Can Beyoncé heal our divided nation?

Over the past few decades, the differences of interests, experiences and identities between rural and urban Canada have gotten starker, or at least more politically salient. In the most recent Alberta election, for example, the winning United Conservative Party formed a government with zero seats in Edmonton and only five seats in urban Calgary, while essentially the opposite held for the opposition NDP, who picked up only a tiny handful of seats in “rural” parts of the province. Although widespread exhaustion with the governing Liberals probably means a different result in the next federal election, similar dynamics have been at play in federal politics as well, with the Liberal party being restricted almost entirely to “urban” (or suburban) ridings and the Conservative Party having significant difficulty breaking through in urban ridings outside of the prairies.

To some extent, that might be natural evolution (even though it’s changed over time – my students are sometimes surprised to hear that 60 years ago, one of the key bases for socialism in Canada were prairie farmers). After all, the ways in which we make a living, raise our kids, get around and get together aren’t the same between Canadians in cities and in rural areas; why shouldn’t that affect how we vote? But, as St. Augustine famously said, a political community is not a random assemblage of people, but one “bound together by a common agreement as to the objects of their love.” Difference, even division, is inevitable and possibly even healthy, but we need to have and foster at least some matters of shared concern.

A shared object of our love

Between urban and rural Canadians, one of these “common objects of love” could be our shared environment. I’m writing this from a province facing the worst drought for more than 20 years after a year of massive forest fires, both of which are almost certainly turbo-charged by human-induced climate change. These disasters affect urban and rural Albertans differently, but our wellbeing is equally imperiled by them.

But voting patterns, polls and recent protests suggest that this too might be an area where our (apparently) different economic interests and cultural antipathies drive us apart. Maybe we need to set a lower bar for a common object of love, if only as a place to start. Polarization (be that ideological or regional) is driven by distrust, and distrust is fed by a sense that we are strangers to one another; that we don’t even speak the same (cultural, political) language. Well, Beyonce has a new country album out. It’s really great. Surely Queen Bey bringing her inimitable talent into loving conversation with country music can give us all something to love together, maybe a musical language we can share. At least “Cowboy Carter” can give us something besides our divisions to talk about for a while. Either that, or we could have a serious conversations about the environment. Or both.

I’m good with both.