America is Pretty Awesome- in "Blue America"

Before former President Barack Obama became a national “thing” in 2008, there was John Edwards, a “made for TV” Southern Senator from North Carolina who spoke eloquently about the “Two Americas” that we lived in. Edwards was never quite able to convince the public that he had the “meat on the bones” the way President Obama did, in terms of how he could fix this problem, but Edwards was able to put his finger on the pulse of America’s divide. He identified the “Two Americas” divide, and President Obama was able to take that divide to the next political level.

Here we are after eight years of President Obama though, and the reality is that Donald Trump is now our President because no one to this date has been able to bridge the “Two America” divide. A map of America in the 2016 election would show Hillary Clinton winning literally almost every “urban” county in the country, while Donald Trump won literally everything else. If you broke out counties by economic output, Clinton won almost every highly productive county in the country, while Trump won most of the less productive ones (by raw dollars, not any other standard). Hillary Clinton won New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Houston, Dallas, and just about every other big city in between. Donald Trump won just about every county in Oklahoma, West Virginia, Alabama, and Kansas. If there was a large metro area where you were voting, Clinton won. If there wasn’t, Trump won. There is almost no crossover. We literally live in two different Americas.

I was recently reading a piece talking about the horrible 21st century we’re having. In the piece, they basically hypothesize that “elites” are so out of touch that they don’t know how terrible life is in most of America. The idea is that America since 2000 has been moving backwards for most people in terms of economic opportunity, health outcomes, and quality of life. If you ask someone in New York City if things have become worse in that period of time, they would probably say no. If you ask someone in Southeast Ohio that same question, they’d give you a different answer.

This was completely predictable, given that we are a part of a global market. A globalized market basically moves good paying jobs into “clusters,” usually around large markets (cities), where skilled laborers are most likely to be. In other words, life is great in Chicago, where much of the Midwest’s skilled work-force is likely to go. Things are not as great in rural Missouri. There is way more at work than that, but the point is that no one should be acting shocked.

It’s also worth noting that New York and Philadelphia’s economies (to name two) are not really dependent on factory and manual labor jobs anymore. That matters a lot, because it means that they are not suffering in the age of automation. The simple reality is that low-skill labor is not necessary in an economy that can have robots do those jobs cheaper. Since big cities aren’t running on low-skill labor jobs anymore, they largely don’t care about the ravages of automation. Meanwhile, much of the “Rust Belt” rural areas actually did depend on the factory jobs. With those jobs gone, the “Wal Mart” economy is now their dominate job creator. Life was a lot better in Southwest Pennsylvania in the age of the coal mine and steel factory than it is in the era of Wal Mart.

What we are now realizing is that we’re in two different countries. In the parts of the country that voted for Hillary Clinton, America is doing really well. In the parts that Donald Trump won, we need to “Make America Great Again.” Neither side is wrong, within their own reality, but neither knows much about the other’s reality. To be clear here, a sexist, racist, protectionist Donald Trump is not going to make things any more united. In fact, the political choices of both are basically diametrically opposed to each other. Electing President Obama seemed alien to more rural settings. Voting for Donald Trump is evil in San Francisco or Manhattan.

The fact that we’re coming to different answers about the state of the country based on where we live is pretty alarming. It means our shared “American experience” is no more, and we are living in some sort of new “segregated” America. In one America, this is a really great country. In the other? We needed to elect “MAGA.” I think we can all agree that in that respect, nothing has changed over the past 15 or so years.

When We Define Our Exceptionalism...

Americans like to view our nation as special. For much of our history, we have been. We put the first men on the Moon, we won the World Wars, we defeated the British and enshrined the most progressive founding documents the world had seen to that point, we built the interstate highway system, American innovators have consistently created technological breakthroughs, and we rose again after 9/11 to fight al-Qaeda- to name a few things we’ve done that were great. America has a record of being great, being exceptional as we like to tell it. In each and every one of those instances, and others, it took people actually taking action and being great. We weren’t just great because we were born in sovereign American lands. 

The thing is, we like to leave out the low-lights of our history, of which there are plenty. We had our long history of slavery, followed of course by Jim Crow. Women couldn’t vote for the first 150 or so years of our existence. There was the “Trail of Tears,” and our general treatment of native peoples here. In none of those cases did we behave exceptionally. In none of those cases were we a “great” nation. We were not great when we banned immigration for most people in 1924. We were not great when we interned the Japanese during World War II. There have been many cases in which we did not live up to our greatest values. Now, 240 years after the birth of our nation, we are dealing with another low-light episode in our history, starring Kellyanne Conway, Steve Bannon, and Donald Trump. Whether it’s denying climate change and shutting down our scientists, banning Muslims from nations that don’t do business with Donald Trump, or attacking and lying to the media, this is not going to be a high point in our history.

Once again, America will not be great just because we woke up in the United States in the morning. If America is to be great, it will be because the people who live here live up to our highest ideals. Make no mistake, it’s not going to be a pretty or fun four years- as we have seen in the cabinet approvals form Donald Trump’s team, patriotic Americans will have to deal with losing almost all of the battles that lie ahead. Congressional elections in 2018, particularly in the U.S. Senate, are almost certainly not going to yield a Democratic Congress to stop him. Trump is most likely going to serve at least a four year term, and do a lot of damage along the way. He’s going to trample on the ideals of a multi-cultural nation, he’s going to empower white nationalists and other bigots, and he’s going to tilt our economy towards billionaires like him- and we’re going to have to bare it. Just being American will not be what makes us great, as we saw during the election. How we respond to terrible negative event after terrible negative event will likely define us. Donald Trump will choke off immigration, start trade wars, take health care from millions, and do untold other horrible things. We will have minimum opportunity to stop him.

Eventually though, we will rid ourselves of Trump. We can hope that is on January 20th, 2021, but it might not be. If you want America to be an exceptional nation again, if you want us to be the nation of the Statue of Liberty, and not of a big, ugly, useless wall on our southern border, then what happens after will matter. Resist now, march, protest, and make your voice heard against this occupying regime that was selected by the system and not the majority of American voters. Fight as hard as you can. Most of all though, remember that we must convince our neighbors, our families, and our friends to come along, and make America truly great again, when we get past this dark chapter in our history. That is what exceptional nations do. That is what we must do.

When Stupid Became a Virtue

It was sometime in the year 2000 when I realized what was happening around me in America, I was watching George W. Bush speak. I was a junior in high school, and I wasn't eligible to vote yet. Now, we can debate the merits of whether or not George W. Bush was actually stupid, or whether it was an act (I believe it was mostly an act), but we cannot debate the bottom line- it helped him. I realized something as I watched him- he actually represented an alarmingly large portion of America while he butchered our language. He would be elected President that year.

The late-1990's were a different time in America. The "most important" issue in the country was whether or not it was a big deal that President Clinton had an affair with his intern. The Cold War was over, we had no rival in the world, and 9/11 hadn't happened yet, so most people in this country couldn't find the Middle East on a map. "Conspiracy theory" at that time centered around who killed the Notorious B.I.G. and Tupac Shakur. A walk down the board walk in New Jersey would entail looking at lots of "Austin 3:16" and "The Rock" shirts. The entire 1990's could be summed up by Seinfeld.

I consider the 1990's to be the golden age of my life, the best of times, period. With that said, it's not difficult to trace the line from those days in the late-1990's, through the Bush years, to the point we're at today- the era of Trump. I recently read an article blaming our current state of affairs on the TV show "Friends," and while I wouldn't entirely put this mess on that, the basic point is 100% true- We made it a virtue to be stupid. From that piece:

The show ended in 2004. The same year that Facebook began, the year that George W. Bush was re-elected to a second term, the year that reality television became a dominant force in pop culture, with American Idol starting an eight-year reign of terror as the No. 1 show in the U.S., the same year that Paris Hilton started her own “lifestyle brand” and released an autobiography. And Joey Tribbiani got a spin-off TV show. The year 2004 was when we completely gave up and embraced stupidity as a value. Just ask Green Day; their album American Idiot was released in 2004, and it won the Grammy for Best Rock Album. You can’t get more timely. The rejection of Ross marked the moment when much of America groaned, mid-sentence, at the voice of reason.

Yes, my theory is that Friends may have triggered the downfall of western civilization. You might think I’m crazy. But to quote Ross: “Oh, am I? Am I? Am I out of my mind? Am I losing my senses?” Did you know the song that originally accompanied the Friends pilot episode was R.E.M.’s “It’s the End of the World as We Know (And I Feel Fine).” A blissful song with an apocalyptic message that goes largely ignored.

I was a teacher in 2004. I coached our school’s chess club. I saw how my students were picked on, bullied. I tried my best to defend them, but I couldn’t be everywhere. My students were smart, huge nerds, and they were in hostile, unfriendly territory. Other students would be waiting outside my room to ambush the chess club members who met in my room every day at lunch. During my tenure as a teacher, I gained the reputation of being a slayer of bullies and defender of nerds. I promise you: bullies can be mean, but they knew Mr. Hopkins was much worse.

Maybe intellectuals have always been persecuted and shoved in lockers, but something in my gut tells me we’re at a low point — where social media interaction has replaced genuine debate and political discourse, where politicians are judged by whether we’d want to have a beer with them, where scientific consensus is rejected, where scientific research is underfunded, where journalism is drowning in celebrity gossip.

I see Kim Kardashian’s ass at the top of CNN.com, and I am scared.

It's hard to argue with much of that. Ross, the smart guy on the show, is depicted as weak, inept, and just not cool in general. He has to chase around Rachel, who really isn't that smart, and fails basically for the entire show. He is not depicted as the winner in the show. In fact, it's hard to find anyone in the show depicted as more of a loser.

Intelligence is not an American value. To be fair, America has done some really intelligent things- an interstate highway system, NASA, built amazing Skylines, earthquake-resistant buildings, anything done by the Army Corps of Engineers, amazing research at universities, even the internet- but we don't view Silicon Valley or Manhattan as the epicenter of American life. American identity is much less vested in Ernest Moniz, and much more so in Donald Trump. We don't elect the "smart" or qualified candidates for President, like Hillary Clinton or John Kerry, but we elect the "cool" ones- as we've seen time and time again.

We like balance in our debate, even if that "balance" puts climate deniers on the same pedestal as scientists. Frankly, we don't like scientists, I don't like scientists, because they tell me behaviors I like (like eating a Big Mac) aren't good for me, and I shouldn't do them. Intelligence challenges the norms, it challenges our way of life, and we don't like it. What we like is strength, particularly in men.

I actually think we crossed the tipping point when Sarah Palin was elevated to a national platform, but it's unfair to blame her for being unprepared and incapable. Palin was essentially a byproduct of years of "priming" of the pump towards stupidity. It began when everything was bliss, under Bill Clinton. It reached a fevered pitch in 2016, when we elected a reality TV star over Bill Clinton's wife. Where we go from here is truly uncertain to me, but I am quite concerned that we will continue to elevate "stupid" as a virtue. We certainly don't value intelligence, deep thought, and learning as the key virtues to success today.