Forum Post: The United States of Disturbia.....Where Trolls Go To Live And To Die.

When did America become so fragmented? Why are solutions so difficult? Why can't our leaders compromise?

One word: Suburbia.

Since World War II, this nation has been financing the means of our own destruction. We have built highways and expressways that made it possible to live in a manner that is simply not compatible with democracy.

Consider this, in no time period since permanent dwellings can be identified (10000 BC) has man resided in this fashion. And, the reason, I would postulate, is because suburbia is a snake swallowing itself tail first.

In, "Bonfire of the Vanities," Tom Wolfe describes the innate flaw in our new normal. "Insulation! That was the ticket... 'you've got to insulate, insulate, insulate, meaning insulate yourself from those people. ... If you could go breezing down the FDR Drive in a taxi, why file into the trenches of the urban wars?"

The problems I currently see in America are problems derived from this insulation, this disconnect of people. Business transactions are now corrupt because they take place with the keystroke of a terminal....or where parties will never know one another, let alone trust one another. Politicians now shout at each other across television networks rather than doing the difficult work that is compromise.

Every problem has become someone else's problem. Suburbia has made it possible for someone to exist in his own fiefdom and never know his neighbor, never know the difficulties others face, and never realize that the system can be brutal. "There but for the Grace of God go I"" has been replaced by "There goes a deadbeat."

Rather dramatically, many Americans have shifted their reference group. The disadvantaged, minorities, and the poor have become only abstractions upon a television screen. Crime is only newsworthy when there's dirty laundry....or blood. And, "if America could just go back to it's roots, all would be OK." (Never mind the fact that exburbs didn't exist in the time of Franklin.....Benjamin or Roosevelt).

There has, therefore, developed a callousness--a de-empathization--that has strangled our progressive impulses. Yes, it is fostered by Fox News and talk radio, but it is has also been accepted by our religious institutions.....even cultured in our new suburban churches.

In an age of diverging incomes, this callousness might have been predictable, even necessary. "When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves in the course of time a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it," wrote Frederic Bastiat two hundred years ago. Sadly, plunder has not only become a way of life....it is THE way of life.

Suburbia has created it's own subculture and generations have existed there without knowing anything else. It is a throwaway mentality, very expensive to maintain, and it's contributions to the dilemmas we face in energy use and climate change cannot be underestimated. It has created it's own institutions, where communities are built upon an artificial consumer model. Shopping malls and megachurches have replaced main street and the town square. (I have written on the "New Christianity" elsewhere). The mixing of the masses has become the mingling of the same.

Most ominous of all, suburbia has spawned an entirely new breed of politician. Representing a very homogeneous, affluent, population, these skillful manipulators have created a new history of America, a new meaning for the American dream,, and innovative methods of playing upon our fears. They are, for the most part, Republicans and conservative.

But, every man for himself carries a price. We cannot all be little kings and we must learn to live together once more. Fate, and an economic collapse, have produced an era in which we must again reexamine our interrelatedness. We must learn to take note when politicians tailor their message to this electorate. We must understand the thoughts and fears of Clark and Ellen Griswold. And, we must find a way to reach out to them before it's too late.