The “Hate-Bite” machines, in ‘”1984” fashion after the recent
speech, are pumping out prepared responses with wild fury now. I don’t
understand. Is partisan enthusiasm now the measure by which we measure our love
of America”
I hope not, for I worry about other things.
From where I sit this morning, I could, within an hour,
drive through a dozen communities, once vibrant home-towns for thousands upon
thousands of hard-working Americans. Now those communities are near-empty or, at best,
half-empty shells, devastated by the economic turns of the last 60 years or so.
Perhaps most of the decline resulted from the inevitable economic
changes that swept through an area based on an agricultural economy. As hard as
it might be to face, race also figures into the history of the decline. White flight has been the most prevalent response to economic decline so far.
At any rate, it seems to be that most of the remaining citizens
of these communities are those waiting to move, or those waiting to die. The vacant
buildings and cracked concrete slabs bear mute testimony to this. Should one
even attempt to run a business in one of these towns, the only activity they
would see would be the delivery trucks bearing products purchased on the Internet, or friends
waving as they drive by heading 30 miles or so to the nearest Walmart.
Oh, we do studies and hire experts to tell us how to “revitalize”
such places. They draw pictures of pedestrian trails with kids waving from their
bicycles, and write reports from, to quote Alistair Cook, “warm places and on full stomachs.” Their proposals scatter terms like “empowerment,” “sense of place,”
“branding,” and other such silly crap.
As their findings are being published, another family leaves town with its life’s belongings stacked “Joad-like” in an ancient vehicle.
We even sometimes send squads of college students down to
tell these folks how to obliterate decades of economic deprivation, something
we can feel quite confident that those kids know a lot about. (Sarcasm alert for
the Ivy-League educated).
Although issues facing other geographic areas lie well
outside my meager and modest area of expertise, I’m sure I could drive farther,
to the north and east, and find once prosperous industrial cities in similar
states of despair.
For those unfamiliar with the areas of which I speak, the
folks there don’t give a flying fig about who stood and how many times they
applauded the president during his speech, nor do I. They don’t carry a lot of voting
power, so the corporations don’t spend much money courting them.
We've left seeds of potential disaster, though. There are socio-economic “chickens” in such towns, just waiting for the chance to seek a new place
to roost. I believe this represent a real problem to be addressed.
If a stable and unified society doesn’t address them, the gangs, drug dealers,
and firearms industry will. They are awfully good at it.
“How does this affect me?” one might ask, from behind the walls of
a gated community in a homogeneous and wealthy enclave. Good question.
On answer might include this. What could result from what I
call the “Willie Sutton” effect?” In other words, what if young, angry, impoverished, and hopeless folks
should realize that you live “where the money is?”
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| Tell them Willie sent you. |
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