[MannoFr]

http://www.thestranger.com/2004-11-11/feature.html




THE URBAN ARCHIPELAGO
It's the Cities, Stupid.

From news article:


It's time to state something that we've felt for a long time but have been too polite to say out loud: Liberals, progressives, and Democrats do not live in a country that stretches from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from Canada to Mexico. We live on a chain of islands. We are citizens of the Urban Archipelago, the United Cities of America. We live on islands of sanity, liberalism, and compassion--New York City, Chicago, Philadelphia, Seattle, St. Louis, Minneapolis, San Francisco, and on and on. And we live on islands in red states too--a fact obscured by that state-by-state map. Denver and Boulder are our islands in Colorado; Austin is our island in Texas; Las Vegas is our island in Nevada; Miami and Fort Lauderdale are our islands in Florida. Citizens of the Urban Archipelago reject heartland "values" like xenophobia, sexism, racism, and homophobia, as well as the more intolerant strains of Christianity that have taken root in this country. And we are the real Americans. They--rural, red-state voters, the denizens of the exurbs--are not real Americans. They are rubes, fools, and hate-mongers. Red Virginia prohibits any contract between same-sex couples. Compassionate? Texas allows the death penalty to be applied to teenaged criminals and has historically executed the mentally retarded. (When the Supreme Court ruled executions of the mentally retarded unconstitutional in 2002, Texas officials, including Governor Rick Perry, responded by claiming that the state had no mentally retarded inmates on death row--a claim the state was able to make because it does not test inmates for mental retardation.) Dumb? The Sierra Club has reported that Arkansas, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Alabama, and Tennessee squander over half of their federal transportation money on building new roads rather than public transit.

[doctorzlo]

Not bitter at all. Kind of like Bill Hicks, but a lot angrier. I don't think there is anything cynical, satiric or bitter in that. I think it's a pure statement of aims and goals in light of what's possible to achieve. I honestly believe you have to be some kind of masochist to want to Tikkun Olam a world that not only doesn't want it, but hates you for trying. There are no more national issues.

So let's call a spade a spade, shall we? Let's give the Alabamas and South Carolinas their head. Let's allow them to form their own feudalistic enclaves with whatever opressive retrograde bigoted laws and mores they want. They can outlaw anything they can bring back prayer in school, hell they can bring back the lash and the pillory too. Screw em. Give them their local issues. Let the guy from Oklahoma put monitors in the girls bathrooms because of, and I quote "Rampant lesbianism that goes on there" unquote. Let red states make performing abortions a capital offence. With any luck someone they 'save' can someday grow up to the be the state's executioner.....because life is precious and god loves you....

This is what I say. Accept that there are really are different Americas and maybe we need to explore the notion of state's rights in a new way. Stop fighting for people who don't share the same goals. Instead of working against them, just stop. We can work a lot more effectively if we work to protect our interests instead of trying to impose our interests on them. And at the same time resist their interests being imposed on us.

I've been to North Dakota, they can have it. Rural heartland god gays and guns lilly white christian America is not the goal. That's not where our future lies. Maybe in some ridiculous 'security mom' fantasy it is but not in the real world. We had a phrase for that once: Ein Volk. Our future is actually, in the future; in cities, capitalism, urban development. In opening not closing the country to foreign students, to welcoming people who are different from us. We complain that Saudi Arabia negates its own future when it discards 50% of its human capital that is female. Are we that different? We've got Senators now who say, as part of their campaign that married women should not be allowed to be teachers because they should be home cranking out babies, and single women shouldn't be teachers either because they might be gay. This is not a man bites dog story - this is normal. So I say again, screw em. Let them burn witches and outlaw libraries, let them rip a page from the Taliban. I'm sure I don't care.

[Ifroham4]

Like I said, the Jaberwocky Party never existed. And it never will.

I just don't believe that electing Kerry would've solved most of these problems. That's neither here nor there. In either case it's irrelevant. In two years or 1 year that will ring hollow. "We're not CANNIBALS, yet...."

As I see it now, Dems just want to raise taxes, mostly overtly, by taxing everything other than people's incomes, in order to finance the programs we have in place. The largest tax increases I experienced as a tax paying adult were under Reagan, Bush-I and now this one. That 600 dollar loan I got from George was the most expensive 600 dollars I ever got. Every single one of my taxes both direct and imputed has increased and I live in a red state.

The moderate Reps would rather work to improve the system and make it more efficient. Like who? Show me one and show what they are capable of wresting out of this mess? Whoich committees do they chair, which governorships?

[softy54534]

Very true.

What's wrong is the extreme Right approach to just about everything both rural and urban.

And same can be said about the extreme left. While the larger cities still hold their traditional "blue" status, there aren't really that many differences between the urban Democrats and Republicans. In general, there aren't many, if any, differences in regards to social policies, and it is more a matter of minor differences in budgeting and funding of local governments.

[9mm_fan]

Nonsense. You just have to cut your losses and move on. This insane notion that the Democrats can recover by being "Conservative Lite" and all they need is yet one more Southern Centrist Governor who stands for the same things the Conservatives do minus prayer in schools is well, it's insane.

Few people realize that most of the US is big blank depopulated nothing and when they bash the 'east coast elites' they're really talking about a hundred mile wide swath of the Atlantic coast from Washington to Boston where over a hundred million Americans live. As if they're the enemy.

It would be as if someone in your country decided that Tel Aviv was its own country and didn't really have to be counted at all.

I live in Redneckistan and I say screw them and their agenda and if any of those intolerant biblehead hypocrites want to reach across the aisle I'd cut their hands off. Because their version of compromise is me shutting up and they get to do whatever in hell pops into their heads. Their view of conciliation is me becoming just like them. I didn't create the most divided country since perhaps the Civil War but I'm sure as hell not going to conceed in the name of appeasement either.

I sincerely want these people to get their head, to overreach and have it come crashing down around them. And every single person who peeped "well I really disagree with everything they stand for but I really like how he's going to .....(fill in the blank)" should be able to look on with pride, I hope, at the lunar landscape and a country full of scared redneck Cotton Mather wannabes that they helped create.

I see the blue states ripping a page from the Republican playbook on states rights and self interest. Did you notice that you don't hear too much about those sacrosanct states rights from the Conservatives anymore now that they own the Federal government...could it be they were just being cynical? Ya Think? What the blue states can do is simply execute on a local level and toss all the highminded national agendas out the window. What works for urban centers works and the hell with everything else. Maybe your pickup truck will keep you warm on those cold coal sulphur fired nights out in Trailerland.

[Lillie_Steins]

Rudy was a useful tool, good for his time but let me tell you that if the law were different and he could have run another term he would have gotten his head handed to him. He alienated so many people that its unlikely he'd get more than 40% of the vote. At any rate, point taken. Problem is that all those guys like Pataki and Arnold are just kowtowing to the machine. None of them is going to piss off the evil empire. So they really don't enter into the equation.

[Paul Bunyan]

Howeever, I have to disagree with Mediocrates. I think the best possible outcome is to have more moderate Republicans, of the type that want a small and efficient government, but aren't willing to forsake basic governmental services or to push the Christian reconstructionist agenda. I'm not a registered Republican, but I usually vote in the Republican primaries to give support to the Republican moderates.

No that's the same unattainable utopian fantasy levelled against the 'liberals'. You have the biggest government in history, courtesy of small government Republicans, you have a progressive dismemberment of services both at the Federal and state level....because no one wants to pay for it. Fact is, look at the color map - all those people who are UTTERLY opposed to what you suggest are in control in virtually every county and every Congressional district (counted as a raw number). They are the people in charge, they are the people pushing the far right agenda, they are the ones pushing for the dismemberment of SS, for massive tax cuts and massive deficits. They are the ones who have turned reproductive rights into a holy cause. And make no mistake; no one will be spared. They are the ones clamoring for public funding of religious schools, of religious tests for public office, for a doubling, tripling of the prison population in America. They are the ones pushing a two-tiered citizenship mentality: white christian hetero, and everyone else.

If you are not worried then I seriously don't understand what's wrong with you.

And all I'm saying is this. Give them quarter where it makes practical tactical sense to do so. We are never going to get social programs,environmental laws, labor laws, and a continuance of LBJ's Great Society, etc. restarted there. Hell, I'd settle for Nixon at this point. But what you'll get is a grim red state hate fueled dream of greed and self interest cloaked in values, few of you even claim to support but are willing to go along with for god knows what reason.

Well, I don't really care who's with me. You elected this mess, you live with it.

[Big A]

I'm glad you agree with me. It's about the Urban zones. Screw the hinterland.