You know, every so often I have to listen to a lot of bellyaching about coastal elitism, and the notion that 50 million of us in the BOS-WAS corridor are disconnected from real America. Often, I'm told not to criticize small-town Murica by people who've never lived there. /1
Conversely, I'm told by people who've never been in a town that breaks five digits that the megalopolis I live in is some kind of weird exception. This is logic-defying at best. /2
I grew up in a small city, I've lived in three major cities, I've lived in a rural college area in boondock New England, and I live in a town of about 25,000 now. Enough with the "who's real America." Let's ask a different question. /3
Instead of asking "who's the real America," let's ask: "Who, today, reflects values that were once the bedrock of American virtue." No one has that monopoly now.
But I'll gladly defend the cities as more tolerant and generally less dumb than sparser areas. /4
But I'll gladly defend the cities as more tolerant and generally less dumb than sparser areas. /4
But even then, I'd ask: "Who's more out of touch withe majority of their fellow citizens?" That's not even close: most people in this country are not evangelical or small town or rural or uneducated. And I don't need field trips to go ask them to be more tolerant and informed. /5
For a long time - and I mean, for a few decades now - I have been fed up with the idea that "we" have to understand "them," even as the "them" dwindles in numbers and hardens in mulish, intentional aversion to facts and knowledge. /6
I'm all for outreach - to people of good will with whom I might disagree, and who are willing to learn new things even if those new things make them uncomfortable. But I am tired, tired, tired of people calling for us to go find the dejected "forgotten" people. /7
America's cities, for one thing, are full of dejected, forgotten people who wrestle with drugs and crime and unemployment. They're just not the right color for the sympathy the new Trumpistas declare we're supposed to deploy in the heartland. /8
And this isn't really about the coasts vs the heartland; I can have these same arguments driving an hour in any direction here in New England. This division among us is about resentment, mostly fed by myths and sustained by willful ignorance. /9
So when I see people cheering "clean, beautiful coal," or whooping it up for Space Force when they don't have basic health care, I reach some conclusions about them.
I'm glad to help educate them, if they're willing. But I'm not going to be their therapist or enabler. /10x
I'm glad to help educate them, if they're willing. But I'm not going to be their therapist or enabler. /10x
