Antebellum Era of the American Suburb

Think of this as Volume 14, Number 3 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

It's
easy to see 1896 Thomas E. Watson Populism in today's Republican Party.
But despite the cooling of the economic fever, the anger against
President Obama and Democrats generally feels more like that of 1860.

Why?

I have decided the answer lies in the American suburb.

I grew up in an early suburb, on Long Island. It was an unreal beginning.

Suburbs
have little connection to any other form of reality. They are isolated
from the cities they depend upon, by freeways and distance.

They
are isolated from the land as well. Food comes from the supermarket.
The wild is completely tamed. What ecosystem exists is dominated by
dogs and cats. Hunting is a hobby, a game, and killing is called sport.

What
history will one day say, I believe, is that this suburban idyll had
much in common with the American South before the Civil War. Freeways
were our cotton gins. They were an invention that let us keep reality at arms-length, and if
reality intruded on our neighborhood we could move further out, then further.

It
was a magical time, which can lead to magical thinking. We ignored the
government that made possible the schools and hospitals and freeways we depended upon .
We pretended we were entirely self-made. The sacrifices were in the past. We indulged ourselves.

The
Greatest Generation had made these sacrifices. The Baby Boom took them
for granted. We rebelled, some of us, against the good on behalf of
perfection, and when we were put down we grew into our roles within the
suburb, thinking this unreal land was the only reality.

But
it's not. What Georgia is doing to its urban forest is little different from what Brazil is doing to its rain forest. It's an unsustainable "ecosystem," dependent entirely on the outside world. Among the side effects are isolation and
self-delusion. We think that a world that serves us is a natural order.
It's not.

So
from inside our comforts we blame the rest of the world for our stupidity. Getting fat isn't our
fault. Our kids growing up on TV and video games isn't our fault.
Pollution isn't our fault. Crime isn't our fault. Isolated even from the basic functions of government, we see government as the enemy — unless it's killing someone else. Anyone who thinks differently must be an
enemy, one we can destroy at a distance, just like on a video screen.

As
the suburban era has gone on the suburban house has grown. It began as
a small place, on a small lot, a few miles from a train station. It
evolved into McMansions, on half acre lots, 60 miles or more from the
city. The only way to get anywhere — to get some milk, to see a friend, to exercise — is a half-hour drive by car.

It's
all so much like the Antebellum South. When the land in the east was
played out the planters moved west. They became isolated in
increasingly enormous mansion houses, ignoring the suffering their
unreal lives were causing, thinking themselves natural men, when they
were in fact little different from the dandies of late 18^th century France.

Thus
we've had a generation of politicians who fed the isolation, teaching an ideology that is increasingly magical.

• Since 9-11 we have had murdered, in our
  names, over 100 innocent Muslims for every life lost in the towers, yet
  we are still unsatisfied.
• We
  pretend that we can burn carbon indefinitely and nothing bad will
  happen.
  
• We pretend that politics can reject science.
  
• We refuse to take
  responsibility for anything politicians have done in our name – the
  war, the debt, the economy, the dysfunctional health system, the
  growing inequality of education.
  

It's fine in our cul de sacs, we say –
“the other” must just be lazy or jealous of us. They're trying to take
it away from us.

They must be destroyed. Panic is the natural response but it's immature.

Arming
ourselves is the ultimate delusion. We turn our homes and cars into arsenals and
think we can take on armies. We are kings who are threatened by outside
forces.

But
we have done all this to ourselves. Just as in the Antebellum South,
America's suburbanites have grown lazy, and fat, and passed on these
values, while the world around us has earned away our markets and
professional titles.

Not all, of course. There are good people everywhere. Where land has run out, as in the northeast, or where distances have become too large, as in California, many people have stopped running and started dealing. 

The deliverance of the suburbs is possible, and it is at hand.

Suburbs must become self-sustaining. Having offices, having centers, having government services that work for everyone in the community — these are possible everywhere. Suburbs can cooperate, not just with one another but with the cities that birthed and sustain them. Suburbs still have the opportunity to sustain their waterways rather than paving them over, creating opportunities for wildlife. And they have the chance to gain a new relationship with wildlife generally, allowing natural predation instead of the unnatural kind.

But in "Tea Party Land," especially in the exurbs of Texas and the Confederacy, the rejection of reality has left people entirely unhinged, especially in the face of a new Thesis that is grounded in it, and which seeks to use the words "we" were taught — responsibility, hard work — against "us."

Some hard facts for y'all.

Today's
Mexican immigrants are just like your grandfathers. They have nothing
but a willingness to work hard, to save every penny, and to raise up
their families to join them. Today's Indian immigrants are just like
your fathers, using their education, constantly seeking more, taking
every opportunity presented while you sit on your ass and complain
about it. Our future depends on sustaining immigrants and on changing our own attitudes toward education and hard work, to compete with them and alongside them.

The
future has always belongs to those who work hard, who learn constantly,
who are connected to their family and neighborhoods, and who remain
connected to what is real. This is the real threat of China and India. They're working their butts off to make their communities and lives better. What are you doing?

In
America's cities our neighbors are
close. There is no way to raise high the drawbridge. We can see who is
succeeding, and who is failing. We know that investment must be
continual, that you're either coming up or going down, that time wounds
all heals, that there are many names for God, all of which he answers
to. Just as he answers all hearts, and the prayers of all colors.

Many of our cities are broken, but many can be mended. It starts by their becoming better suburbs. Their answers are listed above.

So this is the political divide that defines what is happening. The suburbs imagine their own reality, and are ready to fight for it. They will condemn me as they condemn the President. They will not negotiate, they will not equivocate, they will not compromise, they will not deal. They will fight, most with ballots but some (unfortunately) with bullets.

Against them is arrayed everyone with a Clue — white, black, brown, Asian, gay, female, educated or just hard-working. The cities keep growing outward, consuming older suburbs. Rural America is gaining new immigrants from cities and universities, anxious to deal with reality.

The suburbs are increasingly beleaguered, increasingly isolated. They want to fight back, but all that's against them is their fellow Americans. 

So what happens now? Every crisis has echoes of the deep past within it, but it usually proceeds much like the one immediately preceding. That's why Obama is Nixon. He will be able to feed the Left only rhetoric until Democrats become united enough, organized enough, and determined enough to do what the New Right did a generation ago — fight for this thesis and for its validation. 

Barack Obama may never see the consensus he seeks. But we can. Yes, we can. It will just take time.