For me, the great question that hovers over me and my politics, the one we seem to deal with mainly by indifference or avoidance, is: what are people for? For me, this transcends the murky and mostly bankrupt dialogue of the left and the right, and the machinations of lobbyists, billionaires and politicians. Is our greatest dignity in poor jobs, struggle and the growing costs of maintaining our health?

In the conversations I have had with my neighbors and friends after the election – it would have been more productive for me to have had them before the election, but hindsight is free and easy, true wisdom is harder to come by – I have been mostly hearing talk about work.

What have they done to work? Why don’t I hear any politician anywhere ask what people are for?. And how we can be true to them.

Jobs that disappeared, jobs that are demeaning, insecure and do not pay enough for a man or woman to live in freedom and security. Jobs that move away. People who are thrown away.  People who are left behind. What are people for?, I ask myself each time I listen. You cannot break promises to people again and again and expect them to acquiesce in their own diminishment and betrayal.

The farm to city migration – one of the most dramatic in the country’s history – has boosted the corporate economy. So many people working for little money or safety. It has devastated the people’s economy. The middle class is on the run, everywhere, gone from the country, priced out of the cities. Is there anywhere for them to go?

The vanishing farmers and workers have been replaced by machinery, foreign workers, petroleum, chemicals, computers, robots, apps, credit and the other expensive services from the agribusiness and tech economy, sometimes confused with what was once called good work or farming.

The departure of so many people and their children has devastated rural communities and economies all over the country. In the cities, the poor serve the rich.  There are no longer enough people to care for our farms or our land. The cities swell with the rich and the poor, there is no longer any middle. The founding fathers never imagined a world with the permanently unemployable. Our very idea of work has become opaque and confused.

The police of the bureaucrats and economists is clear: we now put an absolute premium on profit, not  the quality of work, the dignity of work, the security of work.

I think of the forgotten land, empty and abandoned and waiting with open arms.

There is a lot of work to be done here, so much need.

There is the work of restoring our cities, families,  farms, forests, rivers, rural towns and communities.  Of bringing back jobs and workers. The work of restoring the meaning and value of work itself. The work of re- building the contracts that once connected employers and employees, but now pits them against one another

Over the next years, I am focusing my own values and ideals on the simpler question: what are people for? It is not an easy question to answer. My politics are shaped by where I live, and I think it is the time for the rural world to rise again.

To me, people are for living in community. For having dignity. For living in peace, not perpetual fear. There is good work for everyone to do, including the work of returning to nature, helping to restore the shattered communities of the heartland, working to restore the earth.

Today, the week of darkness and cold eased, the solstice is passed, the light and color has returned to us. The beautiful old trees keep whispering to me: What are people for?