At the outset, I would like to proclaim that I love you, dear soul, no matter where you fall culturally or politically. Humanity has given birth to such a vast spectrum of personalities, and it was written into the background code of our reality that we should not all experience this reality the same. Still, there’s no reason why we should not attempt to love one another despite our differences. Contrary to popular belief, it is entirely acceptable to love your perceived enemies while continuing to stand for what you believe in.
That being said, chances are relatively high that you will not believe in or agree with some of the things contained in this work. I’ve found that there is always the likelihood that you’ll create a sort of cognitive distance between yourself and your readers when writing about personal experiences that contradict widely held and vehemently guarded beliefs. I’d like to be frank with you here; I have no emotional investment in whether or not you believe the things I’ve written. It isn’t required of you, and, to be quite honest, you should be skeptical. I don’t know if I believe it all myself sometimes.
What follows is the story of life in America through the eyes of a bumbling millennial wastrel during the tumultuous administrations of both Donald John Trump and Joe Biden, a period of American history that I truly believe will be marveled at for generations to come, assuming the end isn’t nigh. It is also a recollection of how I came to write about politics for a time, a choice that single-handedly contributed more stress and anxiety to my life than any other decision I've ever made. At the same time, this choice eventually led me to spiritual liberation from the self-imposed and socially encouraged confines of hardcore nihilism and atheism.
It is not my intent to ruffle any feathers, but I doubt this can be avoided in a world as broken and polarized as the one that we’ve inherited. Regardless, any real writer or artist knows that when the muse directs you, you must either act on that supernatural direction or learn to heal your quiet shame. It is not my intent to convince anyone of anything they don’t already comfortably believe; that is your own job. I am merely offering my subjective experiences and interpretations of our world. It is also my desire to produce a form of highly personal art that I can only hope others will at least find entertaining, if not informative.
At its core, Devil Country is an abstract recount of life in the United States of America during a time when the rare glimpses of truth were harder to believe than the wildest fictions of the day. I suppose the work at hand should be classified as creative nonfiction; though the people and events contained within are all very real, I have taken creative liberties for the sake of artistic expression and the privacy of certain individuals.
It may be worth mentioning that I have always experienced a sort of debilitating uneasiness when writing in the first person, which was the primary hurdle for me in coaxing these experiences out of the solitary confinement of my mind and onto the page for public consumption. For so long, I’d assumed it would come off as narcissistic to think that anyone would care about my personal experiences, let alone take the time and effort to read about them. Who the hell was I? What qualifications did I have to give my words any sort of weight or importance? Well, as it turned out, the only qualifications that I needed to proceed were being a member of the collective human family and possessing a desire to reveal the truth as I had come to understand and experience it, often at my own social and financial peril. Naturally, some truths are more subjective than others.
Frank Herbert once wrote that “fear is the mind-killer," and to me, these words ring true throughout all of time and space. I’ve chosen to put my thoughts and experiences into print regardless of how visceral a reaction it might cause in some of my fellow doomed, thoroughly indoctrinated peers. Those poor individuals who are still suffering from the modern pop-culture cult-of-personality mind virus curated for us by the entertainment industrial complex, a labyrinth of tax-exempt foundations and spook-infested international think tanks.
Some will instinctively pigeonhole the point of view that nature has provided me, and that is okay. We are all humans and subject to human error, especially when it comes to judging one another. I have found forgiveness to be the most effective prescription for treating the distortions between us, so think what you will; I’ll love you regardless.
It’s a hot, sticky night here in the quiet hills of northern Georgia—the perfect conditions to squeeze out some texts and flirt with my shadow. We all have our own homemade devils, doing the Macarena in our hearts and minds, and America itself is no different. If we can forgive one another, then it only stands to reason that we can forgive whatever disdain we harbor toward the country we inhabit. They say forgiveness leads to healing, and this great nation desperately needs to heal. I can only hope that this book will help facilitate that in some way.
-Ryan DeLarme, 2021
Sounds good. My only comment is that "widely held and vehemently guarded beliefs" are usually, if not always, the least founded on truth.