The Myth of Small Town America

The New Republic on our misplaced romanticism of small town America. Choice quote:

But the idea that we are a nation of small towns is fundamentally incorrect. The real America isn't found in cities or suburbs or small towns, but in the metropolitan areas or "metros" that bring all these places into economic and social union. Palin's positioning may appeal to a certain nostalgia that Americans have about small-town life, but the Manichean dichotomy of city versus small town (not to mention "urban" candidate versus "rural" one) no longer describes the radically connected and interdependent way Americans live and work.

This reminded me of a good blog post by Steven Berlin Johnson. Choice quote from that post:

One of the reasons the Republicans have so thoroughly lost the urban vote is that they have spent the last 30 years demonizing the culture of big cities – from Reagan’s welfare queens to the recent scaremongering about San Franciscan Nancy Pelosi becoming speaker of the House. City dwellers, we’re told, are not part of “real America.” No doubt this division made more sense in the early days of the Republic, when the U.S. was more than 90 percent rural. But today, only 20 percent of Americans live in rural areas. And whatever you think about the culture of urban life, it is an undeniable fact that the big cities are footing the bill for the residents of so-called “real America.” Blue states consistently pay more in taxes than they receive in federal assistance; the opposite is true for the red states. Why? Because cities like New York or Los Angeles or San Francisco, despite their welfare queens, are tremendous engines of wealth creation. The right wing might still evoke gay marriage and beatniks when it slurs the “radical” Bay Area, but in terms of tax revenues – not to mention global brands – Apple and Google are much more representative of Bay Area values....

Our enemies do not harbor this sentimental obsession with small-town values. There’s a reason the attackers of Sept. 11 – and most foiled plots – have targeted New York, Washington or Los Angeles: because to people in other countries, those urban centers are defining icons of American culture. Indeed, one of the small blessings in the weeks after Sept. 11 was the distinct sense that the rest of the country was in solidarity with New York City, that the city’s values were suddenly bound up in our national identity. But it shouldn’t take a terrorist attack to dispel the myth that our urban centers are somehow less real than a rural hamlet. It’s one thing to celebrate the values of the American farmer and small-town civility. It’s another thing for city dwellers to be lectured about urban depravity and the “heartland” way of life, when cities are partially subsidizing that way of life. The Democrats have long recognized that we are no longer a nation of Jeffersonian gentlemen farmers, that city life is central to the American experience. If the elections of 2006 are any indication, the Republicans may finally need to face up to that reality as well.

Wednesday, September 24, 2008