Northern tryhard hicks are the worst. Nick is not outdoorsy, he isn't from the south and him listening to basic bitch country as a trust fund baby from Minnesota fits the tryhard hick persona perfectly. I knew he reminded me of people I hate at a subconscious level, now i now why. I know a lot of these people who waved around confederate flags and were born and raised in Illinois, Wisconsin and Minnesota. I have no issue with a guy from Alabama raising his stars and bars, but its poser shit for great lakes peoples. Fake Degen, Fake Hic, Fake Lawyer, Fake Father, Nick is a poser and can never be cool.
Being from MN isn't why it's wrong - America is full of variations on a country theme, and though Southerners do it best, the Midwest, including the Upper Midwest, has its strain. It has an accent like KarmicX*, and the F150 likely has a boat behind it every spring and fall before the lake freezes and the day after the ice-out, and the fried fish is walleye rather than trout, but it's all American. As is country music. Cowboys out West plucked banjos, too. Hell, there are California cowboys, and not even all of them are Mexican. Cowboy music, too. Buck Owens and Dwight Yoakam stand as emblems of the Bakersfield sound in country (sure, Owens was born in TX, but early moved West and west-er), and Owens influenced people like Merle Haggard and Brad Paisley.
And I have been to see Dwight Yoakam in a Northern state; I promise you the entire crowd looked straight out of rural (white) Georgia.
I agree with you: Yankees and Westerners don't
really get it, but they're not posers by default.
ALL THAT SAID, and even despite his Texas roots, Nick fits none of the groups and has none of the qualifications: He hasn't held a hammer in his life, and if he did, he bent the nail. He doesn't take care of his home (can't even attach a cabinet door) or his property; he doesn't have - or need - a truck to haul stuff; he neither hunts nor fishes, probably doesn't even know what a jon boat is; he has no twang nor rurality to his voice (whiny nasality doesn't count); he's probably never sat on a stump nor split wood; he doesn't love America; and he has no soul, no sentimentality not directed at himself, and no concept of real heartbreak.
...Unfortunately, thinking about various cultures, I just thought-expanded to almost having a sliver of...comprehension about one teeny-tiny aspect of Nick's misfit life in Minnesota, even though I'd say that whereas for other people it would be a big factor in their social world, his personal self and sins all but obliterates it. Still, it exists, and it might account for a touch of the sting he's felt in Spicer/Willmar:
Minnesota is notoriously difficult for non-Minnesotans to be fully integrated into socially. Without going too anthropologically deep or in detail, I have heard, for decades and from dozens and dozens of people from all walks of life, accounts of never, ever being fully comfortable and "at home" with Minnesota as your social life if you come from elsewhere. Many move-ins find their larger circles with other people from elsewhere, or at least "half & half" couples. It's not necessarily hostility; sometimes it's just that people have their circles still from high school (even if they moved elsewhere and boomeranged back with their spouse in tow, which is very, very common).
But also it's that there's an unspoken and often impossible-to-nail-down cultural/social undercurrent that others can feel, sometimes learn to spot, but never truly intuitively operate in completely. And it's that thing that will get you cross-wise with Deb and Barb and uninvited to go deer hunting (or to the dinner parties, whatever your echelon) from now until forever.
Once you are cast out, there is no coming back. You will thereafter at most experience seemingly perfunctory polite inquiries in unavoidable social situations, and those inquiries will forever be blank-faced and bland-seeming - but they will in reality be sharp probes to dig up something to evaluate and judge or confirm prior judgment, toss a subtle but undermining barb at in response, speculate as soon as the other person is (nearly) out of hearing range, and later drop casual gossip bombs that look and sound like nothing on the surface, but are social Chernobyls - lasting and ugly.
And a key characteristic of Minnesota social mores, particularly to the outsiders wandering in, is that whereas the welcome to outsiders is a mild pleasantness and unimpeachably neutral withholding, underlaid with mostly inoffensive disinterest and perhaps a theoretical potential openness to conditional acceptance or persuasion; the snubbing of those who offend is swift, silent, and ruinous. Children will be pitied and tongues will tut.
Again, Nick has never had anything but snobbery toward his neighbors and relatives, being the
sophiste he believes himself to be, even as he sat and pretended to worship God in the pews next to them. The feeling was 100% mutual, guaranteed, long before Nick and Kayla became obviously dissolute, merely from his abrasive and self-centered rude style. Probably the pastor even tried at points to reach out, be more welcoming than the flock tends naturally to be with those who don't immediately blend right in.
However, with Kayla having family in the congregation, it could and should have been much different, so obviously Nick went out of his way to reject before rejection, then get mad when it was reciprocated. Minnesotans hate showboats, even not overly crass, drugged-out, intentionally rude and arrogant ones; you can be prominent and magnetic and people will flock to you, as anywhere, but you'd better be understated, accessible, and considered in your manner, or at least take the edge off your shrill voice and learn how not to turn a church meeting into a bitter shouting match.
Tl; dr: Minnesotans will cut an outsider bitch, and even what are usually minor infractions can take years to heal, so for anyone else I might have some compassion just for the stealth brutality of it, but for Nick (and weak Kayla),
The Lottery worked for once.
