More thoughts on the Bennhold piece on bitter East German men and the rise of Germany's hard right: this piece has a lot of resonance with what's going on here. (Am I trying to do something besides worry about tonight? Why, yes) 1/ nytimes.com/2018/11/05/wor…
The US also has a lot of stranded men in declining regions. Austin, Glaeser and Summers had a very interesting piece on this, showing high rates of prime-age men not working in Greater Appalachia 2/ brookings.edu/wp-content/upl… 
These are also areas that went for Trump, bigly. So there are commonalities with German experience. Meanwhile, the concentration of high-end economic activity in places that are already doing well continues 3/ nytimes.com/2018/11/05/tec…
So we, like the Germans, are sort of turning into two countries regionally and culturally. There's a lot more wealth and considerable more people in forward-moving America -- but our political system gives disproportionate weight to the other America 4/
