I have had it with the real America

[mme_hardy]

Salena Zito drove down U.S. 30, also known as the Lincoln Highway, to get in touch with "America's heartland".

Yet it remains the best route to America’s heartland, populated by voters whose moods elude most pundits in this election cycle. These are people disconnected from New York’s cosmopolitan pace or Washington’s political elites. They value small-town connections to family, community and livelihoods; they rarely consider moving, despite a lack of opportunity.

Here's what she didn't mention:  80% of Americans live in urban areas.  Quoting from an article on the 2010 census:

In 2010, a total of 80.7 percent of Americans lived in urban areas, up from 79 percent in 2000.  Conversely, 19.3 percent of the U.S. population lived in rural areas in 2010, down from 21 percent in 2000. At the same time, the population of urban areas grew by 12.1 percent, much faster than the country's growth rate of 9.7 percent from 2000 to 2010.

So, contrary to her narrative, these people are moving -- or, rather, the people she's interviewing don't, for obvious reasons, represent the entire historic populations of their towns.   

The idea comes down from Jefferson, the idea that the farmer is the true, unspoiled American that the rest of us should be inspired by.   It's a silly idea, and has been silly from Jefferson to today.   When pundits aren't laying down the law based on the people they know in the big coastal cities, they vacillate between sneering at everybody else and praising the people who lead the lives they don't understand.  (Helloo, David Brooks.)   

Smalltown, USA still exists, and people live there and enjoy it.  But it's not the real America, any more than New Hampshire is real America.  It's an America, but one that should be neither exalted nor despised.   Most of us live in the cities, and we've chosen to do so.   We're real, whether we're in Indianapolis or Charlotte or, yes, San Francisco, Los Angeles, or New York.

The lesbian Tejana in San Antonio is as real and true and representative as the middle-aged white guy in Chappell, Nebraska.  

Comments

[caulkhead]

THIS.

(In my case it's 'The will of the people' that I'm sick of. Am I not part of the people, liberal educated elite that I am? (On the other hand, apparently I grew up in a 'poor white inbred ghetto*', so maybe my voice does count after all? But on the prehensile tail, then I moved out of it - and lived in, gasp, EUROPE, and worse yet London, so probably not).

*Copyright the then head of OFSTED - Office of Standards in Education.

[perennialanna]

If we're playing voice-of-the-people bingo*, I am a single mum on benefits in a deprived area!

*My first thought was Top Trumps. Perhaps not.

[mme_hardy]

I, too, am a Taker instead of a Maker.

[perennialanna]

Last time I had an appointment to be put in my place at the Job Centre I actually had an advisor who pointed out that bringing up two children and being involved in their school life was also a job. Shame the regulations don't see it that way.

[caulkhead]

Hooray for advisor!

[perennialanna]

It doesn't change the date by which I have to find work, but it was good to emerge feeling confident about my abilities for a change, rather than fighting back tears and in desperate need of something cheap and sugary.

[mme_hardy]

It's very hard work, finding the emotional energy to handle the children's needs, the aftermath of a bad divorce, AND job-hunting. Wishing you fortitude and fast employment.

[perennialanna]

Plus poorly mother (she had a pacemaker fitted a week ago. She is feeling sore and shaken, but far more optimistic than she has in at least a decade).

And despite all that, there is far more happiness in my life than when I was materially far better off. And my relationship with my children is immeasurably better. We have far more fun now.

[mme_hardy]

"Fun is the only thing money can't buy." True enough. I am glad you are happier.

[sabotabby]

Wow, I didn't know that. My impression was that America was a lot more rural (I guess because of these articles, and because when I go to the US these days it's generally to rural places). Is it still true that large parts of the US don't have internet connectivity?

[mme-hardy.livejournal.com]

Large parts of America don't have *high-speed* internet, because it's not covered by the same laws that subsidize rural telephone service for all via taxes. It's more unusual not to have Internet at all. If you look at a map, you see enormous areas that don't have internet, but those are very thinly inhabited.

84% of all Americans and 78% of rural Americans use the internet. (Some, obviously, have chosen not to rather than are unable to.)
http://www.pewinternet.org/2015/06/26/americans-internet-access-2000-2015/ We've got a ways to go; there are tax subsidies and government programs to encourage universal access to broadband, but it's not even close to there yet.

Sign of my age: I just had to go back and edit "Internet" to lowercase throughout. I also have to remind myself not to capitalize or hyphenate email.

[mme-hardy.livejournal.com]

ARGH! I hit commit before I'd finished editing. Rural areas *are* covered by tax programs to extend Internet service; money has been transferred from the programs created to make sure rural areas have telephone.

[sabotabby]

I find the US rural-urban divide so hard to picture. And it's not like I'm not there regularly—it's just that culturally and geographically it shouldn't be all that different from Canada, except that it really, really is.

[mme-hardy.livejournal.com]

The divide has gotten a lot bigger since my youth. In particular, big stretches of the Plains States are emptying; farming income is marginal, and the children leave for better financial and social opportunities. Every so often somebody does a close-up story on some tiny farm town whose grocery store, bank, and pharmacy have all closed, and most of whose remaining residents are over 60.

[resonant.livejournal.com]

Parts of Nova Scotia are like that.

Melrose, NS used to have literally a thousand times more people than it does now. When my grandmother moved into a nursing home two years ago, the population halved.

She used to live in the 11 Mile House stage coach house mentioned in Wikipedia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melrose,_Nova_Scotia

[resonant.livejournal.com]

It's all abandoned houses and overgrown fields now.

The one new building you see is the post office / ambulance staging area / community hall for the region.

https://www.google.ca/maps/place/Melrose,+NS/@45.2615141,-62.0751938,5831m/data=!3m2!1e3!4b1!4m5!3m4!1s0x4b5c8752b69783ed:0x866b7735c30745a0!8m2!3d45.26152!4d-62.040174

[mme-hardy.livejournal.com]

"Since then the building was used as a Seniors Club and Community Centre and post office until it was recently demolished, along with the community softball field." Ouch ouch ouch. What happened? Destruction of the salmon run?

[resonant.livejournal.com]

Salmon fishing is seasonal. All the kids moved away for steady work. The school had black mold, and it was cheaper to tear it down and move everything to other communities than to remediate it.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Is a country the land or the people? The vast majority of the land in the United States is rural. The vast majority of the people are urban.

[sabotabby]

Both, I suppose, but I meant the population.

[resonant.livejournal.com]

At that rate, in a decade nearly everyone will be in urban areas.

[malkingrey.livejournal.com]

I wonder who's going to be growing the food to feed them all?

[mme-hardy.livejournal.com]

Either robots or zombies. Maybe kaiju.

[resonant.livejournal.com]

Agricultural robots. Combine harvesters can already run themselves, only needing humans for maintenance.