Dear D.C.: The People In Flyover Country Don't Care What You Think

A friend and internets-colleague of mine has been live-blogging from the Campaign for America's Future panel on the future of progressive politics this afternoon. She posted this comment on another blog and asked that I weigh in -- so I did, and what follows her quoted remark is my response. Make of that what you will.


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"Otter -- I am hoping you will weigh in on what I am sharing here -- this is a challenging talk to listen to -- Sperling is talking about being comfortable in a think tank, and Washington's self interests and tendency to operate as if the rest of the country is also trying to get their kids into private schools..."

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I wouldn't know anything about "being comfortable in a think tank," and I can't really think of anyone I know that does either. It is a topic that is 99.9 percent irrelevant to virtually everyone else in the country except those who either participate in or interact with people in think tanks. Frankly, my dear, we don't give a damn whether they're comfortable in there or not.

More of us give a damn about the private-versus-public schools issue, of course. But most of us don't have the financial wherewithal for that even to be a question, much less a choice. And for every year that goes by under the current affirmative-action-for-the-top-one-percent government mentality, less and less of us can even consider private school -- or any other kind of beyond-basics education -- as an option.

Do the common people out here in flyover country recognize, disparage, and deeply distrust both the conservatives and the non-conservatives who are so steeped in inside-the-beltway thinking that they can no more comprehend what it feels like to be Joe and Jane Voter than they can comprehend what it feels like to live on Mars?

Yeah. We do. You can bet our tiny little last remaining untaxed unspent unbankrupted dollars we do. I mean, *we* can bet our tiny litle last remaining dollars on it. We have to. And we have to bet them every day. We don't have any other choice. They're all we have left.

The Shrubyites' patently-fake non-populist "populism" is only a tiny degree removed from the professional-Democrats' bogus noblesse-oblige popularism. It's all smoke and mirrors either way, and everybody out here already knows that.

As far as Joe and Jane are concerned, it's crap. It's all crap. And our crap is only marginally better than their crap -- if that. People out here in the real world don't trust professional Democrats any more than they trust professional Republicans, which is a mighty low standard to live down to in the first place.

I'm lucky in some ways, in that I'm a relatively well-connected and well-educated, well-informed guy. But I'm also a guy who's spent the last couple of years living in what most people would consider a blue-collar industrial backwater. Well, guess what? A surprisingly high percentage of the locals here *do* read above a third-grade level, they *do* pay attention to what's happening beyond the end of their own noses, and they *do* know a lot more than I once would have assumed about what's going on in Washington and New York and Seattle and San Francisco.

But you know what? They also believe that far and away the largest part of any and all information and opinion they receive from all those think tanks and those pundits and those high-paid op-ed writers out there is basically worthless bullcrap. They figure that all the blahblahblah has nothing to do with what they know and think and feel out here on the ground, and that the people spouting it couldn't possibly care less about them.

That's what they think, that's what they feel, and that's what they believe. That's what they tell me, every day. And you know what? I've pretty much run out of ways to keep trying to convince them that they're provincial and shortsighted and unaware and wrong about those things. Why?

Because, by now, I don't think that they are anymore.

so that's me weighing in on this,
Otter

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[P.S. -- I'm not big fan of external blog-pimping, but those of you who are interested in reading the thread in which I made the above point in its native habitat can find it here: http://tinyurl.com/luct4 ... on the other paw, I'm actually more interested in hearing what you think about this topic here on CK. So please feel free to comment away, y'all. Thnx.]

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