[lbo-talk] Sean Wilentz: Blue Cities vs. Red Surrounds

[Wojtek Sokolowski]

Michael Pollak quoted:
>     COMMENTARY
>     Hicks Nixed Slicks' Pick
> 
>     By Sean Wilentz
>     Sean Wilentz is a professor of history at PrincetonUniversity.
> 
>     "It's the secular coasts versus the religious heartland," CNN's Tucker
>     Carlson says of this year's election results. That sums up the
>     conventional wisdom that right-wing Republicans would prefer that you
>     believe and that too many of the rest of us do believe. The effete
>     liberal coasts against the Real America. Situational morality against
>     real morality. Relativism against Standards. Metrosexuals against the
>     God-fearing.
> 
>     Wrong.
> 
>     The real electoral division isn't between the coasts and the
>     heartland. It's between cities all over the United States and the rest
>     of the country.

Snip


>     By perpetuating the easy impression of a nation divided into coastal
>     liberals and heartland conservatives, reporters and commentators are
>     misleading themselves and their audiences about the actual political
>     state of the Union. Without realizing it, they are also advancing the
>     picture of the nation advanced by the GOP culture warriors, feeding
>     the despair and paranoia of coastal liberals and writing off millions
>     of Americans in every part of the country.

Michael, thanks for posting this piece, it is really informative. It is
certainly consistent with what I saw around Baltimore and Harrisburg -
"blue" cities surrounded by "red" burbs.  It is, however, important to
observe that most of burb dwellers are urbanites who "escaped" to the burbs.
It is therefore, important to understand how this "escape" is correlated
with politics.

There are two possible causal arguments here:

1. Conservative political views, such as racism, unwillingness to live with
minorities, etc., caused people holding these views to "escape" to more
class- and ethnically homogenous burbs;  This argument posits that increased
mobility and development opportunity resulted in a geographic segregation of
the US population by cultural/political preferences and life styles.
Before, these different groups were forced to share the same urban space.

2. Escape to the burbs and the conditions prevailing there, such as
compartmentalization and resultant alienation, greater dependence on mass
media in filling the pass time, etc. caused people to become more
politically conservative.  This argument posits that suburbanization,
lowering population density and filling out pass time with mediated content
(tv, radio) instead of human interaction altered the political views of the
Us population as a whole.

If memory serves, Elaine Tyler May, _Homeward Bound: American Families in
the Cold War Era_ quotes Nixon saying that suburbanization was the
Republican strategy to defeat communism in the US.  I read that book long
time age and need to re-check it.  But if true, that is consistent with the
argument #2 above, and it is also consistent with the staunch Repug
opposition to any attempt at urban revitalization.  Needless to say that if
true, that makes the situation even more hopeless as trend toward
suburbanization continues in this vast wasteland.

Any thoughts?

Wojtek