I'm as populist or whatever as they come, but I find the sentimentalization of the people and bottom up etc highly annoying. Most of such idealization of workers would be remedied if being a leftist involved ten mandatory hours per week of housecalling random working-class people for organizing conversations.
I used to live on 4th St in Columbus, btw. Definitely proto-american in the sense that wendy's (fast food) originated there, but in terms of political economy of the city, it is structurally a sun-belt city located in the rust belt, has disproportionately white-collar population owing to predominance of insurance and university as town's main industries, and is an overwhelmingly dem city--- while the general US public voters are more split between the two parties.
>
> This is all at a high level of abstraction. What good ideas do the
> American people - a large and almost unimaginably diverse group, I
> know, but I'm thinking of moderately educated people below the
> professional/managerial class - have that are so wonderful that left
> intellectuals fail to acknowledge?
>
> There's an idea on the left that the really good stuff should
> percolate up from below, and the duty of intellectuals is to listen
> and learn from such but I really would love some concrete examples.
> You live in Columbus, Ohio, which is almost by definition the
> prototypical American city, so surely if it's out there, you've heard
> it.
>
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