Sexism Visible

I am a science fiction fan, and I am a mystery fan, and I am also a fan of book deals, so I subscribe to the Amazon Kindle Daily Deals list.  When books are two or three bucks, you tend to be open to trying new things.

Or old ones.  I've had a tendency to purchase books by classic science fiction and mystery authors whose titles I remember seeing on the shelves of the used bookstore I worked at in Boston. Stuff that was popular in the 70s and 80s. The series about the rabbi detective; the series about the journalist with a cat; the wizard in spite of himself, and so on. Some of them are remarkably decent.  Certainly I was pleasantly surprised by the Dorothy Sayers mystery series and Agatha Christie.

Lately I have found, though, that any narrative pleasure is severely diminished by the rampant sexism in these old genre stories--even those written by women! Maybe it is the Me Too movement, or maybe I am just getting old(er) and (more) curmudgeonly.  I no longer have patience for characters who judge women by the attractiveness of their bare knees (or more erogenous features).

I am aware of the recent hullabaloo in the fantasy/science fiction fan universe over the increasing popularity and success of feminist, gender- and race-inclusive, and politically concerned work.  Such work has always been among my favorite (I'm thinking of Ursula K. LeGuin, here, but there are certainly others) and I am glad that more of it is being recognized now.

As for series like The Cat Who... and The Warlock in Spite of Himself, I'm just done.  I guess that stuff used to be invisible to me.  Maybe the impact of Me Too is that none of it is invisible anymore.

Unsubscribed

After years of getting so many emails, from stores I no longer shop at, political organizations I really don't want to hear from, and restaurants that I ate at once, I am unsubscribing with determination.

For a long time I kept the political emails because I was an inveterate petition signer.  But having been persuaded that petitions don't really make a difference (for the issue being addressed), those emails (so many!) became just so much spam.  In the current environment, I am really trying to avoid outrage triggers.  They are so ubiquitous!

So my email box is becoming a lot leaner and we will see how my anxiety levels respond over the next weeks.

Substitution in Thinking about Activists

There is something so very wrong when college students are subject to racial epithets and ugly vandalism and nothing is done, as has happened at Missouri State University. Now, because the football team decided to strike, there are at least some administrative changes in the offing, but there is still not much clarity around how the racist behavior at the root of current events will be addressed. 

And when the protesting students make (perhaps) a misjudgment (the refusal to tolerate a media photographer at their tent city on campus), the world rushes to condemn them.

As if pushing one reporter away outweighs addressing any harm the students have suffered and will suffer due to entrenched racism in the university community.

I suppose it is because racism makes us so uncomfortable. We much prefer to believe it doesn’t exist, or if it does, then it isn’t our responsibility to fix. 

The other night I was glued to Twitter, reading a conversation between Roxane Gay (who recently spoke at the Humanities Festival here in Chicago) her friend, sociologist Dr. Tressie Cottom, and David Simon, the former journalist who created the great television series The Wire and Treme. David Simon was arguing for absolute freedom of the press, criticizing the protestors for barring access to photographer Tim Tai. Gay and Cottom were making a more nuanced argument, accounting for the protesters’ wariness of media and their desire to foster a safe space.

What stunned me most was how much Twitter energy was going into arguing over this incident—one viral video. This was more worth discussing than how we fix the real problems that those protesters are facing? Tim Tai himself tweeted, “Just want to reiterate that while I think we need to talk about the 1st Am issues from today, the larger story is not about that.”

Yet The Twitter conversation went on! I was deeply disappointed in David Simon, although this discussion has been proposed as an example of a useful debate on Twitter.

Can we have multiple conversations (e.g., about racism and about the importance of the first amendment)? It seems like we ought to be able to. But when one conversation is difficult, we tend to supplant the difficult conversation with the easier one. And if the easier one involves switching blame to the victims we might be complicit in harming, so much the better.

We not only get to avoid the difficult conversation, but we get to weasel out of our responsibility to fix the root problem. It’s like focusing on a rape victim’s tacky fashion sense, or—even more typically—focusing on the shoplifting activity of an unarmed teen killed by police.

I don’t know what stops this. Per Daniel Kahneman (Thinking, Fast and Slow), answering an easier question when we’re asked a hard one is something we just do. Recognizing that we do it is one step forward, but only the first.

P.S. Good article by Roxane Gay on student activism here.

Eric Oliver at the Chicago Humanities Festival

Last night at the Chicago Humanities Festival we saw Eric Oliver, a professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago, who gave a talk about American magical thinking. He sets up a dichotomy between what he calls “tangible” and “symbolic” thinking, which is best exemplified by a survey he describes, in which respondents are asked whether they would rather stab a photo of their family four times or stick their hand in a jar of slimy worms. Or spend the night in a beautiful house in which a family had been murdered versus spend the night in a seedy bus station. Would you rather wear pajamas that belonged to Charles Manson or pick up a nickel from the street and put it in your mouth?  

The gist of these questions is probably clear. The first items in these pairs are symbolically (and negatively) resonant but don’t cause actual harm, while the second items carry real risk. Oliver found that people who consistently choose to avoid the symbolic negative resonance (and bear the real risk) tend to have other magical beliefs, such as beliefs in angels, conspiracy theories, the idea that we are living in biblical end-times, or the healing power of crystals.

Oliver connects his work to that of Daniel Kahneman, who, in his Thinking, Fast and Slow describes how we frequently use cognitive shortcuts that lead to wrong results. For example, if a ball and bat together cost $1.10, and the bat costs $1.00 more than the ball, how much is the ball? 

Did you come up with 10 cents?  Think again. 

Similarly, if the asking price of a house is $400,000 we tend to believe its value is something around that, but the asking price is not relevant to its value. Determining value from scratch, though, is very difficult question. Starting with the asking price is a convenient shortcut, even if we are effectively answering a different (easier) question.

Oliver traces the surprising post-enlightenment persistence of magical beliefs to uncertainty—which he sees as always at the root of magical thinking. For example, a tribal fishing culture he discussed had few magical beliefs around river fishing, which they understood very well; however, there was a whole set of magical beliefs arranged around deep-sea fishing, which was fraught with dangers and offered uncertain rewards.

Magical thinking, then, is a kind of cognitive shortcut we use when we are uncertain or uncomfortable. While this explains particular beliefs—for example, uncertainty and discomfort about the finality of death leads some to believe in reincarnation—it’s not as clear how such beliefs are effectively tackled. Indeed, Oliver was asked that question and didn’t have a good answer.

Because we have a political discourse that is plagued by magical thinking and the denial of science, this is very troubling.

Post-Benghazi

Yesterday’s Benghazi hearing session with Hillary Clinton was likely a watershed moment for her presidential campaign. As one pundit (Jeet Heer) put it on Twitter yesterday:

Most Dems like Hillary but a sizeable minority have doubts. That changed tonight. Now almost all will want to be in her corner in a fight.

I was reminded of how I felt during the 2008 campaign, when the Clinton team was attacking Obama. I went from being ambivalent (thinking we’d do great with either as a candidate for president) to feeling very emotionally tied to Obama’s candidacy. Jeet Heer refers to a feeling of wanting to be on the same side as a winner in the tweet above, but for me this combines with wanting to stand with someone who is being bullied.  That sympathy is just crucial, and I hadn’t really had it before.

I’ve been a Sanders supporter—his politics are much closer to mine than Hillary’s are. And if you had asked me about Hillary last week, I would have shrugged and said I’d vote for her, but I didn’t especially like her.

Now I like her. I hope Sanders continues to run, but I doubt he’ll be able to overtake Hillary at this point. The hearing has provided her with an opportunity to act truly presidential (the kind of president we'd like to see): measured, unflappable, commanding.  

Bonuses for Poor Performance

Like a lot of people, my reading of political news gets increasingly voracious as Election Day nears.  This morning I was struck by this article from the New York Times, which discusses the surprising fact that the Romney campaign is hurting for money.

This is surprising because for a long time we've been hearing about how Republican supporters have been pouring money into this campaign, particularly the very rich.  But PAC money is not campaign money, and the fact that most of Romney's money comes from the wealthy turns out to be a bit of a problem--only a fraction of their contributions become campaign funds; the rest goes to the Republican National Committee.

What particularly struck me, though, was where some of Romney's campaign money has gone: bonuses.

The day after accepting the Republican nomination, Mr. Romney gave what appeared to be $192,440 in bonuses to senior campaign staff members. At least nine aides received payments...

I am not sure whether such bonuses are common practice for campaigns, but I suspect not, since the reporter notes that they are "likely to draw grumbles from Mr. Romney’s allies."  Even if bonuses for outstanding performance are common, what performance is being rewarded in this case?  Making it through a terrific convention? Really?  Does anybody remember anything about it except the Clint Eastwood weirdness?

No.  So these folks are getting bonuses in spite of poor performance, and in an organization that's hurting for cash.


Really? That's what the "businessman candidate" does?

I can't say I'm surprised; that's how a lot of financial companies do it, as we all learned during the last crash. We also learned how well that worked: rewarding risk-takers for losing bets, even rewarding them for winning some bets when most of the organization's bets are being lost--it's not a strategy for stability, growth, or even survival.

It's a strategy for fail.

The Challenge for Africa

Wangari Maathai, of Kenya, won the Nobel Peace Prize for her work with the Green Belt Movement in 2004. Victor and I had the opportunity to hear her speak here in Chicago last winter and found her tremendously inspiring. Almost as soon as we got home, I ordered a few of her books, and this one is the first I've completed.

It's not a long book, but not a page-turner, either. I read it in snatches while I ate breakfast or lunch at the dining room table. Maathai presents a lucid, convincing account of how Africa got where it is and how the continent as a whole can move forward. She is able to rationalize why Africa's people have tolerated so much bad government and still express urgency and hope about ending such tolerance.

Her vision for a sustainble future for Africa, one which encompasses environmental sustainability as well as economic growth, is persuasive. I was struck by the parallels between what she describes in Africa and what has been going on here.

We are really not so far apart.

Can We Talk (about Credibility)?

The HuffPost headline says "McCain's Revenge" and the media is lapping up the losing 2008 presidential candidate's excoriation of the stimulus bill, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, and President Obama's ethics.

Let's take these one at a time. McCain says the stimulus "really is a bad bill." Does he present any alternative?

Sure: the Republicans have consistently pushed for more tax cuts for wealthy Americans and corporations, as well as less government regulation, which is exactly the set of policies that that landed us in the mess we're in. Apart from McCain's much-publicized admission that he's relatively ignorant of economic issues and would be relying on advisors who have since been largely discredited, what has he done to establish any credibility in this area?

He smears Timothy Geithner by blaming him for the mismanagement of the first TARP installment because he was a "key advisor"--maybe he's forgotten that the people in charge of the TARP were Bush appointees?

And then he questions the President's commitment to his own ethics standards by pointing to nominees who have been withdrawn. This from a guy whose closest advisors were lobbyists for industries that have been instrumental in causing our economic problems.

I am sick of seeing Republicans in the media. They have brought us war-by-choice, torture-as-SOP, and civil rights-as-luxury, flushed our economy down the toilet, and continually stonewalled efforts to protect the planet and limit climate change. Their ideas have held sway for a solid 8 years (and I think a case could be made that they held sway for 28) and have left us in a place substantially worse than we were before they took over.

This is not a partisan observation. We are less healthy, less educated, less wealthy, less respected in the world--you name the area; we are almost certainly worse off.

And now we have a president who has been elected to lead us to a better future, and all the Republicans can do is call names.

I guess that's all they could ever do, since their ideas are bankrupt. Well, I hope they have fun getting advice from Joe the Plumber. He'll surely keep their ideas in the mainstream.

Oh. Most Americans don't hate Social Security? Well, doubtless if Joe knows best, along with Mr. "The fundamentals of our economy are sound."

Today's GOP: Stagnation You Can Believe In

Republican legislators are delaying the confirmation of Eric Holder as Attorney General because they are worried that he will prosecute U.S. agents for torture.

(They have expressed no particular concern about U.S. agents engaging in torture.)

Other legislators are delaying the confirmation of environmental nominees Lisa Jackson and Nancy Sutley reportedly as part of a strategy to derail the appointment of Carol Browner to the newly created Climate/Energy czar cabinet position and delay/weaken action against global warming.

Now, I hear they're objecting to Obama's new ethics rules.

Does the GOP think this is the way to win elections? As the pro-torture, anti-environment, anti-ethics party?

Good luck with that, GOP.

Obama's Inauguration Speech

Graphically.

Back to the Future

I want to live in the universe this newspaper is reporting from.

Garrison Keillor (almost) Gets It Right

Very amusing article today. I would beg to differ on one point, though: Chicago has been cool for a long time.

Admittedly, Obama is making it cooler.

Another Letter to the Editor

I just got an email from Al Gore's Repower America asking me to send a letter to the editor about renewable energy. Here's what I wrote:

The unprecedented environmental, national security, and economic challenges we face share a common thread: energy.

Our dependence on dirty fuels wreaks environmental devastation; our dependence on foreign energy sources poses tremendous security risks; our dependence on increasingly scarce (and expensive) natural resources renders our economy unsustainable.

We can address all three of these formidable challenges by Repowering America with 100 percent clean electricity within 10 years, as Al Gore has proposed. Details on the plan are available at repoweramerica.org. Key steps include energy efficiency, generation of power from renewable sources, and an upgraded national power grid.

The result will be high-paying green jobs, lower energy costs, reduced foreign debt, increased security, and (not least) decreased impact on global climate change.

I want our leaders to know that we in Chicago understand it's time for big solutions.

I've done these before, but never got published (I mean, using these automated tools. I did get a letter published in the Boston Herald that I had sent by snail mail, but that was more than 20 years ago. OUCH!). But maybe if enough people send letters on this subject, some of them will be published.

Which is what counts.

Obama Love

I find that in spite of the election being over, I am still obsessed with Obama and company. Here are some videos and links that make me smile and/or feed my obsession.

Obama supporter of the parrot persuasion:



True facts about Rahm Emanuel.

Hip hop Obama:



Obama pictures that make me weepy.

That's all I can think of right now. More later.

Obama's Luck, and Other Inantities

I went to a panel Friday here in Chicago (in which kos happened to be participating) about the recent election, what it means, etc.. Along with kos, the panel included Laura Washington and Lynn Sweet of the Chicago Sun-Times, Jonathan Alter of Newsweek, and was moderated by Charles Madigan of the Chicago Tribune. Per Laura Washington, who happens to be African-American (the sole African-American member of the panel), as she discussed the enormous about of luck Barack Obama has had in his life and career, Obama is also lucky in that he is “not African American.”

WTF?

Did I hear that right?

Yes: she said it again. Because he doesn’t share (in his blood, presumably) this country’s history of slavery, he’s not African-American.

And this makes him lucky.

Ironically, before I heard Washington make this comment, before the panel started, I fell into conversation with a couple of (white, 60-ish) women sitting near me. They appreciated the historic nature of Obama’s candidacy, but wanted to be clear that Obama didn’t get their vote because he was black.

OK, that wasn’t why he got my vote, either.

Then one of the women pointed out that he was “both” (white and black). I mentioned this Garry Trudeau cartoon, which had me laughing till I cried the day after the election.

Then the other woman said, “But I think he should remember that he’s half white.”

WTF?

The first woman pointed out that he could hardly forget that, having been raised in a white family.

“Well, of course he knows it, but he should…” I can’t remember the exact words. “…act like it?”

Thankfully, the panel started before I could formulate a response. And then, in her introductory remarks, Laura Washington said Obama is not African-American.

Well, guess what. That’s exactly what he is. Having a father from Kenya makes him African-American, just as my husband’s having parents from Germany and Egypt makes him German-Egyptian American. My two grandparents from Hungary, one from Poland, and Russian great-grandparents make me another kind of mutt (mutt, by the way, appears to be the new black).

The fact is, there is nothing particularly lucky about being born nonwhite in America. It’s not like bigots ask you to fill out a genealogical questionnaire before they discriminate against you.

I’m paraphrasing kos here: you want to talk about lucky? Being born George W Bush—that’s lucky.

Being born half-white, half-Kenyan and being raised by your single white mom and/or your grandparents—for most people that would fall under the category of lemons out of which you try to make lemonade.

By definition, we are all lucky: whatever happens to us is largely a matter of chance. But luck does not define how we respond to and leverage what happens to us. That is defined by character, skill, knowledge, experience, and other highly personal qualities (partly genetic, no doubt, but also willfully, effortfully developed).

I am frankly sick of commentary about Obama’s “luck”—whether it’s inanity about his not being African-American, or the “luck” of the financial crisis occurring when it did, or the “luck” that the Jeremiah Wright business came up so early.

The fact is that Barack Obama has proven able, over and over again, to master the circumstances he’s been presented with. That’s not luck. That’s a demonstration of the kind of skills we need in a president, after having suffered one who managed to squander just about every bit of luck that ever came his way.

Lawrence Lessig at the Chicago Humanities Festival

Last night's talk by Lawrence Lessig was pretty phenomenal. He gave a very effective presentation on the influence of money in politics, basically contending that its most pernicious effect is the obliteration of trust--the people's trust in their government.

You can view the presentation here.

And if you want to join the movement to change congress, you can learn more here.

FYI, Lessig is also the founder of Creative Commons.

Goodbye, Chicago Tribune

Today, I called to cancel our subscription to the Sunday Chicago Tribune. I wrote this letter (submitted online) to explain why:

My husband and I moved to Chicago about four years ago, and shortly afterward began our subscription to the Chicago Tribune. Only Sundays, because we frankly haven’t time to read the newspaper daily. Like many people, we spend so many hours working during the week, most of our news comes from the radio and internet.

Sundays are different, however, and we’ve enjoyed dedicating our Sunday morning hours to reading the Sunday Tribune and the New York Times. It is with regret that we choose to stop including the Chicago Tribune in this ritual. We cannot continue to support a newspaper that publishes intellectually dishonest editorials.

A number of recent editorials have disturbed us, but the latest, “Scapegoating Markets,” was the last straw.

The headline is ironic. While the editorial argues against scapegoating capitalism as the cause of the current financial crisis, instead, attempts to “increase homeownership, particularly by minorities and the less affluent” are scapegoated.

The editorial claims that if deregulation were the problem, “it would be the commercial banks, not the investment banks, that were in trouble,” ignoring the failures of Indy Mac and Washington Mutual, and the shaky status of Wachovia. “The demise of Glass-Steagall turns out to be a boon,” the editorial adds, noting that its absence enabled Bank of America to purchase Merrill Lynch.

The editorial ignores the fact that if the regulations eliminated in the past 20 or so years had still been in place, Merrill Lynch might not have required rescue.

Instead, the editorial blames the current crisis on “an attack on underwriting standards [that] was undertaken by virtually every branch of government.”

Which “underwriting standards” are we talking about? Standards that facilitated discrimination against whole classes of borrowers, including single women and minorities? Redlining of neighborhoods? Certainly U.S. courts and the legislative branch have been instrumental in attempts to eliminate such “standards,” and I hope we are all proud of this.

But where the government has urged relaxation of fiscal lending standards, such relaxation was backed and promoted first by lending industry lobbyists, like—for example—Rick Davis, John McCain’s campaign manager and former president of Homeownership Alliance, a lobbying firm funded by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. (Which were (until recently) private corporations, by the way, not “mixed” public-private enterprises as your editorial suggests.)

We thought a lot about whether it’s appropriate to cancel our subscription to a newspaper because of its editorials. They’re just a reflection of opinion, after all, and we wouldn’t cancel a subscription because of a disagreement with a columnist. We think that unsigned editorials are different, though, because they represent the opinion of the newspaper as an institution, and we find we can’t continue to support an institution that demonstrates such low standards. If we want to read editorial fueled by ideology instead of facts, we can find lots of that online. From a newspaper, we expect measured and reality-based news and commentary.

We understand that your newspaper is launching a redesign tomorrow: more pictures, less words.

Good luck with that.

Sincerely,

Promoting Science

The other night, I attended a presentation sponsored by the Chicago Council on Science and Technology, which seeks to promote more (and accurate) understanding of science and technology. The speaker was Alan Leshner, head of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and he talked about science challenges for the new millennium.

These mainly involve the disconnect between a large swath of American opinion and the goals and conclusions of science. Where science conflicts with what Leshner called "core values," Americans tend to just look the other way. So we have a remarkable proportion of citizens who don't accept that humans developed from a simian ancestor, or that the earth is billions of years old. A remarkable proportion of Americans simply don't trust scientists, and look at scientific conclusions as opinions they can take or leave.

Leshner proposed that to deal with this problem, scientists need to do a better job of communicating with the public rather than to the public.

This response seems rather facile. A preposition change is not sufficient. I think the problem needs to be dealt with by dramatizing why these scientific conclusions matter. I am not entirely sure how to do this, but I think it's crucial. For example, millions of Americans are able to reject Darwin's theory of evolution (particularly as it pertains to human beings) because ultimately they feel it doesn't make any difference what they think about it.

We do not live in a society where truth/reality is valued for its own sake. Our public discourse is riddled with lies and spin, and we pretty much have to decide what we think before we decide who we're going to listen to. People are treating scientific conclusions the same way. After all, there are so many scientific conclusions, and they frequently contradict each other: coffee is good for you; coffee is bad for you. In a society where we're overloaded with information, we largely ignore stuff we don't see a way to use or doesn't fit with our world view.

Scientists (and their communicators and policymakers) need to figure out how to make critical scientific conclusions relevant to Americans. Maybe it's by reminding us of why the practice of science is important. What happens when you don't do science properly? How do problems get solved if you pick and choose the conclusions you like best? As some scientists like to joke (with regard to creationists who call evolution "just a theory"), gravity is just a theory--how would you like to jump out that window?

Maybe what we need is an ad campaign that warns us of the consequences of bad science and of ignoring scientific conclusions. People hear about the rewards all the time; they're all around us. The rewards of science are so ubiquitous that we almost feel they're natural occurences. So let's focus on what happens when we don't teach kids to be good scientists, and when our decision makers and policy makers are science ignoramuses (ignorami?).

Our society in recent years has come perilously close to valorizing ignorance (see Idiocracy).

Let's change that.

Exhausted and Relieved

I couldn't get to sleep last night because I was waiting for the results of the Indiana primary. I kept flipping between news sites and blogs, hoping that Obama would pull an upset there.

Almost, but it looks like close does get the cigar. It looks like nobody is suggesting she can win anymore, and attention is turning to the November race.

I'm thrilled that Obama has stayed ahead in spite of (one hopes, because of) a campaign that has been remarkably free of cant and catering to small interests. Brother-in-law Bob pointed out this blog entry, which pretty much lays out how I feel. Some things are more important than winning; it's nice to have a candidate who lives by that, for once.

Why Cities Should Fight to Keep Their Middle-Class Residents

I'm irate. I was just reading an article from last Sunday's Times called "Cities Shed Middle Class and Are Richer and Poorer for It," which conveys the not-very-new news that our major cities are becoming enclaves of the very rich and very poor, with the folks in the middle squeezed out and establishing homes in the suburbs or elsewhere in the country. This is a reality I've recognized (and bemoaned) about New York and other big cities for years—what made me irate are the remarks of some of the quoted experts.

Here's W. Michael Cox, chief economist for the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, on the problem of laborers being unable to afford city digs on their smaller salaries: there is no problem—instead of letting them eat cake, let them work two jobs! Firefighters, for example, could benefit from "portfolio diversification in [their] income." Will someone fire this man, please? And then let him get two jobs so next time he's fired he can benefit from the diverseness of his night shift at the 7-11.

Right. Then there's a Harvard economist named Edward Glaeser, whose study of income inequality in cities in the 1960s and 1970s concluded that there's no reason to think they negatively affect housing price growth, income, or population.

Maybe I have a problem with economists, more than anything else. They talk as if all that mattered were growth. Sometimes you need to look past immediate benefits (rich folk move in, drive up prices, buy more products, pay more taxes), and think about the losses: what happens to society when people don't mix anymore—rich live with rich, poor with poor.

The miracle of cities, the energy of cities, the thrill of cities, come from their diversity, not from shiny commercial constructions that cater primarily to the very rich (e.g., New York's Trump Tower and Chicago's 900 N. Michigan). Such luxury super-malls can be (and are) constructed anywhere—in Sun Valley, Idaho, or Columbus, Ohio, and only serve to flatteringly reflect the rich back to themselves.

Cities are special for their ability to contain juxtapositions of glitter and grime, glamour and grit. The glue that holds those contraries together is the people at the middle of the economic spectrum, those who daily traverse the worlds of rich and poor, riding public transit to jobs that pay decently, buying groceries in cheaper neighborhoods, frequenting public parks and beaches, splurging at an expensive department store at Christmas, going out to a fancy restaurant once or twice a year for a special occasion. Without these folks, we eliminate any sort of connection between the extremes, because public amenities tend to deteriorate without their support, enforcing social as well as economic segregation, depriving the poor of hope for a better life, and limiting the rich to a narrow (private) set of activities, interactions, and destinations.

Meanwhile, the middle-class, living in the boonies among the enclaves of the super-duper-rich, become the most isolated group of all, commuting in private vehicles on suburban freeways, never interacting with anyone outside the circles of family, colleague, neighbor, or church. Safety is a value prized above rubies, and the city, with its crime and expense, exists as a place that the middle-class is lucky to be free of; its charms and satisfactions are forgotten, and notions of interdependence, cross-fertilization (of people and ideas), and public good are discarded.

(By the way, this is how Republicans are made.)

Filed in: Thinking, Politics