of the “popular” group, but that group was generally nice to me, and those of us who were more explicitly Christian could go our own way without much trouble. I’m sorry Rod’s experience was different.
I agree that small towns are not a “refuge” for children, at least those who continue to attend school. I do think they are for homeschooled kids, especially those that live in more rural areas. They can play and ride their bikes freely and they don’t have to worry much about crime. When I was a boy in the summer, from 6 years old on, I would leave home and roam free for hours with my younger siblings and slightly older neighbors and friends, and our parents never gave a care, nor did we. My city raised son, who is 7, has never known that kind of unsupervised freedom, and probably won’t until he is old enough to drive (and by then I’m sure all cars will have GPS leashes to keep track of teens and cars.)

Crustacean,
Let me also humbly submit that [the deficiencies of cities aren't the fault of small towns]
…..well, yeah. But nobody here, least of all myself, said that they were.

Crustacean: Excellent post.
Rodney, while the system is not the problem, I think it can definitely exacerbate problems and make them harder to solve.
I think a lot of it is temperament and family support (or lack thereof). I grew up in a small Appalachian town in the 70′s and early 80′s. At times you could smell weed in the locker rooms–there was plenty of that and booze. However, I was rather introverted, and the high school I went to was a county school, so most of the kids there didn’t live close by. These factors combined to cause me to have little extra-curricular social life. Additionally, I was always happy to spend time reading, and my parents sent a definite “just say no” message. Thus I didn’t drink or do drugs at all; and, since my family didn’t belong to a church, I didn’t use that as a means of avoidance, either. Did I get bored sometimes? Yes; but for me it didn’t manifest in drugs or drink. At least not until college, which is another issue.
I think mercer makes an excellent point: “I think you should consider that before the great depression it was considered normal for people to join the workforce and become adults while they were teens.” My father, who turns 81 next month, says that over half the kids he went to grade school with didn’t graduate high school (if they even attended). However, the education that the average kid got by the end of elementary school was in some ways better then than now, and there were many more jobs open to that level of education. Credential inflation and economic shifts have changed all that. Now I’m not saying that kids ought to get out on their own at 14; but maybe some system where they’re not tacitly expected to be teenagers until they’re 30 might not be bad, either.

TTT,
Let me congratulate you then on having a more realistic view of how the world works than many folks on the cultural and the political left.
Just out of curiosity, does your Social Darwinism apply only to small towns, or does it also apply to inner cities and the smaller and poorer countries in the developing world?
If all of, say, St. Francisville’s problems are St. Francisville’s fault, then would you also argue that all of, say, the South Side of Chicago’s problems are the South Side of Chicago’s fault, or that all of, say, Haiti’s problems are Haiti’s fault?
It would seem that for consistency’s sake you’d have to do that, or at least to account for what makes the case of St. Francisville different for you … other than the fact that people in St. Francisville tend to have cultural and/or political opinions with which you disagree or the fact that you don’t get moral brownie points for being in “solidarity” with people — like those in St. Francisville — who are not “on [your] side” culturally and politically.

Parenting has to make a big difference. My friends all drank and got high routinely in the rural area I grew up in. I did too, to a degree, but my parents’ stricter rules didn’t allow me nearly as much opportunity. When I got home (at midnight, or else) my mom was awake and talked to me. Same with my friend up the road. Ours were church-going families. We were still rotten, but some stuff just didn’t fly. So, we found other things to do, even if it was driving 45 minutes to go to the movies.

I know we live in the age of the blame game (comfort food for the psyche) but I’ll offer one solution. I wouldn’t rule out the world of ideas, even for small town kids. Of course, whether they can tap an inner life of that sort at a young age depends on their parents (tougher to do if they don’t read) and their teachers.
Even small towns have libraries although they are not as well stocked as the bigger ones. And in this day and age, it’s very easy to order previously owned books from online booksellers. I NEVER was bored growing up because I always had my nose in a book. There are multiple benefits to reading. Books (fiction and non-fiction) are a wonderful way to learn about things you don’t hear about in the classroom. They also open your mind to different ways of living. And expose you to the different challenges people face, not just in the U.S. but in other countries. Not only does reading prevent insularity, for the anxious (which wasn’t a major problem for me), they soothe you by revealing, “hey, others have gone through this before.” Much better solution than hitting the bottle or reaching for drugs.
Reading on your own also gives you an edge when it comes time to submitting college applications and job applications. Your knowledge will have more depth than that of peers who never read for pleasure. And your writing will be better rounded, less stilted and less formulaic. And when job hunting, you’ll stand above those who don’t read because bosses will recognize you as what they are looking for. Someone who is educable, open to learning and continuous improvement and more likely to “add value” to the organization you hope hires you.
Stock villains aren’t the answer. It’s really a myth that the best jobs go to those who went to the “best colleges.” I went to a mid-rated college and paid for all my grad school expenses myself while working full time. It’s not easy but it is doable. You just have to be willing to work very hard and sacrifice a little (not popular these days, I know). And I’ve been doing very well professionally and financially for a while now. That said, I had the advantage of having parents who loved to read and genuinely valued learning.
Yes, I know. It’s harder for boys than for girls to reach for books. That has nothing to do with brainpower and more to do with acculturation that starts at a young age. Young males are very conforming, very tribal, and acculturated to cope by doing, something, anything. They’re supposed to shield their anxieties. Those anxieties (and we all feel them at least a little growing up) go underground, more so than in girls. Good dads recognize that and tailor their assistance to boys and girls to take that into account. They give their sons outlets for self expression (even if its non-verbal) and for being themselves. Boys need that because they won’t always find such outlets with their peers, where the need to fit in and conform creates its own stress and anxieties. That’s why I said the lucky kids, the ones who make it, often have parents who are wise to some of this.
Bottom line: Employers look for two things (1) ability to do the job and (2) ability to fit in with a team. Get along well with others, act at ease with yourself, be comfortable in your own skin and you increase your chances of holding on to and rising in ranks in jobs. It’s partly your job and partly your parents’ job to get you to that point of young adulthood. There’s no way booze and drugs are going to help with that. If you started out with seething resentments or anxieties, they’ll still be there when the buzz wears off. If substance abuse becomes a problem, AA is good in its “work the steps” approach because it encourages self examination. You’d be surprised how much guys who go into AA learn about themselves. The lucky ones can shortcut that self-discovery process through reading and never become addicted. Reading is a much better alleviator of boredom, if someone in your life instills a love of it in you at a young age.

Just out of curiosity, does your Social Darwinism apply only to small towns, or does it also apply to inner cities and the smaller and poorer countries in the developing world?
“Social Darwinism” is an odd reading of normal adult responsibility.
But whatever you call it, my stance holds for any occasion when people attempt to use regional bigotry as an excuse for their own flaws, i.e. “My town would be way better if those dirty city people who ruined the whole country just didn’t exist anymore, because every gay bar there means a meth lab here.”
So of course, it extends to large parts of the developing world where religious traditionalists (who happen to be of the cheer-as-their-cultural-symbols-crash-and-burn type you alluded to) try to hide their own greed and infrastructural impotence behind a farrago of denunciations of Mickey Mouse.

I’m not sure I’m buying this explanation.
I’ll explain why — I grew up in a town with a drug and alcohol problem so bad we were featured on 20/20! And we were NOT a small town with nothing to do. We were a posh NYC suburb, population 60,000. Our high school had an Olympic-sized swimming pool and a dizzying array of extracurricular activities — everything from drama to science to chess to all sorts of music to art to ham radio to you name it. There were over 2,000 students at our school, so it was easy to find people who shared your particular outlook, be it jock, prep, brain, shop class, punk, hippie, artist, musician, socially conscious whatever. Our town was brimming with culture and recreation opportunities — we had beautiful beaches, a public ice skating rink, bike trails, parks, tennis courts, an enormous public library, a thriving downtown district with all sorts of shops, and we were 30 minutes away from New York City on the train.
Yet we still complained there was “nothing to do.” Pretty much everyone — even the smart, clean-cut, Ivy-League-bound sort of kids — indulged in weekend binge drinking, and pot, coke and acid were easier to get than chewing gum. The big difference between our town and a small town out in the boonies is that the kids in our town tended to be the offspring of wealthy parents, so as long as they kept their grades up enough to get into a good college, people were happy to sort of look the other way. Many turned out seemingly fine — after all, rich WASPY New Englanders are historically very tolerant of heavy drinking. Others fell into addiction; some made it through rehab (once again, it helps if you have wealthy parents who can afford expensive addiction treatments), while others ended up with ruined lives.
I suspect that the point made by other posters, that in times past, teenagerdom didn’t really exist per se had something to do with it. Up until the mid-20th century, you were either a child or an adult. Since adults were the ones with status, there was a powerful motivator to act like one by your mid-teens, so that you would be taken seriously and not treated like a child. If you read period literature, you see how teenage girls of 14, 15, 16 years old eagerly awaited the day when they could wear long skirts and put their hair up, and be treated as young ladies rather than children.
Contrast this to today, when teenagers are held up as some sort of pinnacle of life. TV shows aimed at “tweens” (ages 9-12) often portray adults as bumbling idiots, compared to the smart, fashionable, sexy teens. Adults often attempt to continue being teenagers well into their thirties.
And why has this change come about? I suspect it has something to do with the postwar (1950′s) generation being the first generation in history to have increased leisure time and disposable income. Advertisers have increasingly targeted teens as they are the ones most likely to spend ridiculous amounts of money on trendy clothes, electronics, entertainment, etc..
I was pointing out to my daughters the other day, as they complained about having to go to school, that in the “old days” they might well not have to attend school, but they wouldn’t be idle — they would be expected to cook, clean, care for younger siblings, sew, knit, weed the vegetable garden, milk the cows, churn the butter, etc., which would leave precious little time for playing. It occurred to me, while I was saying this, that the old saying about the devil finding work for idle hands to do is probably more true than we think.

i think a big attraction with drugs is that some of them are, for lack of a better word, awesome. the problems with drug use stem from irresponsible use or using nasty stuff like meth. but alcohol, pot, mushrooms, even ecstacy and coke to a lesser extent, are in and of themselves pretty fun when experienced responsibly.
but that’s the problem, isn’t it? most teenagers aren’t capable of being responsible with this stuff. of course, when DARE and other clueless programs are out there equating pot with meth and heroine, teens don’t have much reason to trust the “authority” on the subject.

Consider Rod’s dad’s point:
Those country kids hunted, fished, rodeo’d, that sort of thing.
What’s more, they did those things with minimal adult supervision at best, and often no adult supervision. They did it in an era before the era of overprotective parenting, before we decided that no child should ever be put at any risk, in essence before we infantilized adolescence.
The way you keep kids from being bored is to empower them to DO SOMETHING. But if they always need your permission, safety gear, supervision and etc., you’ll wind up with kids who are empowered to nothing but idleness, and idle hands are the devil’s workshop.
Now you can blame the homogenizing effects of television and mass media, but the demand that we always and in all cases be safe from any and all potential mishap is driving boredom in kids. We see this in our neighborhood, where kids aren’t allowed to skateboard without helmets and pads but are allowed to sit in the alleys and smoke pot, and where it takes permits to play a pickup game of football but nothing to sit around and drink a 40.

While I agree that our Crustacean has some important insights… I can’t accept the implied (and explicit!) motivations he lists.
Who drives culture? Who drives expectations? And what evidence can anyone provide for the motivation to mold cultural and lifestyle expecations beyond the (Occam’s Razor) simple quest for increasing profits?
“I want it now!” — from my POV with all caveats about anecdotal evidence offered — is a direct translation and assimilation of the marketers’ mantra “You deserve to have what you want when you want it!” I submit that the “culture war” of much debate is over the definition of the “what”, and the children’s response to one side or the other’s value system. Instead, I suggest, the real war is over the entire concept of what we need, what we want, and by what measurement we define “enough”. Boredom is not over what we have, but over what we don’t have. The strongest armor against excess is a sane expectation of what constitutes enough.

Rod, I haven’t read the comments yet, but you described my life growing up to a T. If I had stayed where I grew up (instead of going to TAMS, Texas’ version of LSMSA), I don’t know what I would have done. I grew up on a farm about 10 miles from my school and the small village it was in, so I didn’t even have the chance to walk down main street (the River in Starhill) to get in that kind of trouble. I stayed sober, and so I would not have fit in at all.
My wife and I are thinking of moving to a smaller town (but not so small as where I grew up, nor as small as Starhill). I’ll read the comments, but I really don’t have any idea on how to keep kids out of trouble unless you go for the semi-monastic life of living far from any town.

Personally, I think that Salamander’s explanation makes a great deal more sense than Crustacean’s martyrology of how the big cities are brutally oppressing the poor simple country folk.
As others have pointed out, substance abuse is hardly a problem confined to the countryside (although I’m shocked, shocked to discover that religious indoctrination in these conservative communities doesn’t appear to help, hence the necessity of appealing to Sinister Outside Forces for subverting All that is Good and True).
Rod’s (and his father’s) recall of his teenage years may be interesting anecdotally, but not so much statistically. Bear in mind that he was attending a school with demanding entrance requirements. The kids with the drinking or drug problems (whether from the city or the country) probably weren’t performing well enough to get in in the first place. These also would have been the kids most likely to take greatest advantage of the opportunities offered up.
One thing that our increased requirement for education has done over the years is to postpone the onset of adulthood with its responsibilities. Once, you could be illiterate and still make a relatively decent living. Later, an 8th grade education would get you into a decent factory job. Now, a high school diploma is the barest of bare minimums, with post-secondary education of some kind becoming more and more important to making a decent wage.
So we delay when people are obliged to enter the workforce and support themselves. And people being people, as long as their immediate needs are being met, there’s less incentive to perform. So behavior that might have resulted in losing your job and the means to feed yourself now results in counseling and (perhaps) a suspension of some kind.
As for opportunities for entertainment? Hunting, fishing, rodeo, all of that is still there. No doubt lots of kids get into it. There are plenty of things to do these days; more even than in Rod’s father’s time (you can pursue all kinds of intellectual and creative activities online, for instance).
Crustacean’s complaint (and Erin Manning’s endorsement of it) is interesting though for another reason: I suspect they think life would be a lot better if they lived in a small town that had never heard what was going on anywhere else. Rod’s original post seems to echo this.
That’s a lifestyle built on ignorance. I guess it just goes to show that they know that the kind of life they have to offer doesn’t necessarily appeal to many, so it’s a tacit admission that they either have to hide the other possibilities or use the law and social pressure to bludgeon people who might want different things.

Oops. If you can edit my post, please add “</a>” after “LSMSA,” then delete this one.
And where’s the preview function?

Fascinating blog entry and comments, and I agree that Crustacean’s initial post was very good. The first thing that occurred to me when I read Rod’s initial post was to ask, “What about the adults?”
I mean, if their parents drink, if they do drugs, if they have a lot of broken marriages, if they don’t have particularly meaningful work, that would go along way towards explaining why their kids are doing drugs.
The contrast between rural New Mexico and Seattle that Sully’s reader mentioned may not have been so much because of the social activities that engaged the Seattle children as it was with the culture the Seattle parents had succeeded in creating.
Teenagers are often bored. I remember when we used to visit my maternal grandmother in a small town in Southwestern Minnesota, about once every 3 years. Before we were teenagers, we loved hanging out in the little park and going to the drug store. We had a ball, in fact. When we went back about 3 years later, as teens, we were bored to tears. I’m not saying the parents are to blame if their kids do drugs, but the kids may only be reflecting the lives their parents are leading.

I say this is a non-problem. The rebellious nature of youth has been well-known since Roman times. Yet, it has not prevented the forward momentum of human society. Like Rod, I grew up in a small-to-medium sized town and I also smoked pot and drank alcohol while in high school. So did most of friends. But in the long run, this did not matter because we still did well in school, made it through college, and created successful lives for ourselves. The fact that America has continued to have economic growth and technological innovation in the past 30 years suggests to me that this is a non-problem. It certainly is not an existential problem (the existential problems being the only ones worth getting hung up about).

This is a very interesting subject. I have rural relatives. One family in particular really resonates with me on this. We used to visit them on their farm when I was a kid in the 70s. The place was bucolic with rolling hills in the background. My uncle was an accomplished accordian player and played in local bands in the area. The family was quite large but when they left the farm to move into town (around 20 years ago) things seemed to go wrong. Not too much substance or alcohol abuse but there was an unhealthy number of illegitimate pregnancys, divorce and failed relationships.
I worked as a student for the phone company 22 years ago and my job involved going to rural locations to convert party lines to single lines and also upgrade the phone equipment in the homes. Rural life back then seemed to be various oasises of civlity, friendliness, normalcy and sanity. There was drinking but it was within reasonable limits. There was probably drugs as well but again not at problematic levels. I hear the same can’t be said today where alcohol and drug abuse is rampant. Not to mention teen sex and promiscuity. I think the difference is the electronic media. 20 years ago cable TV was not available in those areas. Today, there is scarcely a house without cable or satellite TV and the MTV culture is getting pumped at the rural communities who are very eager to embrace it.

The temptation to treat this a teenage phenomenon ignores the reality that this is life for many adults. The old adage in Wisconsin is that you need a church and a bar to make a town. There are a lot of people up into their 40s that basically work to drink. Sure, some are full blown alcoholics, but most of them are just regular people. You don’t see them because you don’t travel in their circles.
This idea that everyone drinks, has sex, or smokes in college or high school is simply wrong. Survey after survey shows it isn’t the case. What it is a case of is confirmation bias.

Sad that not a one of you, our bloggiste included, bothers to differentiate between “doing” drugs and abusing drugs.
Maybe, just maybe, people (not JUST teenagers) do drugs because they like their effects. Most adults I know LOVE the effects of caffeine (most assuredly a drug – and that’s another thing: Why no differentiation between the kinds of drugs people do?), many who like the effects of marijuana, and scores – nay, multitudes more – who like the effects of booze.

Geoff G.,
When you “suspect” that Erin and Rod and I “think life would be a lot better if [we] lived in a small town that had never heard what was going on anywhere else,” your suspicion is not only wrong but condescending and therefore insulting.
In fact, your suspicion is a case in point of precisely the sort of metropolitan parochialism which, when foisted upon small-towns, exurbs, suburbs, and underclass inner-city neighborhoods by haute-bourgeois, urban, domestic-imperial, mandarin-caste elites in metropolitan hubs has a lot to do with what makes for the misery of small-towns, exurbs, suburbs, and underclass inner-city neighborhoods … to the limited but real extent that miserable they are.
What the media broadcasts to people in small-towns, exurbs, suburbs, and underclass inner-city neighborhoods is not that there is *more* to life than they thought, but that there is *less* — specifically that the kinds of life they see being lived all around them are not “real” life, with the implication being, as Rod notes in his post, that “real” life goes on elsewhere and consists almost entirely in selling off one’s human capital to haute-bourgeois, urban, domestic-imperial, mandarin-caste elites in metropolitan hubs.
The message broadcast from say Manhattan to the Bronx is the same message broadcast from New York to “fly-over country” is the same message broadcast from the “The First World” or “The Global North” to “The Third World” or “The Global South.”
And the sort of strip-mining and clear-cutting of human capital from which “The Third World” and “The Global South” suffer in relation to the “The First World” and “The Global North” is the same sort that “fly-over country” suffers from at the hands of New York, is the same sort that the Bronx suffers from at the hands of Manhattan.
In each case, the game is to extract all the ivory and “exterminate all the brutes.”
Now, certainly, there are Social Darwinist grounds and Nietzschean grounds for support that sort of game — and perhaps those are grounds that you (and TTT) would like to claim.
But those grounds are entirely incompatible with the sort of sentimental humanitarianism that the cultural and political left also likes to claim for itself, and the incompatibility goes a long way toward explaining why the “populist” tone that our currently inpeccably urban and urbane Emperor is about to take in response to having his jug-ears boxed last week will be met by derisive hoots of laughter from the pop-corn-munching punters out in Jesusland.

Geoff G.: Crustacean’s complaint (and Erin Manning’s endorsement of it) is interesting though for another reason: I suspect they think life would be a lot better if they lived in a small town that had never heard what was going on anywhere else. Rod’s original post seems to echo this.
Boy, that makes no sense to me at all. In fact, I was desperate to know what was going on everywhere else. That’s why I read and watched and listened to anything I could that helped me escape my unhappiness and ostracism. That’s why I kept up 12 different pen-pal relationships with other teens all over the world. I have often written here about the difficult relationship I have with the idea of small-town life: I want the communal solidarity, but only on my own terms. Which is impossible, I grant you.
And I’ve also written about how my wife and I used to laugh when we’d fly back to New York after visiting my hometown, and getting caught up on all the salacious gossip, that we sure were lucky to be moving back to Brooklyn, where we never heard about things like that happening. The joke, obviously, is that of course things like this happen in Brooklyn all the time; we just don’t know about it, because it’s much easier to be anonymous in a big city, to pick and choose among your social circles, and to keep your private affairs to yourself. In important ways, big cities are much more conducive to living inside a bubble than small towns are.

Boy, that makes no sense to me at all. In fact, I was desperate to know what was going on everywhere else. That’s why I read and watched and listened to anything I could that helped me escape my unhappiness and ostracism. That’s why I kept up 12 different pen-pal relationships with other teens all over the world. I have often written here about the difficult relationship I have with the idea of small-town life: I want the communal solidarity, but only on my own terms. Which is impossible, I grant you.
Yup, and that’s my point. You knew what was out there and you left because of that.
If you hadn’t had all that exposure to the outside world, if you had been locked away without contact outside of the local town and surrounding countryside, you’d probably still be there. It never would have crossed your mind to leave, because you would have been unaware (i.e. ignorant) of living any other way.
Sorry if I wasn’t clear.

This topic caught my immediate attention, because I had the same experience that you did. I thought this problem was unique to my town, but now I see it differently. I was in 6th grade when I moved to a very small rural Louisiana town (population less than 3,000). I finished out my remaining school years there. Drugs and alcohol were commonplace and very easy to obtain. There was immense peer pressure to partake, and although nobody would outright confront you if you chose not to, you would feel the consequences later as people categorized you as an outsider. Nobody wants to be an outsider in general, and especially not in a tiny town where there’s nobody else to commiserate with. Among the biggest problems were heavy drug use, heavy underage drinking, drunk driving and promiscuous sex. We had 1 or 2 accidental deaths (usually drunk driving related) among our small high school crowd each year. That’s huge, when the total high school population is only about 300 kids to begin with. “Fun” was riding around town, parking in a local store parking lot and hanging out with your friends, or going outside of town to various well-known party spots to get drunk. I also assumed that the kids in big cities were into the same things – and probably much worse – but I found out that the opposite is true once I graduated from high school and moved to Dallas. When my new friends and I discussed high school and the drug scene, they made it crystal clear that they’d never done any of that (maybe some drinking, but nothing major and NO drugs) and they didn’t have a good opinion about those who did. I kept my own sordid past to myself. Today I am raising three kids (two are now teens) and there is a huge difference in what they’re doing at ages 15 and 13, compared to what I was doing at those same ages. I am incredibly grateful that we are in the city and that staying clean is not the exception, but rather the norm.
This is a real problem. It’s kind of a sub-culture that is easy to miss if you’re not a teen living in a town like this.

In fact, your suspicion is a case in point of precisely the sort of metropolitan parochialism which, when foisted upon small-towns, exurbs, suburbs, and underclass inner-city neighborhoods by haute-bourgeois, urban, domestic-imperial, mandarin-caste elites in metropolitan hubs has a lot to do with what makes for the misery of small-towns, exurbs, suburbs, and underclass inner-city neighborhoods … to the limited but real extent that miserable they are.
Has there been a time in U.S. history when this wasn’t true? Elites (including those who have the time to pontificate on the Internets about the harms of the haute-bourgeois they somehow think they aren’t a part of) have always set the expectations for how people live and aspire to. It’s the reason you can regurgitate academic Marxism via Limbaugh. You are as much a part of the problem as anyone else here, given your status as an elite.

Picking up on what Rod says, it’s pretty rich for Geoff to accuse the small-towns (and their equivalents) of being parochial and cut off from the “real” world represented by the metropolitan hubs, when, in fact, it’s the small-towns (and their equivalents) which are the more *cosmopolitan* places to live — since people there know all about themselves *and* all about the culture of the metropolitan hubs, which is broadcast to them — and the metropolitan hubs that are the more parochial places to live, since they know only about themselves and not about anywhere else.
Far from offering multicultural options to the small-towns or anywhere else, the metropolitan hubs are in the business of imposing what Patrick Deneen calls “monoculture” on the small-town and everywhere else — a monoculture in which the only kind of life worth living is a life lived selling-off ones human capital to the the urban, haute-bourgeoisie, domestic-imperial mandarin-caste.
Take Rod’s case as a case in point, Geoff.
Rod was human capital that St. Francisville had that first New York and then Dallas and then Philadelphia wanted and took away from St. Francisville.
Rod was shamed by the culture into feeling that he would be a “loser” if he stayed in St. Francisville. When he left, or when he realized he could leave, the kinds who didn’t have that same chance resented it and picked on Rod, in part because they were shamed by the culture into feeling doubly like “losers” for having to stay while others would have the chance to leave.
It’s as much the case that people like Rod tend to leave places like St. Francisville because they can’t be happy there as it is the case that people like Rod can’t be happy in places like St. Francisville because people like Rod tend to leave places like St. Francisville.
What people like Rod don’t have is the choice of really being happy either in places like St. Francisville or in the metropolitan hubs. Their choice is either be “losers” or to sell themselves off to the urban, haute-bourgeois, domestic-imperial mandarin-caste.
How you contrive to see that sort of dilemma as an opening up of someone’s life-horizons instead of a rather brutal instance of them being shut down is beyond my understanding.
But, granted, “we” all know that city-slickers like you are so much “smarter” than everyone else — as evidenced by the smashing success that the oh-so-slick and oh-so-smart Emperor Teleprompter has been.

Peter,
I live in a not-especially-affluent town in a not-especially-affluent state.
The town I live in has 40,000 people, which is more people than dollars I make in a year.
I went to college, but I never studied Marxism there or anywhere else.
And I’ve never listened to Rush Limbaugh or read one of his books.
Thanks, though, for letting know that I’m part of the “elite.”
Does that mean I have to stop “clinging” to religion.
Does it mean I have first go buy a gun, so I can stop “clinging” to that?

Hold on, Crusty, nobody told me I would be a “loser” if I stayed in my hometown. I couldn’t wait to get out because I was an outsider who was bullied for two years by the preppy kids, and I was completely miserable. I’m grateful I had the opportunity to escape. My sister had a completely different experience there, and chose to stay. In no way do I consider her a loser, or anybody else who remains there. It’s possible I would have left anyway, because my talent and my passion is for writing and journalism, and there are no jobs for me there. But maybe not. The point is, I got out because I didn’t belong, and was made to feel like I didn’t belong not by the mass media in the big cities, but by the elite clique that ran the dominant social group in my high school.

Does that mean I have to stop “clinging” to religion.
Does it mean I have first go buy a gun, so I can stop “clinging” to that?
Your constant attacks on Obama represent the kind of elite-driven populist rage that you decry when it comes from the right. Think for yourself, man. Stop allowing your elite college experiences and the conservative elite populist rhetoric you are parroting control your life. You are being controlled by the haute-bourgeois elites that make up the conservative culture class. Put down the books, turn off the TV, and pick up a shovel because they’ve taken over your thoughts.

Crustacean, you’d be surprised how many people in the cities originally come from smaller towns.
If people are voting with their feet, you may want to figure out why that is before you start congratulating yourself for how “cosmopolitan” you are.
Specifically, there’s this from Rod’s comment above:
It’s possible I would have left anyway, because my talent and my passion is for writing and journalism, and there are no jobs for me there.
Your “cosmopolitan” small towns didn’t have any meaningful way of satisfying Rod’s talent. Maybe that’s not true any more, since any bozo can start up a blog these days.
I can tell you this, your “cosmopolitan” small towns have always offered people in my situation exactly three choices: leave, live in the closet or be ostracized. It should come as no surprise that most people end up choosing option “a.”
Considering that small towns are so “cosmopolitan” as to offer basically the same options to Rod (leave, forget about writing professionally, or continue being an outsider), and considering that we pretty much are diametric opposites in a lot of ways just goes to show that your “cosmopolitan” small town really about as narrow and cramped a place as you’ll find in this country.
Philadelphia, after all, is big enough to comfortably include both Rod and these guys.

The real question is if alcohol and drug consumption by teens is increasing. The statistics I have seen indicate that they are not. Also, I believe pot smoking among teens reached its peak in 1979 and has declined somewhat in the 30 years since. I can tell you that there were a lot of drugs in my high school in 1979, but less in 1981 when I graduated. I’m not convinced its any worse today.
The 70′s was wild. Anyone who was a kid during this time can remember either experiencing or hearing stories about all of the fighting, vandalism, and other criminal activities that were common to teens at the time (and this was in my hometown of 150,000 people). My impression is that kids today are far less rowdy and more passive than kids were in the late 70′s.
Perhaps those of you who have teen kids can comment on this, as to whether my impressions are correct or not.

I am the same age as Rod but grew up in a rather different environment: the suburban sprawl of metro Detroit. But teenage boredom and partying were just as prevalent there as in his rural home. One difference though: no class barrier on pot smoking; everyone (that is, kids from all backgrounds, not literally 100% of us) indulged. This may have been due to the proximty of two major universities and some remaining hippie enclaves. With another drug, cocaine (this was the 80s after all), there was a class divide, since only well-off kids could afford it.
When I got to the UofM (I was almost 21 when I started college– long story) I did encounter teens who hadn’t spent their adolescence indulging apart from a sporadic drinking binge. Most of them also came from quite well-to-do backgrounds and of course they were pre-selected as being kids who had their act together since not everyone gets into the UofM. I recall an 18 year old girl confiding in me one night that she had smoked a joint– as if that were the most fabulously transgressive thing to do. At that point I had been there done that and lost interest.
I should also mention one young college friend from a rural part of northern Michigan and he didn’t smoke or drink (OK, the latter a little) despite the fact that his parents were ex-San Francisco hippies and his father still smoked a lot of pot.

I don’t know if drug use is up or down these days among rural teenagers, but it seems worse.
I think there’s probably just as much alcohol, and maybe if the drug use percentage of the population is the same, the drugs themselves aren’t. There’s more crystal meth and probably less (though still a lot) pot.

Having graduated in 1982, I witnessed a lot living in small town America. I graduated from what was known as “Drug Capitol.” It made me sick to see at each graduation, the classes from before who had gone nowhere, standing around the auditorium to snatch the following classes into their lair.
Where are they today? A few were murdered. Many are in prison, and those who are still around, have only aged, continuing the only life they’ve ever known.
All of which have grown up to become serious alcoholics and more fully addicted to the harder drugs. The most popular guy in school.. died last year due to shooting up with used needles. This guy had so much potential, yet went nowhere but to an early grave.
Yes, we’ve produced a few doctors, many military careers, a few college graduates, but the most disappointing was watching each Valedictorian and Salutatorian with big dreams of becoming lawyers and otherwise successful, dooming their futures to the drug use.
My parents once asked me what it was that they said that kept me from even experimenting. It wasn’t anything that they did really, it was a strength within myself, having made the decision due to seeing my friends make outrageous fools of themselves after taking something at their locker or coming off of lunch break completely stoned. It was everyday occurrence to have drugs and money passing hands right in front of my face, and then within 30 minutes, to see these same ones standing on the desks thinking they were flying. I had their respect for not participating, many of them telling me later. Peer pressure was definitely an issue, but I can amazingly tell you, I never bowed. I could count on one hand those that took my stand.

I have three kids and one teen still at home. We also live in a small town an hour off the interstate and a day’s drive away from any major metro areas, so we’re spared some of the pressures you will find in small towns that have become mere bedroom communities to big cities, or small towns that have been “discovered” by the affluent, or small towns that have become major drug hubs because of their location along major highway corridors. So the small town experiences of my kids may not be typical. According to them (and what I’ve observed), teen life in our town seems much more tribal than I remember. Our community high school is huge, so for kids to survive, they have to join smaller groups. Drug/alcohol usage seems to depend in large part upon what, er, tribe your kid happens to be a member of.
Cheers,
Mike

Sad that not a one of you, our bloggiste included, bothers to differentiate between “doing” drugs and abusing drugs.
Since these drugs are illegal, the difference is irrelevant.

Rod,
Well actually you *could* have pursued a career as a writer in a place like St. Francisville or at least in one of its size. There are, after all, local papers, even in small-towns. You could likewise have compromised on your desire to write for a living, or to do a certain kind of writing for a living, in order to commit yourself to living out the socially-conservative, localist values you write about. In fact, you still *could* do that. In addition to writing for a small-town paper, you could teach school, you could enter the clergy, etc, etc. There are plenty of things for people with your skills and inclinations to do in small-towns if that’s where they choose to be. You were blessed with the choice to leave or to stay and you chose to leave. I’ll venture (a) that you were heavily influenced by the culture at large in making that choice, and that (b) you were likewise heavily influenced in your choice by the choices to leave made earlier on — again under heavy influence from the culture at large — by others of your character type. There’s a snowball effect that sets in, where if no Rod Dreher is ever willing to stay in a St. Francisville, no St. Francisville can never become the sort of place where any Rod Dreher wants to stay. It could be argued that in choosing to leave, you did as much as any future set of bullies did to help make St. Francisville even more the sort of place where the current set of Rod Drehers don’t want to stay, just as the unwillingness of an earlier set of Rod Drehers did as much as any of the bullies you faced in high school did to make St. Francisville the sort of place in which you yourself didn’t want to stay.
As for your sister, and, for that matter, your parents — well, of course, they’re not losers to you personally or to me personally, but they certainly are losers from the point of view of the metropolitan culture which you’ve chosen to join, albeit in an uneasily dissident role. Your sister’s life and your parents’ lives are of absolutely no worth or import or dignity at all in terms of the Social Darwinist logic that we’ve seen displayed by several defenders of the domestic-imperialist system all down this thread. In their eyes, your sister and your parents are absolutely nothing more recrudescent holdovers who retard social, political, and economic progress — they are absolutely nothing more than the sort of “clingers” whom Emperor Teleprompter spoke of in San Francisco. It’s their fault “we” don’t have nationalized health care yet, it’s their fault “we” don’t have gay “marriage” yet, yadda, yadda etc, etc. Emperor Teleprompter and his ilk don’t want to do anything so vulgar as actually come right out and kill your sister or your parents. But they d*mn sure want to see to it, however much they can, that as few more people like them, living lives like they’ve chosen to live, are ever born, or, if they are, ever get the chance to live the way your sister and your parents — as opposed to you — have chosen to live. Can’t you see that? I’m sure that you can.

Wow, KMB, that is sobering. Those of us who didn’t have to go to school in such an environment really were lucky, weren’t we? I do think you’re on to something with that building of strength within oneself.
As for Rod’s original essays and some of the comments upthread, I don’t think TV really can replace books as a way of giving a window on the world. You rarely see people in episodic or serial tv shows really working through the nitty gritty of their lives. Books can convey a lot more detail, they’re not as superficial as tv shows. And of course, books were available to small town kids as a source of a window on a wider world well before tv. And those who read before the 1950s when people started buying tvs didn’t all become dispirited and discouraged, some became inspired.
I do think tribalism can be a problem more so for kids than for adults. Although I have to say, I’ve seen dudes in the workplace who act one way when they dealing with someone one on one and another way when they are with “the group,” as if they still were in high school and hanging out with their crowd. There’s still some of that hankering for the group’s approval and a seeming reluctance to be themselves, or to show parts of what they show when one on one. Other dudes seem to move beyond that. Combine peer pressure, tribalism and uncertain job prospects and things really can go awry. Perhaps more than some of you, I think parents really make a difference. My family wasn’t wealthy, in fact, I think my Dad was between jobs when I was born, although he soon got one he stayed in until retirement. Yet my Mom and Dad somehow imbued me with enough confidence that even though I had to live very economically after getting my first college degree (I started work right away and paid for grad school out of pocket while working full time), I never doubted things would improve. I really was very lucky in my parents, they provided me a psychic environment where I could build self confidence.
Good point about many people in big cities originally being from small towns. It’s not as if they undergo a data wipe and forget everything they experienced before coming to the city. Once you’re out in the working world, it’s pretty easy to break down barriers, shoot down myths, shrug off stereotypes, open your eyes—if you want to. I’m a lifelong city or near-city dweller in the East and I really enjoy hearing stories about what my colleagues did growing up in small towns, rural areas, and cities, and what their parents were like. Even though I’m very bookish, just as I was as a child, I’ve found just listening and talking to others to be a great secondary way of learning.

Geoff,
Your one and only non-negotiable criteria for a social and cultural space seems to be that it afford you the opportunity to have promiscuous sex with other men in a non-judgmental atmosphere.
That’s all well and good for you, but not for the overwhelming majority of the rest of us who do not share your comparatively rare and idiosyncratic desires.
In any case, the small-towns, the exurbs, the suburbs, the under-class inner-city neighborhoods lack the power, even assuming they had the intention (which they do not), to strip-mine and to clear-cut the metropolitan hubs of human capital.
No one in any of those places is trying to take away anyone’s opportunity to move to a metropolitan hub to have promiscuous homosex in a non-judgemental atmosphere.
Whereas the metropolitan hubs are very much trying to take away the opportunity of theses other social and cultural spaces to sustain themselves and provide opportunities for a very, very wide variety of different people who are not like you to live lives that, while they may not be exactly, precisely like your own, are lives of equal dignity and worth — lives upon which, in fact, your own life depends in ways which you clearly haven’t realized.
Anyway, the situations are hardly symmetrical. I return to my earlier comment to TTT and reiterate how laughable it is to imply, as you do, that its the metropolitan hubs being exploited and oppressed by the small-towns, the exurbs, the suburbs, and the under-class inner-city neighborhoods and not the other way round. It’s about as laughable as saying the United States is being exploited and oppressed by Haiti or that the Global North is being exploited and oppressed by the Global South.

One factor that can affect the extent to which parents can help their kids is how much they study and understand issues themselves. There’s a lot more available, free, on the web than there once was. It used to be you learned some things primarily through your employer. As a manager, you’re always going to training classes that help teach you how to manage projects, manage people, lead, communicate, negotiate, etc. Rod recently mentioned Myers-Briggs. Things such as that are very useful in teaching you that people whom someone might assume are being deliberately difficult really sometimes just process information differently. Their Myers-Briggs personality typing indicators might be the exact opposite than yours in the four elements. Of course, there are people who simply are asses, plain and simple.
I don’t know about you, Rod, but I’ve found that understanding from my on the job training what is innate and what can and cannot change readily helps in my family life as well. You’re more patient and tolerant with loved ones once you realize what the source of some of the personality differences is. You stop butting your head against walls and thinking “Why can’t she or he be like me?” That’s not to say you don’t sometimes get frustrated still, of course. One of the great things about the Internet is that you don’t have to go to employer paid classes to learn about such things. There’s a fair amount of good literature on the web for free about Myers-Briggs and similar tests. So, for those who want to learn, there’s stuff out there which can help at home and at work.

Peter,
Your squawking-points would be more effective if rather than merely making baseless false accusations of right-wing brainwashing against me, you at least bothered to make false accusations of right-wing brainwashing against me with some sort of pretext, if only an illusory one, of a basis.
You know, you could try to show how I get all my ideas from — in addition to Rush Limbaugh whom you’ve already had recourse to — Glenn Beck or Bill O’Reilly or Sean Hannity or some other such right-wing commentator whom I’ve heard of but barely ever seen and never, ever read.
After all, gee-whiz, that would be such a really, really novel line of rhetorical attack — one that no conservative or right-winger or populist or traditionalist here had ever been subjected to.
That would really stick it to me and show everyone else how “smart” and “well-educated” *you* are.
All any of us conservatives or right-wingers or populist or traditionalists here need is for a free-thinking fellow like yourself to swoop in from Andrew Sullivan’s site or from wherever and set us straight.
Too bad Emperor Teleprompter can’t do that individually with each and every person in the world.
What a *wonderful* world *that* would be …

Emperor Teleprompter. That’s funny. Did you learn about the meme du jour off the Internets–that tool of the haute-bourgeois elites in big cities looking to oppress the little people in small towns with their sophisticated technology–or did you pick it up at the feed store talking to the locals? Was it in a paper, a tool of the haute-bourgeois trying to control small-town American values, or off the New York and California-produced radio or television shows?

Um, folks, is it necessary to bring petty partisan rancor to this blog? I thought Rod intended this to be a step back from such things. Of course he can speak for himself, and I may be out of line, but I would like to register my own disapproval of some of the more sour stuff above.

Could it have something to do with that out here in the sticks, there are a lot more places that are isolated and private enough that the kids can smoke dope and drink without getting busted by a passing cop?
An example – I live in a town of six-hundred or so folks. A mile away from me, I have access to a fifty-three acre spread owned by a guy who lives in a nearby town of 35,000.
I enter this from a county road, but once on the property, there is a dirt road – a private road on the property that cannot be accessed once the gate is closed – that leads to a nice sized pond. At this point, I’m probably a good quarter mile from anyone who might hear us.
So under those circumstances on a summer night, maybe a small bonfire, some beer, some marijuana, lots of stars in the sky, crickets chirping, frogs croaking, kids enjoying life and getting high might not be all that tragic.
It might even be a pretty good way to spend an evening. Dang, I’m looking forward to Spring…
Anyway, my point being that since I – who moved out here from the Big City five years ago – have access to a place where I am effectively isolated from cops and nosy neighbors, it stands to reason that kids who have lived here all their lives probably have access to even more isolated hang-outs.

Peter,
“Smart” and “well-educated” fellow that you are, you no doubt know how to use Google.
Try it and you’ll find that “Emperor Teleprompter” yields no direct hits — and certainly no Rush Limbaugh, no Glenn Beck, no Bill O’Reilly, and no Sean Hannity.
Q.E.D.

Crusty, since I wasn’t privy to your thought process when you made up your absurd redefinition of “Social Darwinism,” I’m afraid it doesn’t work as a pejorative. Sorry. Then again, since you also said those views of mine were “more realistic than most leftists’”, I’m not sure if you were really following along either.
Any thinking person would reject your constant insecure projections of regional bigotry. It is no different from some Middle Eastern tyrant declaring that the causes of their country’s poverty and inequality is Mickey Mouse. Those people have armies and I don’t accept it from them. Why do you think you will be more convincing?

So, Rod, how DOES the comment moderation policy work here? I’ve had several comments vaped in this thread that absolutely were no different in tone or temperament than about a dozen you let through.

John E. – A.S. – the ability to find remote locations may play a part in it. So does free time, especially in the summer.
I think some of the differences relate to the pressures kids feel and the amount of leisure available to them (chores, helping out Mom and Dad, working summer jobs, extracurricular activiteis, etc.) Some high school kids intern at unpaid office jobs during the summer or take extra courses as it looks good on college applications. A lot of kids in wealthy suburbs on the East and West coasts load up with very heavy courseloads, including lots of AP classes. It really gets overdone in many instances. Studies have shown that some are so overscheduled and stressed and exhausted, they develop depression and anxiety as teenagers. It’s like they hardly have any time to be kids at all. It’s amazing how competitive some of these kids are in schools where 95% of the graduates end up going to college. They obsess about SAT scores and getting into their first choice schools. I wonder if that hypercompetitiveness in high school may not be a factor in what is called prolonged adolescence (until 25) these days. They miss out on some of the carefree things in high school that kids enjoyed in the old days, and still do in some schools. And then try to catch up later before they enter the working world. Interesting contrast to what a couple of posters mentioned up thread—that kids used to go from being kids to working at a younger age. College wasn’t an option for many back then, for a number of reasons.

Jon, I agree that its best to leave out partisanship, that is, if we want Rod to be able to continue the blog at all.

This is why the idea of the ‘quaint, safe small town’ is fraudulent. I’d rather live in a big city with plenty of cops and surveillance, and where trouble is expected and pounced on. I grew up in a small town and lot of kids smoked pot or got wasted some other way (I was one of the few who did not).

Some of you have answered my question about teen drug use today compared to, say, 1979. My next question is if kids are as likely to engage in outright criminal behavior as they did in 1979. In 1979, I knew kids who were into drug dealing, house burglary, and even a guy who stole a car. Vandalism was fairly common and “kegger” parties (that often got so out of control that the cops would respond to the neighbor complaints to shut it down) were quite often as well. The muscle car thing was more of a mid-70′s baby boomer thing (by the time I was in HS, most of the muscle cars were gone). Oh, and guys used to fight each other all the time. In junior high, there was a water tower across the street from the school. Anytime two guys had a dispute, it was common for them to go “fight it out behind the water tower”.
Marijuana was everywhere. It was actually easier to get pot than it was alcohol when I was in high school. Psilocybin mushrooms, which are indigenous to my area, were the next most common drug. But these were only available in the fall, around October and early November.
The PCP craze/scare occurred while I was in high school. However, PCP had such a horrific effect on its users that its popularity did not last long, thankfully.
Are these kinds of activities as common today as they were in 1979? Perhaps I just around a rowdier crowd than normal when I was young.

I know this is somewhat off topic. However, since you guys are into the whole localized, decentralized, small town thing, I thought this might be relevant:
The DIY industrial revolution (atoms are the new bits)
http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/01/ff_newrevolution/all/1
It seems to me that this kind of a DIY industrial revolution would be a shot in the arm for rural areas and small towns. It is decentralized and is based on smaller business entities rather than giant corporations.
Any thoughts?

To all the “cooler heads” who are trying to “prevail” here, let it be noted that there is nothing the least bit “partisan” at all about any of my posts on this thread, or, for that matter, about any comment that I have *ever* posted here on *any* thread.
That’s because I myself am not the least bit “partisan” at all, not being now nor ever having been a member of the Republican Party, the Democratic Party, or any other political party.
Now, if by “partisanship,” you “cooler heads” many argument grounded on first principles, well I can only say that my arguments grounded on my own first principles are no more and no less partisan than your own arguments founded (fallaciously) on the principle that your own arguments are founded on no first principles at all and are therefore “value-neutral” — something that no argument at all every has been or ever will be.
Go back and reread Rod’s own numerous past posts citing Alasdair MacIntyre on this point if you doubt me.

Crustacean
Your one and only non-negotiable criteria for a social and cultural space seems to be that it afford you the opportunity to have promiscuous sex with other men in a non-judgmental atmosphere.
Well, you’re the one who seems to be so fascinated with promiscuity. I don’t recall mentioning it at all. I did bring up homosexuality, but only because (a) it’s what I know and (b) it’s a pretty good test of how society handles its “edge cases.” You’re the one who’s asserting that being gay is the same as being promiscuous.
I’m not sure if I should be flattered that you consider me so attractive, insulted, or disappointed that I’m missing out on all this sex I’m supposed to be having. So I’ll take it as a compliment and merely say that while I’m flattered, I am in a relationship and you’re not my type in any case.
If you will recall, I mentioned that Rod was another “edge case” as the kind of kid who tended to get bullied in school (his words). He also felt that his small town didn’t offer enough opportunity to match his talents (also his words).
I presumptuously linked the two of us together as symptoms of a narrow culture that doesn’t tolerate people who deviate from the norm very well. Rod and I both deviate in different ways, but both found small town life confining and insufficient to meet our needs.
Now, I suppose if one was a small-time conservative bully and narrow-minded prig who liked picking on people who don’t fit one’s mold, one would probably fit in very well and enjoy that kind of environment.
Considering your passionate defense of the lifestyle, I’ll allow people to draw their own conclusions about your own personality.

Damn, reading this, I’m not sure I ever want to have kids of my own. At the very least, it makes me think that homeschooling would be the only real option – and that can bring its own issues.
I went to a relatively good school where drug abuse wasn’t THAT bad, and most of the kids ended up turning out OK. Even still, I did suffer for not being willing to join the smoking/drinking/promiscuity crowd (and, naturally, for being a bit shy/dorky/awkward). Reading this thread reminds of how glad I am to be in the adult world now.

Oh, and I’ve always thought that the “there’s nothing to do here” excuse was a total cop-out. People with active minds (and, I suppose, active parents) are rarely bored. I’ve heard people in cities of close to a million complain that there’s nothing to do. That statement certainly reflects more on them than it does on their city of residence.

Geoff, I see no reason why you couldn’t draw the correlation that you did. You come across as a brave person. I’d have given Rod props if he would have noted that after you posted.
Anonymous, I like what you said about active minds and the nothing to do excuse.
There’s a lot of literature out there about bullying but it is very hard to counter. Part of the problem is the “my kid didn’t do anything wrong” syndrome. A lot of parents who think they are raising kids with the type of inner fortitude to face life’s vicissitudes actually are doing the opposites if they tune out signs of their own children being bullies. Sometimes it’s the kids who once were the targets of the bullies or who had to fight off dismal conditions who end up doing best later on in life. Maybe it has something to do with developing coping skills in the face of adversity.
What is interesting to see in comboxes is that people who once were bullied seem to have gone on to do well. (Rod himself is an example.) However, I’m not seeing a lot of correlation in the comboxes between serenity and how many times one attends church (many people of faith are “unchurched”) or someone votes. If there’s any lesson I’ve learned from the comboxes, it’s that serenity seems related to genuinely liking and being at ease among one’s fellow Americans, generically (we all dislike some individuals we know) regardless of where they live. Whether tolerance and understanding of the unlike leads to serenity or serenity leads to tolerance and understanding, I haven’t figured out yet.
Rod, I know you’re home schooling your kids (a subject about which I know almost nothing). So I don’t know how closely how follow public education issues. Have you looked at drop out rates for schools in small towns where there is a lot of substance abuse? Is there a correlation? I looked around the web a little this morning and I saw some literature from the Southwest Educational Development Laboratory about schools in Arkansas, Louisiana, New Mexico, Texas and Oklahoma that do well and schools that don’t. Some of that seems linked to degree of school spirit, size of the school, the openness with which teachers and administrators discuss problems, (commitment to critical inquiry and continuous improvement) and home life. Which makes sense, given what I wrote above about parenting.
One more thing. When carried to excess, youthful drug and alcohol use can really cause problems down the road, as anyone who has sat in on an open AA meeting as a participant or observer soon finds out. Not only that, it can be a big problem for anyone hoping to get a job requiring a security clearance, which requires investigators digging into one’s past. (I’ve been listed as a reference and been interviewed for some friends who’ve undergone full field investigations.)

Geoff,
Funny how you and Rod are suddenly comrades-in-arms, out on the barricades, fighting for the rights of social “edge cases” everywhere.
Funny, that is, because the only reason you ever showed up here is that Andrew Sullivan pointed you to Rod as a convenient punching-bag to keep your homosexualist self-righteousness in fighting trim.
Funny also because you make no common cause at all with social “edge cases” — like small-town social conservatives and others — who fail to be guilt-tripped by your homosexualist self-righteousness schtick.
Funniest of all is how seem entirely unable to draw any parallel at all between the experience of being oppressed on one scale and the experience of being oppressed on another.
You reserve the right to bully people who don’t agree with you, but you don’t ever put yourself in the shoes of people who bully in the same reactive way on the basis of having been bullied themselves by people like you or by people who agree with you and sympathize with you.
No wonder though, because that kind of moral nuance and sophistication would spoil the melodrama in which you’ve cast yourself as the damsel in distress, perpetually lashed to the train tracks by some small-town “Christianist” and perpetually being rescued by Andrew Sullivan, Barack Obama, or some such dashing mountie.

Rod, I don’t know how your new blog is going to work out. It’s hard to tell where you are at because establishing the new blog occurred at the same time that you moved. You haven’t been around that much and it’s hard to tell the extent to which you read comments. I don’t know if you ever read all the comments under the essays you posted on goals for the new blog and on the one where you asked for how to make it work better and to draw more readers.
Something you have to consider is that you established some pretty clear patterns over on your partisan blog. So you have a history. On Crunchy Con, during the the six months or so that I followed it, I picked up this impression. You had a tendency to engage with two types of readers: (1) ones whose views aligned with yours on religious or ideological issues (e.g., Erin Manning, Gerard Nadel)—people you praised and (2) those whom you rebutted, thereby giving you a platform to re-state what your views were. There wasn’t much in between, in terms of feedback. If you had followed that pattern in a workplace, you would have been at risk of creating a group of yes-men, an echo chamber where it was very obvious that there was only one way to get ahead and to please the big guy. OK on a blog, but can be disastrous in the workplace. (I’ve seen the consequences of imposed groupthink,)
On a partisan blog, it’s ok to signal “my way is right.” Is that what you want to do on the non-partisan one? Or do you want to recreate yourself as a somewhat more neutral player. If so, you might want to take a fresh look at how you interact with people on the board. I know it’s hard to hand out “attaboys” to people who don’t vote like you or whose views on social and cultural issues don’t align precisely with yours. But on a new blog of the type you are trying to establish, I do think it would be possible for you to recognize and speak to merit in arguments, without demanding conformity to your viewpoint. It struck me on the threat about kindness in Philly that the only real feedback you gave was to hurriedly reassure the person who praised the southern wait staff that yes, you too liked it. Instead of sorting through what advice people who had lived in the Mid-Atlantic office, you went for the tribal response. And in my view, the easy one. That fit the old blog but is it the best approach for the new one, where your goal seems to be encouraging thoughtful discussion.

I have some work-related stuff going on at the same time as I’m composing comments (you see it in my reference to Mid-Atlantic Office), didn’t notice the errors in one paragraph. So I’ll try again:
“It struck me on the THREAD about kindness in Philly that the only real feedback you gave was to hurriedly reassure the person who praised the southern wait staff that yes, you too liked it. Instead of sorting through what advice people who had lived in the Mid-Atlantic OFFERED, you went for the tribal response. And in my view, the easy one. That fit the old blog but is it the best approach for the new one, where your goal seems to be encouraging thoughtful discussion.”

Crustacean,
You have dragged in a subject (homòsexuality) that has nothing whatsoever to do with the topic at hand (teenage drinking and drug use in rural areas). And not in a way that conduces to the larger discusson, but rather as a way of bashing another poster whose own comments had nothing to do with this topic. It would seem you are trying to ignite some culture war flame-outs despite our host’s desire that this new blog not become a place for such battles du jour. As well, your phrase “Emperor Teleprompter” reflects a crude and rather childish partisanship, repeating a silly slander (note: that means it is untrue) that President Obama was reading from a teleprompter in a schoolroom, a charge that has made the rounds of less elevated rightwing circles. This also has zero to do with the topic at hand.
You may not be a member of a party (neither am I by the way) but you are certainly trying to advance an agenda that is unrelated to the matters under discussion.

TTT, I had no idea the software was holding your comments. Please e-mail me at rdreher (at) templeton.org if your stuff is being held. In most cases, the software won’t let me know. I’m sorry about that. I’ve got a meeting in a moment, but when I get out of it, I’ll free up your comments.
I’m late getting to this thread this morning, but I’m dismayed to see a lot of ad hominem. Crustacean, you really need to back off. As it happens, I sympathize with Geoff’s POV on being gay in a small town. It’s easier for people in my hometown to be openly gay now than it was when I was a kid, but I don’t think it’s all that easy. People really are pretty tolerant — and everybody knows who’s gay and who’s not (in that sense, it’s much easier to be closeted in a big city) — but by “tolerant” I mean not persecuting. They do not “celebrate diversity.” Anyway, if I were gay and growing up in a small town, I’d want to leave as well.
Your point about people like me leaving small towns making it harder for people like me to stay in small towns is an important one, though. I do insist that you make these points without calling others names, and bringing Glenn Beck and all that partisan crap into it.

This is a very long thread and as I am not a regular poster I do not know of anyone who will read this but I would like to add something more.
A lot of people seem to think that the drug life in small towns have a lot to do with people having nothing else to do. My parents grew up in the rurals in the 1950s and they told me of happier times with much more different things to do. Sports were widely popular back then and every hamlet had it’s own baseball team. Curling and hockey were popular in the winter. There were 4H clubs and other youth groups. Churches played a big role in influencing local morals. There were regular community caberets. One of the highlights in a small town was the variety shows that were regularily put on. A good friend of mine mentioned this was a big thing in his community where locals put on plays, comedy acts, and performed music. People put in a lot of time preparing for this and it was enjoyed by the audience and performers alike. Don’t say that there is nothing to do in a rural community. I did not even get into the nature and the recreation it offers.
My friend mentioned his towns variety club’s popularity began to wane has cable TV became more widespread and they had a hard time finding performers and the attendance dropped. It was eventually cancelled altogether. Another friend who grew up in communist Hungary remembers liveliness in the streets of his village where people were out walking and socializing in the streets and square. He remembers a trip to nearby Austria at the same time where the streets were empty as people were inside glued to their TVs.
I read an article referenced by Peter Hitchens where he cites a researcher who travelled to the mountains of northern Thailand to observe the rich culture and music. He returned there a couple of years ago and tells the story of a teen carrying a ghetto blaster coming up to him and shouting rap music in poor English and this was meant to impress him. Drugs and alcohol problems had become rampant in the area.
There is a tendency in the third world (as well as the North American fly-over country) to look at the urban west with envy and at the epitome of what is “cool” and “it”. Unfortunately what is being pumped at them through the electronic media is the sex, drugs, and rock and roll of the MTV culture. I have seen it personally in the third world and we have all seen it in rural North America. The major problem is the widespread influence of the electronic media and the damage it is doing.

Northerner, that is a very good point.

In the early 1970s, I was a teenager in a big city and smoked a lot of dope — like, for the last two years of high school I got high almost literally every day, often starting out with a bowl first thing in the morning. What caused me to change, almost immediately, was getting a job in a small factory, working with a few guy my own age and more importantly, a few adults. That let me know that there was a world out there where the things you did meant something, and you couldn’t do them half as well if you were stoned.
From that experience, I think an important part of handling teenagers is to let them know they have a place in the bigger world. I think relationships with the larger adult community outside of the nuclear family is important as well.

Rod,
My argument was never that Geoff ought to want to live in a small town. Instead it was merely that Geoff’s choice — for whatever reason — not to live in a small town has no bearing at all on the reality that the problems faced by people in small-towns are owing at least in part to larger political and economic forces than the supposed fact that all people in small-town are just rednecked bullies who get what they deserve because they’re too stupid to like Stuff White People Like. I doubt I would want to live in, say, the Bronx, or in, say, Haiti, anymore than Geoff would want to live in a small-town. But I wouldn’t be so foolish or so callous or so narcissistic as to extrapolate from my wholly personal and wholly individual and wholly idiosyncratic disinclination to live in the Bronx or in Haiti toward the conclusion that the Bronx and Haiti are merely recrudescent Social Darwinist backwaters that “suck” because all the good people — all the desirable social gene-stock — have sense enough to leave. Basically, I don’t follow the logic that because Geoff does not find small-towns to his taste as a homosexual man that therefore the whole agrarian, localist, distributist critique of the domestic-imperialist system that crushes small towns and other small communities in social, political, and economic terms is null and void. I would have though that you, Rod, of all people, would have recognized that the criteria provided by the homosexualist movement — of which Geoff is a “partisan” every bit as much as I am a “partisan” of my own convictions — are not the only criteria one might applying in assessing places in social, cultural, political, and economic terms. I doubt Haiti is any more gay-friendly than St. Francisville. But it doesn’t follow from that — as Geoff would have it — that Haiti (or St. Francisville) can therefore just go f*ck off and deserve whatever raw deal they get.
As for Glenn Beck and “partisanship,” that’s a cheap shot — about as cheap as shot as accusing me of being an “evangelical” just because I didn’t think Jason Peters’ nasty FPR piece from a while back was beyond reproach. It seems to me that you’re engaging in some of the same “partisanship” and name-calling here that you’re accusing me of. My only mention of Beck was in response to Peter’s accusation that I’m some sort of mindless zombie who gets all his opinions and ideas from Rush Limbaugh and Fox News. I feel that I was in my rights in rehearsing the admittedly by-now-rather-tedious defense of myself that (a) I am *not* a Republican, (b) *not* a movement conservative, and (c) *not* a patron of Rush Limbaugh, Fox News, or any other such venue.
If your objection is that it’s overly “partisan” even to refer in passing to Barack Obama, even in discussing the domestic-imperialist system he presides over, the urban, haute-bourgeois mandarin-caste whom her personifies, and the derogatory attitudes toward small-towns that he articulates on behalf of both, well, then, I think that’s just silly. It’s no less “partisan” to insist that Obama can’t be spoken of at all, for fear that someone will speak ill of him and give left-liberals here the vapors, as it is “partisan” to speak ill of him, if that’s how one feels. Any President — and Obama more than any other President for many, many years — is both a political *and* a *cultural* figure. Above and beyond his role as a politician, Obama has a symbolic role as an embodiment or personification of certain social , cultural, and even religious values and attitudes. That’s the context in which I find him not only interesting, but an indispensible reference point. There’s no way one can discuss contemporary American culture without making any allusion at all to Obama. And to argue that there is some sort of value-neutral stance that one can take with regard to him — or anything else — is just absurd. I don’t think that you *are* trying to argue that, but it would be good clarify just what you *do* mean by “partisanship.” Sometimes it seems as if “partisanship” here consists of having any opinion at all from which White People might get vapors, any opinion at all that isn’t Stuff White People Like. Again, it would be good to know exactly, precisely what it is that makes my viewpoint “partisan” but not Geoff’s and not Peter’s. Knowing what the criteria for posting here are would make it easier to know if people with points of view like mine are really still welcome here or not, under the new, post-Templeton regime.

Good grief, Crusty, this isn’t remotely as complicated or ideological as you make it out to be. All I’m asking you to do is to disagree without being disagreeable. It’s not that hard, or at least it shouldn’t be. I probably disagree with Geoff G. as much as I agree with him, but I almost never feel personally insulted by his views. Besides, homosexuals exist in small towns, as do racial minorities and other outsiders. Their experiences have to be respected, and perhaps we can all learn from them, even as we expect them to respect our experiences, and learn from them. You don’t have to agree with somebody to respect what they’ve lived with, and through. You sometimes react as if someone had demeaned your mother while stomping on your foot. As a result, you end up defeating yourself by allowing your outrage to dictate your response, making it harder for people to hear your sensible points.
I acknowledged that you have a good point when you say that people like me moving out of small towns makes it harder for people like me to remain there. Wendell Berry has also spoken about how state universities educate the children of their localities to move away. I think there’s a lot of truth to that, and I wouldn’t universalize my particular small-town experience as a one-size-fits-all explanation for why people like me (or Geoff) leave small towns. My story is only my story.
That said, I would urge you not to be so ideological in your localism. Not all small towns are alike. In my own town, there’s a real struggle now over how to develop the town to diversify the economy without losing what’s best about the town’s character. The plain and inescapable fact is that without jobs, young people won’t return to the town to live and to raise their families. Some of the town’s political and business leaders know this, and are working hard to figure out how to deal with this problem. Last year, they had a sales tax election, with the revenues from the proposed tax earmarked to go to put in more infrastructure (water, sewer, etc.), to attract new businesses. The tax was defeated. People don’t want new taxes. OK, fine. But the money they save on taxes will cost them in the long run when new businesses and industries choose not to locate there, because the necessary infrastructure isn’t in place. No new industries or businesses = no new jobs = adult children of the townspeople not having a realistic choice to return home.
So it’s not the case, or at least not always the case, that small towns are helpless pawns against the voraciousness of big cities. In fact, in the case of my town, a lot of people in the nearby big city (Baton Rouge) are eager to get out of the city. Some have moved north to St. Francisville, which has a terrific school system, and is a beautiful place to live. But unless there’s a real and successful effort to invest in the future, and in expanding and diversifying economic opportunity, there’s no hope for the long-term thriving of the town. That’s something that the people of the town and the parish (county) have within their own power to control, or at least to affect substantially.

A big part of this, I think, is the fact that society has invented this thing called “adolescence”, during which one is more or less a biological adult, but one is simultaneously forbidden from working full-time, going to a public house (where young people can drink under rough supervision from elders), or getting married and starting a family. Shoving every teenager for 6 hours a day in a government facility run by underpaid bureaucrats doesn’t help things either; it means less influence from one’s family and more influence from the “lowest common denominator” among one’s peers.
In short, teenagers in small towns have nothing to do because everything teenagers did 200 years ago is now illegal.

It’s not just small towns. It’s mid towns, large towns, down towns and Washington DC. The biggest users of drugs are the legal ones taken by our parents.

omg that is awsome ???

GREAT ARTICLE!

MTV sucks, I can’t believe my parents are hooked on it ugh disgusts me (and I’m 18!)

Kids my age think “Oh it’s no big deal, it’s just TV” but they don’t realize that they are slowly and intricately getting their brains washed. Sure it’s tempting to recreate the OC at home, but it’s only entertaining for the viewer, not if you’re living it.

Good luck kids in small towns! Hopefully you get facilities with stuff to do soon, ’cause you can get bored of parties.

Holy crap!!! Your assessment is 100% CORRECT!!! We are living this nightmare right now with our teens—-and we homeschool them, thinking THAT was a refuge in this small town. NOT. It doesn’t matter what type of family, income, church or school you attend here—-ALL the kids drink, do drugs and have sex. 99% of them. I feel SO sorry for families that move here thinking they will escape the Big Town problems—-because they are in for a huge surprise. This town turns its head the other way to these problems, and hence even good kids from good families that attend church every Sunday WILL do drugs—or have sex—-or binge drink. Regularly. The ONLY solution is to move to a town with NO tolerance to this stuff and that has healthy endeavors and healthy attitudes towards adolescents. We are moving!!!

I was moved to a small town, i feel you. If you don’t smoke enough pot to put a 40 year old man on his butt your out, if you don’t get wasted EVERY weekend your exiled. I keep in touch with my friends from the large city i moved from, most of them haven’t touched any drugs, and the ones that did quit after the first time. I think it’s that there bored, and they think they can make there life into something they can’t have at the moment. I just shut up, hang out with who i can and wait to leave. Good thread btw