On Sep 11, 2008, at 5:49 AM, James Heartfield wrote:
> Doug, corrects me on what America is like: "You really should spend
> some time here to get a full taste of it." Which is true. On the few
> visits I do make what surprises me is how small-town a lot of
> America is, coming from heavily urbanised Europe. So I read, for
> example, that 'slightly more than one-half of the nation's
> population lived in jurisdictions --- cities, towns, boroughs,
> villages and townships --- with fewer than 25,000 people or in rural
> areas.' http://www.newgeography.com/content/00242-america-more-small-town-we-think
>
> Which reinforces my suspicion that the LBO-list is a little skewed
> in its demographic towards the larger cities, and out of touch with
> small town America, as, I believe is much of the US left.
>
> That strikes me as a problem, especially seeing some of the visceral
> hatred that Sarah Palin's candidacy provokes. I suggest that a lot
> of that reaction is just anti-working class prejudice, masquerading
> as anti-republicanism (in much the same way that the left here kept
> its most bitter attacks for 'Essex Man' who was supposed to have
> cost Labour victory throughout the 1980s).
Half the U.S. population lives in suburbs, and another quarter in cities. Only a quarter lives in rural areas. A quarter of the U.S. population lives in the ten largest metro areas, and over 40% in the top 25. The <25,000 jurisdictions your source speaks of are more often than not part of larger metropolitan agglomerations. The notion that small town America is somehow real and the rest of us are fake is purely phantasmic.
The visceral hatred that Palin provokes is about her extremely reactionary politics. Again, you don't seem to have much idea of just how loopy the American right is. She's part of it, and she's energized them.
Doug