Mayberry and Mayhem

A bit of a ramble: I was sitting in my rocking-chair on the verandah last night thinking. According to John Edwards there are two Americas. In his tiny little pea-brain, those are the "Haves" and the "Have-nots." Actually there are a whole lot more than two Americas but, broadly speaking, there are at least two and they're not what he thinks. The two Americas are Mayberry and Mayhem.

To me the thing that keeps Mayberry from being Mayhem is tradition. I'm not a "real" conservative. I know that. I'm too tolerant of many things that "real" conservatives find offensive. I may be tolerant of them but that doesn't mean that I condone them. All that means is that there's not a whole lot I can do about them so I accept them rather than bang my head against a brick wall. I can't change Mayhem but I can live in Mayberry and ignore Mayhem. I can live by the traditions of Western civilization, Christian kindness and common decency even if it looks like the rest of the world is going to hell in a hand-basket.

I lived in Mayhem aka San Francisco for 25 years. I tried to adapt and make the most of it but eventually I realized that I was not going to be able to fit in and I was certainly not going to be able to change it. So I left and moved to Mayberry. Old acquaintances from San Francisco scoffed at me and told me that Mayberry does not exist; that it is a figment of my imagination.

But Mayberry does exist. Maybe Mayberry doesn't have as big a population as Mayhem but it exists all right in small towns and nice suburbs all over the USA. It even exists in small pockets in cities. Even San Francisco has a few decent people trying to raise their kids as best they can but I would never try to raise kids in a city. Like Andy Griffith, I was a single father for a few years when I lived in the UK and the first thing I did was get out of London and move my son and me to a small town in the Cotswolds where he did not have to fight for survival and lose his innocence too soon.

London in the 70s was not nearly as bad as most cities are nowadays. It certainly wasn't as bad as San Francisco is today. Most of the inner-city schools are battle-grounds. City kids grow up thinking that it's a dog eat dog world because so many of their peers are predators.

A lot of white kids become "wiggas" in order to adapt and survive. Maybe they don't really jump right into the "wigga" subculture of easy drugs and sleazy sex but they wear "thug" clothes and adopt tough attitudes so that they blend in and don't attract the attention of the predators. That's not the America I want to live in. I want to live in the America where kids are still kids until they are 18. Give me Mayberry over Mayhem anyday.

In Mayhem, the kids have to grow up too quickly while the adults seem to revert to a sort of perverted "childhood" of "hooking up," irresponsible promiscuous sex and narcissism. And I'm not talking about just the gays in San Francisco; the socalled "straights" are just as indecent. You can't blame only gays for destroying marriage and family. Promiscuous "straights" have done their fair share and have contributed just as much destructive behavior. I could tell you stories about socalled "straights" in San Francisco that would make your hair stand up on end.

Anyway, it's not like any of this is new. It's been going on throughout history. Sodom and Gomorrah have always been around and probably always will be. I just don't want to live like that. So I moved to Mayberry and, yes, in spite of the scoffing by my Mayhemian acquaintances, Mayberry really does exist.

Here in Mayberry neighbors do take care of each other; kids are still kids until they go to college and the adults are decent, kindly and responsible. In Mayberry kids aren't glued to the TV or Internet all day long absorbing the sickness and debauchery of Mayhem. In Mayberry kids have to help feed the chickens and milk the goats. I often think that I would like to take away kids' TV and computers and give them a flock of chickens to tend instead.

Maybe I'm nuts because I know that the whole of America will never be Mayberry and I also know that it never was. Mayhem has always existed. I just don't want to live in it. I prefer having the Cleavers as neighbors to maniacal muggers with meat-cleavers ready to chop my head in to steal some money to buy a quick fix of brain-rotting drugs.

When I was a kid, my Mom used to tell me whenever I was upset about something nasty that was happening in the world, "Just ignore it. Evil will always be there. If you focus on it and try to fight it, you will become like it. Concentrate on the goodness and beauty."

I thought she was being unrealistic until maybe ten or fifteen years ago when I realized that she was in fact being quite realistic. One person can't fight all the evil in the world alone. That's not to say that I should just give up and let the evil win but it does mean that I should not exhaust myself fighting it. I need to surround myself with beauty and grace and focus on what's positive and creative if I want to be strong enough to withstand the negativity and destructiveness.

The best way to fight evil is to be happy. Happiness is infectious. You can't fight darkness in the dark. You have to turn on the light to see what you're doing. The funny thing is that the darkness disappears as soon as you turn on the light and you see that darkness was not something real but simply the absence of light.

So I'll just live here in my little Mayberry and be happy. Even if I can't do much good at least I am not contributing to the evil.