Posted on 11/24/2001 7:55:06 PM PST by tpaine
Dec. Issue: One Country, Slightly Divisible
Sage Stossel - Nov 15, 2001
In "One Nation, Slightly Divisible" (December Atlantic), David Brooks, (the author of Bobos in Paradise,) looks at the differences between small-town Middle America (which he dubs "Red America" after the Presidential Election-night maps which showed those areas as red), and upscale urban America (which he dubs "Blue America"), and considers how significant those differences are to America's sense of having a unified national identity. Brooks's informal research involved spending time in rural Franklin County, Pennsylvania, talking to people and observing everyday life there, and comparing it with life in his own home county of Montgomery, Maryland.
Montgomery County, he explains, "is one of the steaming-hot centers of the great espresso machine that is Blue America. It is just over the border from northwestern Washington, D.C., and it is full of upper-middle-class towns inhabited by lawyers, doctors, stockbrokers, and establishment journalists like me--towns like Chevy Chase, Potomac, and Bethesda (where I live)."
Franklin County, on the other hand "is Red America. It's a rural county, about twenty-five miles west of Gettysburg.... The joke that Pennsylvanians tell about their state is that it has Philadelphia on one end, Pittsburgh on the other, and Alabama in the middle. Franklin County is in the Alabama part."
The differences Brooks observes are legion.
Everything from food to clothing, to recreation, education-levels, and life aspirations are dramatically different in Red as opposed to Blue America. In Red America people eat meatloaf, dine at Crackerbarrel, shop at Walmart, attend Church and participate in Church-related activities regularly, live near family, obtain minimal educations, hold conservative views on issues like homosexuality and abortion, and enjoy a close-knit community life. In Blue America people eat "sun-dried-tomato concoctions," wear designer clothes, get graduate degrees, enjoy ideas, compete with one another for prestige, money and recognition, and tend to be openminded about social issues such as homosexuality and abortion, and open to other cultures.
In light of these many differences Brooks asks, "Are Americans any longer a common people? Do we have one national conversation and one national culture? Are we loyal to the same institutions and the same values?" Some observers, Brooks explains, have expressed concern that such differences are problematic. Many social critics and political analysts, for example, have suggested that the Red America vs. Blue America cultural divide represents an antagonistic chasm between the haves and the have-nots. Brooks argues, however, that this seems not to be the case because the inhabitants of Red America don't see themselves as have-nots:
Rather, the people I met commonly told me that although those in affluent places like Manhattan and Bethesda might make more money and have more-exciting jobs, they are the unlucky ones, because they don't get to live in Franklin County. They don't get to enjoy the beautiful green hillsides, the friendly people, the wonderful church groups and volunteer organizations. They may be nice people and all, but they are certainly not as happy as we are.
Other observers have argued that Red America and Blue America represent opposing moral systems that are bound to clash with one another as they compete to determine how America will be run. But here, too, Brooks disagrees:
Certainly Red and Blue America disagree strongly on some issues, such as homosexuality and abortion. But for the most part the disagreements are not large. Tolerance of other points of view on most issues seems to be the norm both for Red and for Blue America.
Indeed, Brooks suggests, the overarching similarities between Red America and Blue America probably override their many less-significant differences. The differences, he writes, are mainly ones of "sensibility, not class or culture." Inhabitants both of Red America and of Blue America appreciate the fact that this country allows them to make their own choices about what they will believe and how they will live, and that other Americans are free to do so as well: "Although there are some real differences between Red and Blue America," he writes, "there is no fundamental conflict. There may be cracks, but there is no chasm. Rather, there is a common love for this nation--one nation in the end."
What are your thoughts on the differences between "Red America" and "Blue America"? Which culture do you identify with more? Do most of your family and friends identify with the same sector of America as you do? Do you agree with Brooks that the differences are mainly surface ones that don't divide the country in any significant way? What are your gut feelings about Red America vs. Blue America? -- Do you find Red America depressingly provincial? Refreshingly community-oriented and non-competitive? Do you find Blue America exhileratingly progressive and challenging? Competitive and impersonal?... Post your thoughts here.
Brook mentions he was almost finished with it before 9/11, and was a bit surprised that the attack didn't really make much difference to his conclusions. He says that 9/11 rallied people and neutralized the political/cultural leaders who tend to exploit differences. --- "Americans are in no mood for class struggle or a culture war."
Too bad we can't say the same about many on this forum.
In the last 40 years there is no similarity in the populations. The area has been over=run by outsiders. The turner halls are now closed dure to lack of interest.
Most of the scandinavians homesteaded further north.
I'm 65, and know a LOT of old krauts. - And, I belong to the Sons of Norway, to keep me wife happy.
Where I was born there were at one point 28 beer breweries. Coordinate with the East Davenport Turner Halle there was the German Saturday Morning Beer Drinking and Sparrow Shooting society which existed up to the 1920s. On Saturday mornings they would gather together with their rifles, shotguns and steins to shoot at sparrows.
They were occasionally an unruly bunch. The feds confiscated some of their beer for non-payment of taxes. They got together with some of the Irish, got picaxes and sledgehammers, broke down the government warehouse, and drank all the beer.
It's a part of ethnic America that has been lost.
[re: your last comment.]
I don't like what everything is being replaced with.
I wondered how Pennsylvania could be a swing state, I guess this explains it.
What, you want them to drive through and possibly STOP there? ;-)
But to give Brooks credit, one of the big changes in the 90's was that Wall Street and the rich in metropolitan areas supported the Democrats more than they had in years. Maybe it wasn't a big shift. But 5 or 10 percent can tip a county from one party to another and change the electoral map accordingly.
Poorer states like West Virginia found their way into the Republican column, and not in a GOP landslide, either. There are still plenty of Democrats in Arkansas, Kentucky, or West Virginia, and plenty of Republicans in Westchester, Upper Darby or Marin County, but that relatively small shift changes the terms of the discussion. And it was probably something you felt if you moved back and forth between media circles in the big cities, where all would vote for Gore, and ordinary people in small rural towns, who more likely than not supported Bush.
I suppose that Brooks, sitting in Suburban Maryland, noticed that the more affluent counties of the states in the area went more for Gore and the rural counties, which may have been much poorer went for Bush. He didn't want to go into decaying urban areas, or he felt that there was no change and no story there. So he chose the focus of his story accordingly.
Basically, such an article is a snapshot of a particular moment in history. It probably has lessons for the 2004 elections, but the further out one looks, the more likely it is that other factors will take over.
In the 2000 elections, there were not pressing, divisive issues in the form of immediate measures on the table. People weren't voting for this or that policy, so much as voting for an identity or a view of America. Forget what was said after the election, and look at what was said during the campaign about how close the candidates were, compared to previous elections. People weren't voting for what Bush or Gore would actually do about abortion or health care or guns, but against what they feared the opposition party would do, based on the past. They were voting for their own cultural identity and against another cultural identity.
Elections won't always be like that. Either some economic or foreign policy crisis intervenes or one candidate takes the initiative and wins or loses votes on that basis. Curiously, close elections when the candidates aren't so far apart on the issues can appear to be more divisive than landslide elections when factions really are in bitter disagreement about what course the country should take with regard to immediate and pressing questions.
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