In Defense of Coastal Elites
Philadelphia, PA (cc photo by cptspock)
I liked this bit near the end of Christopher Hitchens’ review of Matt Continett’s Sarah Palin book:
The United States has to stand or fall by being the preeminent nation of science, modernity, technology, and higher education. Some of these needful phenomena, for historical reasons, will just happen to concentrate in big cities and in secular institutions and even—yes—on the dreaded East Coast.
Quite so. Cultural/political tensions between metropolitan types and provincial types are a perennial feature of politics. But actually one of the nice things about the United States is that it’s very big and spread out and we don’t have an overweening “main city” in the manner of Paris. But as a nation we’re long past the point when our prosperity depended primarily on the productivity of our agriculture and the vast extent of our rural land. The research universities and major business enterprises that our the foundation of our way of life are, overwhelmingly, in major metropolitan areas. Not because there’s anything wrong with the people of rural Alaska, but because that’s how the world works. The idea of making dislike of metropolitan American (or perhaps all of metropolitan America except Houston) the basis of your approach to governing is pretty nuts.
99 Responses to “In Defense of Coastal Elites”
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November 15th, 2009 at 5:52 pm
Some few people (roughtly those 99% percent that are still kind of angry due to this little financial crisis) might think that the current elites and elite recruitment strategies part of “our lifestyle” should change.
November 15th, 2009 at 5:57 pm
Urgs: Rabid knee-jerk anti-intellectualism is not only not the answer to the financial crisis, but also not the answer to any other real-world problem. Go on bashing opera and “elites” if you want, but doing that is not going to get you much traction with anyone possessing even a small amount of real-life experience and awareness.
November 15th, 2009 at 6:02 pm
Some few people (roughtly those 99% percent that are still kind of angry due to this little financial crisis) might think that the current elites and elite recruitment strategies part of “our lifestyle” should change.
Isn’t this the sum of the Republican strategy? “Economic elites have hurt the middle class, so we have to punish those elite scientists and public policy analysts to ensure they know their place!” ?
November 15th, 2009 at 6:12 pm
If your approach to governing is ‘help your friends and harm your enemies’, it’s not nuts.
November 15th, 2009 at 6:14 pm
And i always asumed the Republican strategy was to tell everyone that rich people are rich because they are smarter and work harder and therefore desere their position in society. My mistake.
But sure, have fun with your “intelectual” elite. I for my part cant find much intelectual in that elite.
November 15th, 2009 at 6:18 pm
Nor can you apparently find a spelling dictionary.
November 15th, 2009 at 6:27 pm
Tyro and urgs – those arguments might have more weight if the Democratic elites (you know, the ones in power right now) weren’t shoveling money into the big banks as fast as they can. While Bush started the idiot bailout policy before he left office, Obama and the Congress have gone wild with the idea, deciding that the idea of “moral hazard” is some quaint notion.
I think they’d all do well to try reading “This Time is Different“.
November 15th, 2009 at 6:29 pm
James, you know, the funny thing is that you’re going to use the arguments that the Democrats are funneling money into banks as an excuse to rail against Al Gore, global warming, and make full-throated endorsements of torture, tax cuts, and universal health coverage.
So in fact, you’re just acting out the Republican “anti coastal elite” narrative on your own simply because you hate liberals and enjoy parroting GOP talking points.
November 15th, 2009 at 6:29 pm
Couldn’t help noticing that Matt’s quote ends just before this: “Modernity can be wrenching, as indeed can capitalism, and there will always be “out” groups who feel themselves disrespected or left behind. The task and duty of a serious politician, as Edmund Burke emphasized so well, is to reason with such people and not to act as their megaphone or ventriloquist.”
Jesus, what would Trotsky say?
November 15th, 2009 at 6:34 pm
Given that I live right in the middle of “coastal elite central”, I don’t know how well that attack is going to work on me. It’s not like I live in West Texas; I live 30 miles from DC, amongst tons of people who commute into DC and the northern suburbs of MD and VA every day.
But go ahead, have fun with the strawman you keep trying to punch. My point was simple: Democrats are in charge now, and what I’m seeing is a lot of money being shoveled at the big Wall Street firms. That’s kind of amusing for the supposed “party of the little guy” – but then again, the Dems do get more money from the wealthy than Republicans do now.
What we’re living through is one of those switching points where the parties reverse places. It’s happened before; it’s happening again. The rhetoric just hasn’t caught up to the reality yet.
Just ask Matt how directly his talking points come from Soros…
November 15th, 2009 at 6:49 pm
Atention, intelectual attacks against the anti intelectuals:
-You are just anti intelectual!
-You make the same argument as Republicans (bad since, every argument they make is wrong
-Your spelling is bad!
Which defends the huge failure of the current elites in exactly what way?
November 15th, 2009 at 6:52 pm
I’m not sure it makes any sense to say that Sarah Palin and the know-nothing right wing has an “approach to governing” at all. An approach to rabble-rousing and fund-raising, sure, but certainly Mrs. Palin has tried to stay as far away from governing and the responsibilities it requires as possible.
November 15th, 2009 at 7:15 pm
From the review, page 2:
Umm. Yes, that’s Hitch, who as you recall is now on the right and for at least a little while had a comfortable sinecure as a media fellow at the Hoover Institution, is now referring to the Right-wing grassroots as “teabaggers”, which, of course is a derisive term employed by Rachel Maddow, et. al., and “hicks” to be “duped”.
The disavowing from the Right-wing Intelligentsia should begin tomorrow. Watch for it!
November 15th, 2009 at 7:22 pm
re: Robertson’s Republican assault on Wall St.
I have a fantasy that the two groups of Republican populism will meet one day. One with it’s End Times/pro-Israel/fundie position. The other with its anti-Wall St incipiently anti-”Jewish money-lender” position. Each group chases the tail of the other faster and faster until they collapse into the Event Horizon and disappear.
A fella can dream, can’t he?
November 15th, 2009 at 7:25 pm
James Robertson wrote:
And then, at 6:34 pm, James Robertson wrote:
James, did you read the linked book review? From the Hitchens piece:
November 15th, 2009 at 7:30 pm
Ah, the poor coastal elites! How badly they have been treated in the last couple of years. I compare the treatment of say, the outgroup defined by SCHIP and the awful, awful treatment accorded Wall Street by Tarp, and tears come into my eyes. How can people be so cruel! That 700 billion just can’t make up for the awful, awful things being said about the East Coast elites!
Hitchens has witness, in the flesh, the horrors of populism. His friend, Chalabi, barely escaping jail in Jordon, and living miserably on the CIA supplied 60 to 100 million that barely kept his group’s body and soul together. Than Wolfowitz, who, for reasons that puzzle man and beast, was not supposed to supply his mistress with a cush position at State. And then a friend, a true friend of the Kurds, like Hitchens himself, Peter Galbraith, getting attacked for making a mere 100 million advocating a war in which the sons and daughters of the non-elite – and really, can you see these people coming up with policy suggestions in a D.C. salon? – were given their appropriate level of employment.
So three cheers for an elite that has led us from triumph to triumph over the past ten years! Hitchens, bless his contrarian soul, knows who has suffered the slings and arrows, and it aint so podunk Iraqi villager whose stuff has been stolen and some random child whacked – it is members of an elite who get called bad names in comments sections of blogs.
So glad to see that MY is also keeping some perspective on this issue.
November 15th, 2009 at 7:39 pm
Considering Yglesias singled out Goldman for some populist finance bashing in a blog post, does that mean he belongs to the anti Jewish money lender populism wing of Republicans? Or is he save, because he is Jewish? Am i alowed to bash Meril Lynch and only Meril Lynch because i got a catholic background?
Questions over questions.
November 15th, 2009 at 7:52 pm
Re: Tyro and urgs – those arguments might have more weight if the Democratic elites (you know, the ones in power right now) weren’t shoveling money into the big banks as fast as they can.
As of right now, they aren’t. TARP has come in signifcantly under budget and the Obama administration has been very tight-fisted with the money. In fact, they’re considering using the remainder of it for deficit reduction. Of course if you prefer the cartoon version of political reality sketched out by Glenn Beck, you’re welcome to it, but don’t expect people who well-informed to take you seriously.
November 15th, 2009 at 7:54 pm
The city of Houston isn’t exactly Palin’s “real America” either, you know.
November 15th, 2009 at 8:16 pm
I would agree with MR Yglesias ,but i would add that anti urban rhetoric is not a good basis for political strategy either. There is a lot of talk in the media about how the “anti -elite strategy” is working.Yet Obama won the election and Congress is in the Democraates hands.And the most recent gains made by the Republicans were when their canidates put aside their right wing rhetoric and talked about ordinary economic issues.We can argue about whether Mcdonnel is a moderate or not.But he basicly ran as one and distanced himself from his previous right wing statements.
For what its worth i think that the whole “small town values VS big city values” talk is overblown.Yes there is an occassional elitist snob in the cities who doesnt like small towns .But they are in the minority . I dont claim to be an expert on small towns.But when i get time off work i ride my bicycle through western Pennsylvannia . And in all of the small towns that ive stayed in ,and all of the diners that i hung out in, i have never heard anyone bad mouth cities .
Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin live in their own fantasy world.The fact that she polls badly proves this.
November 15th, 2009 at 8:46 pm
Palin’s just upset because Philadelphia Flyer fans booed her mercilessly.
November 15th, 2009 at 8:58 pm
Palin is a talisman for evangelicals. Anyone not evangelical is not a real American. What was McCain thinking?
November 15th, 2009 at 9:10 pm
Christopher Hitchens has his moments, and one of them, I think is this:’ In my own not-all-that-humble opinion, duping the hicks is a degree or two worse than condescending to them’.
November 15th, 2009 at 9:13 pm
You could have made an equally forceful post without attaching a picture of the dreaded city of Philadephia, home of the ugliest people in the country and generally a bastion of despair, desolation, and devastation.
November 15th, 2009 at 9:17 pm
Houston is about to have an out lesbian democrat as mayor. Not exactly the conservative heartland. DeLay/Culberson, Poe, and Paul represent the suburbs, sure, but SJL and Gene Green are their antipodes.
November 15th, 2009 at 9:36 pm
Yglesias is being obtuse. When Palin et al talk about metropolitan America they’re talking about niggers and faggots.
November 15th, 2009 at 9:37 pm
I think Hitchens review should be placed in juxtapositon with this NYT article about the star of Twilight. Both tell us wrenching tales of persecution and victimization:
“Life as a teen idol has never been easy. But navigating the obsessive attention of young fans amid today’s media landscape — all Twitter, all YouTube, all TMZ, all the time — can be particularly harrowing. And Ms. Stewart in some ways has it even harder.”
November 15th, 2009 at 9:43 pm
You have to love Matt’s vision for the future, a small cadre of prep school, Ivy leaguers living in Boston, NYC, or DC who get to make all of the decisions and who get to convince each other that they are super intelligent innovators but who have a large number of immigrants to cook, clean, and maintain things for them.
Matt’s vision is the U.S. as Brazil or India. I doubt if many people will want to live in such a place.
November 15th, 2009 at 9:44 pm
Look, you’re throwing a lot of people into the family of “coastal elites” so you can throw up some anti-Wall Street populism. Usually when the likes of Jesse Helms would deride the “literary class” were the educated who tended to be socially liberal, into environmental causes, watched movies with subtitles, etc. Having grown up on the coasts, these types of groups tends to have a lot conflict with local business elites, who tend to be more conservative and more dismissive of the liberal arts and artists and academics. After all, the strongholds of liberal economic policies have been on the coasts. It was Bush’s economic policies, which were hated on the coasts outside of one street in New York, that sought over a decade to funnel as much money to Wall Street to spur economic growth through the “ownership society.” Decrying “coastal elites” for Wall Street’s fuckups is like saying all Texans have hurt ankles because of Yao Ming.
November 15th, 2009 at 9:54 pm
[...] Yglesias also notes the backlash, highlighting a passage from Christopher Hitchens: The United States has to stand or fall by being [...]
November 15th, 2009 at 9:58 pm
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November 15th, 2009 at 10:02 pm
The problem with talking about “coastal elites” is that there is no one “coastal elite”. Hollywood elites are not Wall Street elites are not academic elites. Be more specific, and this conversation will be a lot more productive.
November 15th, 2009 at 10:05 pm
One part of the question is surely who we privilege to be elites. At one time, CEO’s more normally came up from the productive divisions than from Finance.
Another part of the question is whether the economy is organized to take from the have-nots and give to the have-mores – quite clearly, the “Great Compression” between the mid-30’s and the mid-70’s and the “Great American Middle Class” that resulted was a result of deliberate government policy, and the collapse of the American middle class and emergence of a Second Gilded Age are also the result of deliberate government policy to reverse the rise of the American Middle Class.
No matter how much the productive sector of the economy might benefit from a Birmingham, AL Steel-Interstate Hub, the primary financing has to be public, because the private sector system for investing in the future of the US economy that was in place in the 50’s and 60’s has since been dismantled.
November 15th, 2009 at 10:09 pm
Matt’s vision is the U.S. as Brazil or India. I doubt if many people will want to live in such a place.
In Yglesias’s defense I don’t think he’s ever pretended to be a democrat. Americans clearly revolt him, and I doubt he could hack it in Chicago or Los Angeles: A bit too many of them, variously defined.
November 15th, 2009 at 10:15 pm
I know Matt hates our love of cars, but stop all the Houston bashing, we are having a mayoral runoff in a few weeks between two Democrats, we will then either have our second black mayor or an openly gay woman as mayor. San Francisco has never had a serious gay candidate in its Mayor’s race. One of the big issues is whether to use public money to build a Soccer stadium.
The rest of the state loathes Houston as a Democratic bastion, our politicians are unelectable to state wide office because of this. Yet we get constant condemnations from all “right thinking progressives”. I really get sick of it.
To show the situation in this town I would like to point out that in the general (nonpartisan) 4-way election the only Republican did surprisingly well, he came in 4th place with 20% of the vote behind another Democrat, Peter Brown who is a progressive city planner.
November 15th, 2009 at 10:16 pm
Re: Americans clearly revolt him, and I doubt he could hack it in Chicago or Los Angeles
Hell, you should see what he has to say about North & South Dakota.
November 15th, 2009 at 10:54 pm
Well, I was using power elite definition. Everything else is just a distraction in a political context.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_Elite
“The power elite is described as consisting of members of the corporate community, academia, politicians, media editors, military service personnel, and high-profile journalists. ”
That certainly does include Wall-Street, but hardly some “literary class”.
November 15th, 2009 at 11:00 pm
The idea of making dislike of metropolitan American (or perhaps all of metropolitan America except Houston) the basis of your approach to governing is pretty nuts.
The same goes for making a dislike of all of rural America the basis of your politics, Matt.
i live in a urban area and will prbably live in one for the rest of my life, I’m die of depression if I went back to where I grew up.
That being said, people in rural areas aren’t all shit kickers and slack-jawed yockels, they deserve more respect than you and many other people here give them.
Also, this blog is a prime example of why people in rural red states don’t even consider voting for democrats for progressives. There are plenty of posts about urban rapid transit, taxing soda, or alcohol, things that do nothing to appeal to the daily needs of people who live in rural areas. Progressives basically have nothing to really to say to rural America except propose enviornmental policies that are athema to rural populations and farm policy proposals that would turn the current agriculture industry on it’s head.*
the rural bias against eastern “elites” is based largely on illusions to what “elites” or what they desire. But the emotions that produce these attitudes are anchored on a very real gap between rural America and urban America that progressives can’t seem to begin to bridge, in fact they are a part of the problem when it comes to that.
*Not that i don’t think that the farm industry doesn’t need a shake-up. But progressives don’t realize that reform doesn’t seem appealing when you’re barley making a living in agriculture already and you have a family to support.
November 15th, 2009 at 11:18 pm
Um, by “elites” do you mean educated people who live in metropolitan areas?
November 15th, 2009 at 11:24 pm
There’s another even more obvious reason that research universities and major business enterprises are in metropolitan areas. Same reason that newspapers and football teams and stock exchanges and organized crime rings are in metropolitan areas: that’s where the people are.
About 80% of America lives in cities and suburbs. Partly because of our romanticized vision of the past and partly because of our quirky political apportionment system, we often talk as if that 20% minority were larger than it really is. But we really shouldn’t forget the actual numbers.
November 15th, 2009 at 11:35 pm
Roy, that is interesting. My naive assumption was that since Houston is the hub of big oil that it would be a republican stronghold. But clearly I guess the plebs must outnumber the bosses.
But as far as Sarh goes, shes gone back to her area of competence, being a media personality. trading on her controversaility. She can’t govern, but I bet she can keep an audience of angry evangelicals. Why would she want to go back to politics, these media types make a pretty easy buck.
November 16th, 2009 at 12:00 am
About 80% of America lives in cities and suburbs. Partly because of our romanticized vision of the past and partly because of our quirky political apportionment system, we often talk as if that 20% minority were larger than it really is. But we really shouldn’t forget the actual numbers.
This map is an indication of where people live, and how those people vote. Its astonishing how much territory the red covers, and how little is blue. But the blue is where all the people live. What was the largest city that voted for Mccain? Tulsa?
November 16th, 2009 at 12:07 am
Colorful, but true.
When Republicans trash big cities they aren’t trashing rich influential white people who live in cities and their wealthy suburbs. They’re attacking minorities, hippies, gays, etc. who happen to inhibit city centers.
Has Matt ever talked to an actual Republican voter? Despite the rhetoric, they don’t want to move to a farm somewhere and live the rustic life. They want to live in a McMansion in Orange County or New Jersey, far enough away from the cities to avoid people they don’t like, but close enough that they can actually be employed in a non-menial profession.
If Republicans actually turned into some sort of rural populist movement they’d be capped at like 10% of the vote. To win elections they have to appeal to rural folks and people in the suburbs. To do that they attack the big city freaks. It’s pretty simple.
November 16th, 2009 at 12:14 am
http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/11/why-compact-contiguous-districts-are.html
Relevant to this topic, and it should be interesting to Yglesias, since he has fairly strong opinions about gerrymandering.
November 16th, 2009 at 12:45 am
Matt’s vision is the U.S. as Brazil or India.
Your white hood’s showing, poops.
November 16th, 2009 at 1:38 am
There are plenty of posts about urban rapid transit, taxing soda, or alcohol, things that do nothing to appeal to the daily needs of people who live in rural areas.
Oh, spare us.
Far more people live in urban areas than rural ones. Rural America, however you care to define it, gets more than its fair whack in the democratic process, from the allocation of Senate seats based upon arbitrary divisions of acreage to the under-representation of populous states in the House to the bullshit folksy diner politics of Iowa and New Hampshire, where the real politics is about how much federal coin is going to subsidize industrial agriculture.
The US is actually like France in its embrace of a vestigial sentimentality towards the rural in politics and culture: ‘America’s Heartland’ isn’t much different from ‘La France Profonde’. Except that there’s a more coherent rural culture in France; living in rural America often means scratching out a subsistence existence and paying your rent with the proceeds from hocking your Vicodin prescription.
It was an old when Jefferson and the Virginia farmer elite were waxing bucolic against the dirty urbanite Hamilton. Today, the stout and doughty yeoman is usually more of a welfare case than any urban single mother.
November 16th, 2009 at 4:02 am
I believe that tensions and contradictions between urban and rural (including outer suburban) lifestyles and economics are the main driving force of the (federal) political struggle in the US.
Quite simply: people in small towns and villages are often a homogeneous bunch that doesn’t need much from the federal (or even the state) government; in most cases they can resolve their problems locally, and good for them. All this “science, modernity, technology” stuff doesn’t mean much to them, which doesn’t necessarily makes them bad or less worthy than the urbanites; just people who happen to live in a different environment than you and I.
November 16th, 2009 at 4:06 am
Are “research universities” actually “overwhelmingly, in major metropolitan areas”?
I would think research universities are more spread out than many other power bases, most notably major media. Heck, these days your old employer, The Atlantic, can’t even be based in Boston. It has to move to DC/NYC like everybody else.
What I’m struck by is how little clue the DC/NYC punditariat has about LA these days.
November 16th, 2009 at 6:08 am
God help me, I was thinking the same thing as Steve Sailer. The major research universities are by and large not in major metropolitan areas. Almost none of the major land-grant schools are in particularly large towns. And the A&T, or A&M, or “XYZ State” schools, which also do a lot of research, tend to be in even smaller cities. Even half the Ivies are in non-major cities.
November 16th, 2009 at 6:34 am
Re: people in small towns and villages are often a homogeneous bunch that doesn’t need much from the federal (or even the state) government
Not true at all. Rural areas are addicted to farm subsidies, one of the biggest (and most dyfunctional) welfare programs we have. In addition many rural people are poor and as such use food stamps, Medicaid, the EITC etc.
Re: The major research universities are by and large not in major metropolitan areas.
I am having trouble thinking of a top-rank major university, whether public or private, that is not in a city or suburb. Princeton I suppose is far enough from Philadelphia and NYC to qualify, but Harvard, Yale, Stanford, the University of Michigan, etc, etc. are all decidedly urban or suburban.
November 16th, 2009 at 6:38 am
> I am having trouble thinking of a top-rank major university,
> whether public or private, that is not in a city or suburb.
> Princeton I suppose is far enough from Philadelphia and NYC
> to qualify, but Harvard, Yale, Stanford, the University of
> Michigan, etc, etc. are all decidedly urban or suburban.
Well, if you define the large towns that have grown up around the Big 10 or Big 12 universities as “cities” then that is true, I suppose. Or perhaps you are implying that the University of Illinois, University of Iowa, etc are not research universities?
Cranky
November 16th, 2009 at 6:53 am
Or perhaps you are implying that the University of Illinois, University of Iowa, etc are not research universities?
More likely he’s implying that they are not top rank. Although obviously reasonable people could disagree on what this means.
Using the linked list, however, it’s clear that no more than 4 of the top 25 (Princeton, Dartmouth, Cornell, and Virginia) could be considered rural, and I’m highly skeptical of including Princeton as such, since it’s such a short train ride from both New York and Philadelphia.
November 16th, 2009 at 7:32 am
Especially when it is the provincial areas that lead the nation in social pathologies.
November 16th, 2009 at 7:56 am
Rural areas are addicted to farm subsidies, one of the biggest (and most dyfunctional) welfare programs we have.
Are people in rural areas actually getting those farm subsidies, or is it large landowners and agribusiness?
November 16th, 2009 at 7:58 am
Top 20 research universities, found in such major metro areas such as Madison, Ann Arbor, Sacramento, State College PA, Columbus, St. Paul, Ithaca, College Station TX, and Gainesville FL.
I think the more important point is that MY doesn’t know jack about anything more than 6 hours from Penn Station. I’ve lived from coast to coast, and nothing beats the provincialism of people in the NE. My fiancee from Philadelphia has been to Australia and Greece, but had not ventured beyond the Ohio until I took her home to meet my family. It’s really something.
November 16th, 2009 at 8:30 am
abb1, I assume by welfare he means corporate welfare.
November 16th, 2009 at 8:30 am
people in small towns and villages are often a homogeneous bunch that doesn’t need much from the federal (or even the state) government; in most cases they can resolve their problems locally, and good for them. All this “science, modernity, technology” stuff doesn’t mean much to them
I think that this characterization owes more to a “vestigal sentimentality towards the rural” than anything based in reality. Small towns abd villages in the USA are in fact the main places you are going to see people appealing to the “constituent services” office pf their local representative to make sure that their roads get paved, the post office gets saved, the rover is dammed to stop flooding, and their grandparents get their SSI checks don’t get lost.
November 16th, 2009 at 8:43 am
I think that this characterization owes more to a “vestigial sentimentality towards the rural” than anything based in reality.
Yeah, it’s just my impression, and I could be wrong of course. But are you sure you know what you’re talking about? Their roads certainly aren’t federal roads.
November 16th, 2009 at 8:55 am
Hadn’t actually looked at the discussion before making my last comment. It seems to me that I’ve seen a lot of data on this very blog showing that the more rural states tend to get more federal money than the more urban ones. That would be money to for the state government, yes? And even with corporate welfare, I’d think much of that money would get spent in-state, no?
November 16th, 2009 at 8:56 am
Somebody needs to get on the internet and answer these questions.
November 16th, 2009 at 9:07 am
Worth pointing out that of the nine names Matt B indicated to prove that Matt Y knows nothing about the incidence of top universities in major metro areas, Columbus, Sacramento, St. Paul, and Madison are all 200K+ in population (not counting the outlying communities). (Also that while Yglesias quotes Hitchens referring to even the East Coast, Yglesias himself doesn’t refer to the East Coast at all, merely to the correlation between major univerisities and cities.)
November 16th, 2009 at 9:08 am
@59, could you stop using my moniker, please.
More rural states may use more federal money, but it doesn’t mean that that small towns and villages get federal money.
November 16th, 2009 at 9:35 am
Nonsense. Because I believe evolution is correct, I use my cash looted from Wall Street to pay pennies to illegal immigrants to carry me to my gay wedding on a sedan chair.
November 16th, 2009 at 9:45 am
Sorry, I typed that in the wrong place by accident.
November 16th, 2009 at 9:59 am
Do you have data to support this, RealAbb1?
November 16th, 2009 at 10:18 am
I suggest we retire the value-laden term “elites” (which sounds like something dreamed up by Pat Buchanan) and think of something else to describe what we are trying to say.
I find it dismaying that this word is so commonly used.
The other thing is that the news from rural areas is dire indeed.
November 16th, 2009 at 10:21 am
There seems to be both urban and rural hate aplenty in this thread. A two-way street.
November 16th, 2009 at 10:24 am
As a denizen of the rust belt, I hate rural America and the East coast. But more than anything, I hate Sarah Palin. Which reminds me of a good joke:
What’s the difference between Sarah Palin’s mouth and Sarah Palin’s cunt? Retarded shit only came out of her cunt once.
November 16th, 2009 at 10:29 am
It seems to me that this conversation is in desperate need of definitions. What is an “elite” beyond a random sociopolitical construct? How does one become an “elite”, and what does an “elite” do?
Also, what is the line between rural and urban? I would say one of our country’s biggest problems is a lack of this kind of divider.
As someone who grew up in a small southern hog/tobacco town, and is now a denizen of the dreaded east coast elite epicenter of our nation’s capital, I find all these distinctions pretty vague and descriptive of very little that is real.
November 16th, 2009 at 10:42 am
Medrawt: I lived in Madison for 9 years and would not call it a major metropolitan area. Columbus is huge only because it annexed everything around it in the last century. Sacto is considered a backwater by everyone in So-Cal and the Bay area, and I was being generous by saying UCD is even in Sacramento. So, yeah, I’m sticking by my analysis.*
*I was having a little fun at UM-TC’s expense, I admit.
November 16th, 2009 at 10:52 am
The only important issue in regards to the urbanization of America is…what’s going to happen to big cities when Peak Oil kicks us in the ass?
Mike
November 16th, 2009 at 11:01 am
Do you have data to support this, RealAbb1?
No, just intuition. And general understanding that smaller communities need less top down management. They are just much simpler organisms with fewer components.
November 16th, 2009 at 11:22 am
Re Aidan at 24: “You could have made an equally forceful post without attaching a picture of the dreaded city of Philadephia, home of the ugliest people in the country and generally a bastion of despair, desolation, and devastation.”
Something tells me that the girls in the nightclubs down on Delaware Avenue have mocked someone for having a short penis.
November 16th, 2009 at 11:58 am
Matt B -
My ex-girlfriend was raised in Madison, and she’d beg to differ. Which (a) is neither here not there (b) is yet somehow the point.
If you define “major metropolitan area” to be your personal idiosyncratic sense of the five or ten “most important” cities in America then you can make whatever you want out of this discussion. I have a friend from Cleveland who disdains Columbus as a backwater, but that’s not the point. The actual point here is that universities and major business enterprises are in areas that I’m going to call major metropolitan areas, not because they have what I’m personally looking for in a city, but because THEY HAVE A LOT OF FREAKING PEOPLE IN THE VICINITY. And the reason that universities and major business enterprises are overwhelmingly lcoated in what I’m calling major metropolitan areas is basically because THEY HAVE A LOT OF FREAKING PEOPLE IN THE VICINITY.
None of this hangs on Yglesias’ infamous trust-fund East Coast parochial view of America, which isn’t in evidence anywhere in the above post.
(In other news, a disproportionate number of the the world’s major cities are located on or near sources of fresh water [lakes, rivers, river mouths]. This is due to hydrophilic elitism, no doubt.)
November 16th, 2009 at 12:08 pm
The actual point here is that universities and major business enterprises are in areas that I’m going to call major metropolitan areas
Maybe not exactly “major metropolitan areas”, but they are certainly not rural environments, that’s for sure. University campus is its own kind of environment, and it’s sure much closer to urban than rural kind.
November 16th, 2009 at 12:09 pm
No, just intuition.
Well, that and a dollar will get us coffee.
November 16th, 2009 at 12:16 pm
I meant to say “overwhelmingly” or “for the most part” or something like that. Ithaca isn’t majorly metropolitan. I concede that when people think of “major metropolitan area” they’re probably thinking of Chicago and not St. Paul, but for the purposes of the discussion under question, the reason I’m throwing “major” in there is because I grew up in a city of about 100K people that was pretty economically depressed, and that’s the sort of place I’m excluding from the discussion, although in retrospect it was still driving a lot more economic activity than the outlying towns and rural regions. And again, focussing entirely on universities is a red herring; the places where lots of people live, which we call “cities” or “big cities,” are the places with the most schools and certainly the most businesses that have importance outside an extremely local sphere. There are always exceptions; a few small cities over from where I grew up was a nationally recognized golf ball manufacturer.
November 16th, 2009 at 12:24 pm
Well, that and a dollar will get us coffee.
This is a comment thread in a stupid blog, you know. What did you expect, a PhD thesis?
November 16th, 2009 at 1:09 pm
Please don’t include Philadelphia as part of any “elite”, cultural, economic, or otherwise. We have a well nurtured regional sense of persecution and inferiority and would like to keep it, thank you. Its hard to think of yourself as Rocky when you’re really Apollo Creed.
November 16th, 2009 at 1:24 pm
That’s funny; I’ve lived both places, and Columbus is bigger and has more going on. That said, I suspect your friend’s disdain comes from the fact that much of Columbus feels like it was built in 1986, whereas Cleveland has actual old stuff and neighborhoods with personality.
November 16th, 2009 at 1:27 pm
Pace Truth at 79, I would put our Philly skanks up against anyone’s:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYMsA-jv1tw
You won’t find THAT in an Iowa cornfield.
What, after all , is the purpose of having Civilization if
you can’t have urban decadence?
November 16th, 2009 at 1:40 pm
What did you expect, a PhD thesis?
Slightly more than the weak tea you’re serving.
The interesting argument is whether the doublethink around rural/urban — in France as in the US — is designed to work both ways. Does the town subsidise the country in part for the country to project rugged independence for the benefit of those who want to preserve Jefferson’s ideal yeomanry? ‘Rusticity’ is an urban creation; ‘urbanity’ requires a world beyond the city limits, looking in.
November 16th, 2009 at 1:42 pm
What was the largest city that voted for Mccain? Tulsa?
The map shows counties, and the largest county on the map that voted for McCain is Maricopa County, Arizona, the 4th-largest county in the country. Note, though, that Maricopa contains not just Phoenix but nearly all of its suburbs and exurban areas, too, so we’re getting the home-state effect there and aren’t just looking at one central counties. It’s worth noting, though, that Pima County, which contains Tucson, went for Obama.
The other counties within the top 100 that went for McCain appear to be Orange County, CA, barely (5th overall, suburban in character but becoming more urban); Tarrant County, TX (20th overall, contains Fort Worth); Salt Lake County, UT (43rd); Fresno County, CA (58th, by 26 total votes); Kern County, CA (78th, Bakersfield); Oklahoma County, OK (80th, Oklahoma City); Monmouth County, NJ (87th, Middletown); Cobb County, GA (89th, NW Atlanta suburbs); Gwinnett County, GA (92nd, eastern Atlanta suburbs); and last among the top 100, Tulsa County, OK (98th).
November 16th, 2009 at 1:45 pm
I should note, of course, that votes inside the central cities of those counties probably favor Obama more than the counties as a whole.
November 16th, 2009 at 1:48 pm
Yeah I spent some time trying to find if a site broke down the results in Maricopa county to see if the city itself went for Mccain or not, but I couldn’t find what I was looking for. I guess if I found precinct-level data that would do. Maricopa is huge in population, but also huge in area, its a bit of a strange county. Phoenix, for that matter, is a strange city in that even though its a city its mainly suburban in character. Fort Worth was a large city that went for Mccain, but Dallas was Obama country.
November 16th, 2009 at 1:58 pm
“In Yglesias’s defense I don’t think he’s ever pretended to be a democrat. Americans clearly revolt him, and I doubt he could hack it in Chicago or Los Angeles: A bit too many of them, variously defined.”
This is pure nonsense. “Never pretended to be a democrat”? Yglesias, let’s remember, is the guy who’s against not only the filibuster but even the Senate for being undemocratic, which they are. As for the imputation of racism, it’s hardly worth contempt.
November 16th, 2009 at 1:58 pm
Maricopa is a really strange county, and Arizona’s counties on average are quite large. It only has 15 of them, which is even low when compared to its similar neighbors — NM has 33, UT has 29, and CO has 64.
On a recent visit to Phoenix I tried imagining how one might split up Maricopa County while preventing city limits from crossing county lines; breaking off the Mesa-Tempe area was a no-brainer, along with the southwestern portion around Gila Bend, but north of the Gila River it’s basically just a gradient spreading out from the middle until you hit the edge of development, at which point the area becomes essentially uninhabited. That doesn’t portion out easily, unless you just want Phoenix to stand on its own like Denver.
November 16th, 2009 at 3:09 pm
@82, and your romanticized musings are not weak? At least the tea I’m serving is based on my understanding of socioeconomics, not on fantasies.
November 16th, 2009 at 4:19 pm
I don’rt really have an opinion on this issue. I just want to say f#$K Christopher Hitchens.
November 16th, 2009 at 4:20 pm
The fact is we don’t have a democracy, and if we did the “urban”, i.e., populated regions of our country would have representation.
Branding the high-density areas of our country as “elite” is just an attempt to obscure (and perpetuate) this situation.
November 16th, 2009 at 5:25 pm
At least the tea I’m serving is based on my understanding of socioeconomics, not on fantasies.
Oh, that’s funny. The contours of the rural/urban divide in American politics were already established by the time Jefferson and Hamilton personified their competing claims. Your “people in small towns are self-sufficient and don’t need federal money, just because” argument dates from the time you pulled it from your ass.
Now go back to whining about Zionists.
November 16th, 2009 at 7:35 pm
San Francisco has never had a serious gay candidate in its Mayor’s race
Tom Ammiano ran an unorthodox campaign in 1999 that forced a run off election. He lost to Brown by 19% but he was certainly serious and gay.
November 16th, 2009 at 8:30 pm
Not talking about power elites because the term elite is used in many unclear ways is denying the reality of modern society. Elites are important in a modern organication society. If we dont talk about elites, we reinforce the current elites forever without questioning. But elites should be questioned all the time. Talking about elites, doing resarch about them is important. If you think the current elites are all nice and great, defend your position, dont brush away the debate by denying theres even a topic. That way you leave it to Bilderberger conspiracy theorists.
November 16th, 2009 at 11:13 pm
abb1
No, just intuition. And general understanding that smaller communities need less top down management. They are just much simpler organisms with fewer components.
This post. Has anyone who is throwing out all of these stereotypes of “slack-jawed, meth-addicted, welfare-queen hicks” even lived in a rural community in the last twenty years? Or even ever? Do they know where the majority of farm subsidies go to? And it’s halarious to see the commenters on a so-called progressive blog go after people because some of them might be on some kind of government assistance using what is basically stereotypes of the urban poor applied to the rural poor.
This whole string of comments pretty much confirms the opposite of Matt’s point.
I’m not going to stand up and support generic astro-turf Republican populism that rails against generic elites, but I will denounce urban-dwelling lefties who don’t give a shit about a quarter of the country’s population because of where they live and that they might come from a different perspective in life. What a disgusting display.
Go ahead, bitch and moan about “unequal representation”. In the mean time enjoy losing elections and seeing your legislative agenda stall for another ten years after the 2010 midterms. The hubris that Obama’s election invoked with democrats will probably come back to hurt them unfortunately.
November 17th, 2009 at 12:11 am
Courtesy of your friendly US department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service, showing us that as with everything else in life, Abb1 knows fuck all about the real world:
Link: http://www.ers.usda.gov/briefing/IncomePovertyWelfare/ruralwelfare/
Also, Kropotkin, you were the only one that mentioned slack jaws, meth or welfare queens in this post.
November 17th, 2009 at 12:46 am
Skylines at night. Beautiful things. And I see crane, off in the Philly distance. Another rectangular box-building, perhaps, slowly going up? Or repair work?
Imagine building 50,000 skyscrapers in less than a generation. What fun. What potential for artistry, on a gigantic scale, especially if your architects are free, encouraged even, to try anything.
November 17th, 2009 at 2:57 am
[...] Matthew Yglesias riffs on that: [...]
November 17th, 2009 at 10:59 am
Your “people in small towns are self-sufficient and don’t need federal money, just because” argument dates from the time you pulled it from your ass.
Really? You actually disagree that rural people are more self-sufficient than the urbanites, huh.
I remember a few years ago I watched on TV a half-day blackout in NYC, and it looked like the judgment day. And a few hundred miles away from NYC Amish live without electricity at all and feel fine.
You really find this particular claim so fanciful and controversial, huh.
November 17th, 2009 at 4:24 pm
Aidan, Got dumped in Philadelphia by a beautiful woman, did you?