The Age of Wrath: Part 5

There are places here like those found in the Third World

The sheriff heaves himself out of his chair and goes across to a desk, a gigantic thing made of dark wood. He paws through the papers on it and comes up with a letter he waves triumphantly. “Here, read this!” It’s a resolution passed by the Kentucky legislature in which the representatives thank Sheriff Dupnik for his exemplary work in the wake of the shooting.

“Do you think the Arizona government would have sent me such a letter?” Arizona did not and, in fact, conservatives in Arizona raised funds to hire a campaign manager for the express purpose of trying to unseat Sheriff Dupnik from his position.

“The liberals gave up,” he says, but he didn’t. “I really wanted to begin drifting toward retirement, sitting in my rocker drinking a cold beer in the shade.” But the plans came to nothing. Dupnik will run for reelection again this fall. “I’ve been a fighter all my life. They think they can run me out of office? I won’t let them.”

One person Dupnik would like to be rid of is Ralph Kayser. I have a meeting with him in a Starbucks on the other side of town. Kayser is a corpulent man with gray hair. He wears futuristic glasses and a red-striped shirt. Kayser is the owner of a medium-sized company. His firm clears construction sites and disposes of the rubble.

“Are you carrying a weapon, Mr. Kayser?”

I’ve never asked my conversation partner that question ever before in my life, not even during my stay in America. But it’s no joke nor do I mean it as a provocation. I’m serious. No other place in the United States has more lax gun laws than the state of Arizona. I try to imagine what I would feel if he answered yes and actually laid a loaded pistol on the table between us.

But no, he has no gun. Not here, at least. “My gun is in the gun cabinet at home.”

He says it as easily and naturally as if he were talking about a second car.

How about his supporters? Yes, they carry guns as part of their everyday activity. Even the women. “At our last fundraiser we asked if any women were carrying guns, and 20 or 30 of them opened their purses to show us.”

Ralph Kayser is head of Tucson’s Tea Party. It’s the largest local organization of the conservative movement that has brought so much turmoil to American politics. As Kayser says, “We’re loud, we’re angry and we’re many in number.”

Angry because they hardly dare drive to the Mexican border any longer. Drug cartels rule the roost there. Angry because a ranger was just killed on duty. Angry about smugglers bringing illegal aliens into the country. “Angry because socialists like Obama waste our money. And our children’s money. We’re the silent majority.”

There’s a scene in “Grapes of Wrath” where the Joad family gets their rickety truck to the pass in the Tehachapi Mountains after many days on the road and they look down into California, the promised land. Steinbeck describes how Ruthie and Winfield step down from the truck and gaze silently across the peach trees, the walnut groves and the dark green orange groves in total awe.

The spot where the Joad family finally arrives in California doesn’t exist anymore. It’s been replaced by an interstate highway. And neither is California the haven for the desperate and the failed souls it once was. The state is heavily in debt and the unemployment rate is above the national average. Social assistance programs are being massively cut back. Many families are leaving the state. People like Jonathan and his family.

I drive on to the ocean and stop for something to eat in Carmel, a romantic seaside town. The Italian waiter, loud and heavily perfumed, asks me if I have a reservation. No. It’s a Tuesday evening. I wait at the bar. White wine starts at $10 a glass.

Paul and Cynthia, my companions in the wait for a table say, “You’ve come from Oklahoma City? What on earth were you doing there?”

They’re white, in their mid-fifties and work up north in Silicon Valley. I tell them of the terrible poverty that I’ve seen in the America that is off the beaten path.

Yes, Paul nods, there are places here that are like the Third World.

Then their table is ready. As they leave they say, “Have a great time!”