On owning it all and freedom

I finished rereading Franzen's Freedom last week and then went on to re-read Owning It All by William Kittredge and I am struck by the similarity between the two works, even though one is a post Post Modern work of fiction and the other is a series of essays about the death of the West and the personalization of the agrarian ideal.

The below quote could have been from either work but it comes from the novel.

"People came to this country for either money or freedom. If you don't have money, you cling to your freedoms all the more angrily. Even if smoking kills you, even if you can't afford to feed your kids, even if your kids are getting shot down by maniacs with assault rifles. You may be poor, but the one thing nobody can take away from you is the freedom to fuck up your life whatever way you want to."

Fundamentally, the protagonists of the novel are the spiritual grandchildren of the essayist. Face it, folks, we are all miserable and irrational (yes, I get the irony of me writing this out) and we cling to our notions of right and wrong, justice and transgression, and we can be emphatic about it. And that's great. That's what makes us who were are.

Think about the people who founded us; malcontents, religious extremists, and second sons. Then think about what they did...the gave the finger to the ruling powers back in the old country, and only then did they fight. It started out as an idea, words, and then did arms need to be raised.

Still, as a society, we continue to "cling to our guns" (literally in some cases, metaphorically in most other) and it cause divisions that don't need to be there.

Ninety eight percent of my political DNA is comparable with any other American reading this and as we get closer to a new Congress, can't we learn to respect each other, even when everyone thinks each other's opinions are crap (and believe me, just because you are entitled to a belief, it does not lend validity to that belief) and get on board?

Oh, and in closing, in my opinion, Freedom not sweeping the end of the year literary awards would be a sin. If you haven't read Kittredge, he is worth the read.