Posted by
William D. Dannenmaier on Sunday, May 20, 2007 9:01:52 AM
Our Turkey Culture
By
William D. Dannenmaier
Too many of the liberals I know, which includes at least one of my sons, claim that we in the United States don’t really have a culture, just odd bits of other people’s cultures. This only shows how poorly they have been educated, but I have no interest in pushing that point here. Rather, I was wondering the other day if it could be said that other organisms have cultures. Could we, for example, speak of bees having a culture with their soldiers, their workers, their mostly worthless lay-abouts called drones and their queens. How different from our human society is that? We also have our police, our workers, our welfare careerists and our queens. My walk the other morning started this mental meandering.
On mornings that I don’t report to the hospital for cardiac therapy, I take a three mile walk. That particular morning I watched two Tom turkeys prancing for each other, each one raising his feathers and tail in an effort to frighten the other into leaving. In a sense, I thought, turkeys have a culture. The males strut and preen in open areas, whispering sweet nothings for nearby females. Those females who respond are rewarded with sex and company – for a while. Old Tom disappears when the eggs start accumulating. Let the female care for the eggs and the young. What care he? If she must go hungry for a while, that’s not his fault. If a wandering raccoon or opossum performs an abortion on the nest, no problem so far as he is concerned. The turkey culture condemns him not at all for abandoning his family.
As I thought about it, I remembered the young men described in the “Street Corner Society” (William F. Whyte, 1953). Unemployed and unable to find jobs during the great depression, these young men “hung out” on the street corners in Chicago (as well as other cities) bragging to one another of their achievements and abilities and flirting with passing girls. Each corner had its own, special, group.
I don’t know if the street corners of Chicago still have young men “hanging out” and whispering “friendly” comments to passing girls, but I’ve seen a lot of that around the student unions of various colleges. Just as in Chicago during the depression, different groups of unemployed and non-studying “students,” collect in specific locations. Just as the Chicago lads did, they preen in front of the girls. They even whisper soft “friendly” comments to attractive girls as they pass by.
And, increasingly in our society, the girls respond. Why not? After all, the chant of liberal feminists and their obliging social “scientists” is that there are no differences between men and women. Why should their young followers behave differently? And if the males breed and leave, well that is not their problem. If the women have a child, that is their problem. We have become a turkey culture.
This turkey culture we’ve developed seems to be being copied by increasing numbers of blacks, Hispanics and whites. After all, why should men marry and undertake responsibility if society will provide a living and the girls will provide the pleasure? And our society provides a living for the women and the children also.
But, consider. In the turkey society the children die and the mothers go hungry in a bad year. What happens if our society’s prosperity fades: if we have bad years? Will the women do as those of Europe and Japan and Korea did when the wars destroyed their prosperity with the younger and more attractive turning to prostitution and others scrounging on the garbage dumps to feed themselves and their children?
How they will envy those stupid, conservative, traditionalists who kept to marriage and family and have others to help support them and their children!