Oceanfront Property

Of the nineteen states Hilary Clinton won, only six do not have oceanfront property.  (I have cheated a bit by including Connecticut in the ocean frontage states.) The only four ocean property states she lost are all south of Virginia: North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. The point?  The Big Sort.  Democrats are now clustered in cities and along the two coasts.  The big switch in this election, of course, was that the mid-western states–Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, and Wisconsin–went for Trump.  Only Illinois (home of our second largest city) and Minnesota (by a thread) stayed blue.  The middle of the country has been emptied out of the educated and the affluent for the most part.  The exceptions are a few big cities.  Given the way that the Electoral College, since it gives two freebie electoral college votes to match senate seats, is configured, winning only 19 states (as Clinton did) is a recipe for disaster.  That’s how you win the popular vote, but lose the election.

But there is also the social impact of segregation–of the fact that Democrats don’t live near or interact with Republicans.

“The revolt of the elites” thesis basically comes down to this: the affluent have built a very nice bubble for themselves on the two coasts and have left the rest of the country to go to the dogs.  That those left behind have focused their resentment on the chattering classes, the politicians, immigrants, blacks, and gays instead of on the business elites is one way to characterize the failure of the left.  It’s an old American story that race animosity undermines potential class solidarity.  I have no original thoughts on that conundrum.

When the civil rights movement created a black middle class, a new form of segregation–economic segregation–destroyed the earlier black communities where doctors and lawyers lived cheek by jowl with janitors.  Now a similar same (economic not racial) segregation is true of white America–a product of growing economic inequality.  The top 10% have created their enclaves–a fact reflected in property prices in those coastal cities–and non-affluent whites, those moving down the economic ladder, have been shunted to the Staten Islands and exurbs of our country, condemned to long commutes on clogged highways.

I don’t think you can ever overstate the evils that attend economic inequality.

 

Speechless

I have little to say at this point.  The fatuous comments from the media over the past eight months have been exposed for what they are–the self-confirming echo chamber of the chattering classes.  The alienation between the professional middle class (of which, of course, I am a member) and those who feel excluded from that class and demeaned by it is–not to coin a phrase–huge.  If the experience in North Carolina since the Republicans took control here in 2010 is a good indication, revenge will be the first thing on the minds of our new masters.  They are going to deal out pain to blacks, to immigrants, to gays, to godless atheists, and to all the others they deem to have humiliated them.  It will be ugly, I am afraid.

Hatred of Politics (Part One)

After the 2012 election (in which I co-sponsored a fund-raiser for Obama), I decided that I would no longer contribute to political campaigns.  I had (in 2012) given somewhere in the neighborhood of $2500 to a variety of candidates and to my state’s Democratic Party.  My decision was based on three thoughts:

1. Just as a “rational” voter realizes that her single vote can’t possibly make any difference, the rationalist in me thought that my piddling $2500 (doled out in contributions of $200 or less to various campaigns) could hardly have any real impact.  So it seemed pointless to spend my money that way.  Instead, I decided, I would give the money that would go to politicians to various local charities whose work I admired and wanted to support.

I did break this rule by being brought in as a co-sponsor of a fund-raiser for Roy Cooper, the Democratic candidate for governor in North Carolina this year.  That has been the one exception.

2.  Given that there is way too much money in politics–and that the cost of campaigns just continues to escalate in relation to the ferocity of the efforts to raise money for that purpose–it seemed like a refusal to be a party to the whole shebang was the most sensible response.  I realize, of course, that my individual refusal has about as much impact as the small amounts of money that I was contributing.  But if I am, perforce, in the position of making symbolic gestures, I might as well make the symbolic gesture that aligns with my principles.  And I do know that my $2500 is much appreciated by, and put to a better use, by the small local charities that now get that money.

3.  I am increasingly disgusted by the spectacle that is the modern political campaign in this country.  In particular–and surely I am not the only person who feels this way–I am put off by the 18 emails a day I get from the Democrats, and Move On, and Emily’s List, and so on.  I don’t watch TV, so I can’t be disgusted by the ads that my money pays for.  I do believe in the “ground game,” in GOTV efforts and the like (and have done some volunteering in such efforts, if–most likely–not enough), and am more comfortable when I think of my contributions as underwriting such efforts.  But the hysteria of the daily emails is off-putting.  I guess data proves they are the most effective way to raise money.  But for someone like me–and surely I am not alone in this–an appeal two or three times a year, accompanied with the promise to leave me alone after I have responded to that appeal, is much more likely to get my support.  The daily emails have just made me dig in my heels.  I won’t be bludgeoned into giving.

But–and this is actually the more important point–the whole process has led me to hate politics–and to dream of extricating myself from my obsession with it and even my deeply felt convictions about it.  So that’s the topic I really want to explore–and will do so in my posts over the next week or so.  This post is just a preface.

The Once and Future Humanities

Here’s a link to the You Tube video of a talk I gave in New Zealand at the University of Auckland last month.  I am interested in the idea that the humanities are about meaning–and do not aspire to offer explanations the way that the natural and social sciences do.  I intend to pursue this notion in the coming years.  The other big issue here is the effort to get humanities educators to jettison their coverage anxieties.  Imparting information is close to a dead loss in the classroom.  Just because the teacher said it, that doesn’t mean the student got it–or will retain it.  Cramming more and more content into the syllabus might make the teacher feel good, but I am convinced that it is pretty useless.