Mall of America, or The Glutting Unto Death
As I feared, it has been hard to get back into the swing of things since the election fracasso. I feel like I’ve gone through all the stages of loss: denial (the provisional ballots will save Kerry), rage (fuck the south), grief (it really is the end of the world), and then acceptance (we were close, and hey, we won some state legislatures...). Of course the only thing to do now is focus on the future, build off of what we accomplished, etc. and if we go belly-up or flee to Canada (or, say, Brazil) then the right will have already won. So to everybody out there crunching exit polls, strategizing, finding the openings in the new swing states, looking out for 2008, I doff my hat.
But I have to say that beyond acceptance, there is another phase, and it ain’t pretty: a deep and unremitting remorse for America.
One man is responsible for that remorse, and his name is David Brooks.
It wasn’t his hack jobs during the election, though they riled me up enough (calling Kerry “Castroite” because he gives long speeches is pretty despicable. So I guess it’s o.k. to call Grover Norquist “Marxist” because he wears a beard?). It was last week’s article on the ex-urbs. And it wasn’t any of his typical obfuscation or dishonesty that got to me; it’s that I think he is right.
America’s rural population may have actually swung a bit to Kerry, but it is shrinking; the cities are reliably Democrat, but on the whole they are yesterday’s story -- a demographic wash. The ex-urbs are growing: they are the future. I have no more hard data to support this than Brooks, but it fits with my own experience of America: once a land of big cities and small towns, now a place where a franchised, consumerist monoculture grows in clumps along interstates, overtaking everything in its path. The strip malls are meeting up in the Great Plains – just as the Eastern and Pacific railways once did – bumping up against each other and fusing into one giant, endless strip, a highway to nowhere and everywhere.
Full disclosure: deeply do I loath the culture of suburban sprawl. Perhaps it is impossible to objectively establish that its lifestyle is sick (or at least more sick than urban life). But it seems uncontroversial that sprawl, exurbia, etc, is a new kind of “living technology”, a set of best practices for organizing habitation, work, leisure; in a word, life. And this new technology, spreading fast as all new gadgets do, is based on a single, guiding principle: everyone will drive everywhere. This axiom would be utterly insane and patently unviable were it not for a fact that goes criminally unreported: the price of gasoline in the U.S. is one third of the average world price. Here in Brazil, a major oil producer and a country with a per capita GDP of $7,600 (about 1/5 of that of the U.S.), people pay almost $4 a gallon.
(I’m not taking aim here at SUV moms. I’m taking aim at a system that makes it logical and appealing to purchase an SUV and drive it down the block to rent a movie.)
I’ve always thought that suburban, exurban culture was based on a false premise: move away from the problems of the polis, instead of solving them. Shut your eyes and ears to unpleasant social realities and flood yourself with the endorphin rush of mass consumption. Perhaps in the past a smidgen of guilt weighed on the old conscience, and you’d vote to fund inner city schools or day-care programs. But now a political force has come along that has you entirely pegged; it tells you not to feel guilty, but proud: you are the heartland, the real America. You have the inviolable right to buy gas cheaper than the Nigerians or Venezuelans who produce it. Your strip malls and factory outlets are the envy of the towel-heads, so be a beacon of freedom and shop away! You shouldn’t feel bad if you don’t know where Sudan is on a map: the president doesn’t either. You shouldn’t feel bad if you haven’t ventured into the city for 5 years: neither has the president. You shouldn’t worry if you’ve taken out massive loans to pay for your TV, your appliances, your car, your children’s education on credit: after all, that’s how the president does it.
Hence my remorse: a sick and untenable way of life is quickly becoming the dominant culture of our country, and a political machine hell-bent on destroying the pillars of our polity as we know it has learned to reward that way of life, to gratify it, to nurture it. A vicious feedback loop driven by the world’s biggest internal combustion engine.
Alas, whither my country? In the Roman orgy of consumption, arrogance, corruption, and dissipation of our nation’s financial, diplomatic, and moral wealth that is Bush’s presidency, the election – which held out the hope of a call to sensibility, an end to the gluttony, a sobering up and returning to the duties of leadership – turned out to be nothing more than a trip to the vomitorium. Now, feeling perhaps not exactly refreshed, but at least hungry, unnaturally and unhealthily hungry for more of what has already made our nation sick, bloated, and weak, the citizens of Rome, inspired by the example of their inbred emperor, return to the feast.
But I have to say that beyond acceptance, there is another phase, and it ain’t pretty: a deep and unremitting remorse for America.
One man is responsible for that remorse, and his name is David Brooks.
It wasn’t his hack jobs during the election, though they riled me up enough (calling Kerry “Castroite” because he gives long speeches is pretty despicable. So I guess it’s o.k. to call Grover Norquist “Marxist” because he wears a beard?). It was last week’s article on the ex-urbs. And it wasn’t any of his typical obfuscation or dishonesty that got to me; it’s that I think he is right.
America’s rural population may have actually swung a bit to Kerry, but it is shrinking; the cities are reliably Democrat, but on the whole they are yesterday’s story -- a demographic wash. The ex-urbs are growing: they are the future. I have no more hard data to support this than Brooks, but it fits with my own experience of America: once a land of big cities and small towns, now a place where a franchised, consumerist monoculture grows in clumps along interstates, overtaking everything in its path. The strip malls are meeting up in the Great Plains – just as the Eastern and Pacific railways once did – bumping up against each other and fusing into one giant, endless strip, a highway to nowhere and everywhere.
Full disclosure: deeply do I loath the culture of suburban sprawl. Perhaps it is impossible to objectively establish that its lifestyle is sick (or at least more sick than urban life). But it seems uncontroversial that sprawl, exurbia, etc, is a new kind of “living technology”, a set of best practices for organizing habitation, work, leisure; in a word, life. And this new technology, spreading fast as all new gadgets do, is based on a single, guiding principle: everyone will drive everywhere. This axiom would be utterly insane and patently unviable were it not for a fact that goes criminally unreported: the price of gasoline in the U.S. is one third of the average world price. Here in Brazil, a major oil producer and a country with a per capita GDP of $7,600 (about 1/5 of that of the U.S.), people pay almost $4 a gallon.
(I’m not taking aim here at SUV moms. I’m taking aim at a system that makes it logical and appealing to purchase an SUV and drive it down the block to rent a movie.)
I’ve always thought that suburban, exurban culture was based on a false premise: move away from the problems of the polis, instead of solving them. Shut your eyes and ears to unpleasant social realities and flood yourself with the endorphin rush of mass consumption. Perhaps in the past a smidgen of guilt weighed on the old conscience, and you’d vote to fund inner city schools or day-care programs. But now a political force has come along that has you entirely pegged; it tells you not to feel guilty, but proud: you are the heartland, the real America. You have the inviolable right to buy gas cheaper than the Nigerians or Venezuelans who produce it. Your strip malls and factory outlets are the envy of the towel-heads, so be a beacon of freedom and shop away! You shouldn’t feel bad if you don’t know where Sudan is on a map: the president doesn’t either. You shouldn’t feel bad if you haven’t ventured into the city for 5 years: neither has the president. You shouldn’t worry if you’ve taken out massive loans to pay for your TV, your appliances, your car, your children’s education on credit: after all, that’s how the president does it.
Hence my remorse: a sick and untenable way of life is quickly becoming the dominant culture of our country, and a political machine hell-bent on destroying the pillars of our polity as we know it has learned to reward that way of life, to gratify it, to nurture it. A vicious feedback loop driven by the world’s biggest internal combustion engine.
Alas, whither my country? In the Roman orgy of consumption, arrogance, corruption, and dissipation of our nation’s financial, diplomatic, and moral wealth that is Bush’s presidency, the election – which held out the hope of a call to sensibility, an end to the gluttony, a sobering up and returning to the duties of leadership – turned out to be nothing more than a trip to the vomitorium. Now, feeling perhaps not exactly refreshed, but at least hungry, unnaturally and unhealthily hungry for more of what has already made our nation sick, bloated, and weak, the citizens of Rome, inspired by the example of their inbred emperor, return to the feast.
posted by Benjamin Lessing at 1:25 PM
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