See, rural jobs used to be based around one big local business — a factory, a coal mine, etc. When it dies, the town dies. Where I grew up, it was an oil refinery closing that did us in. I was raised in the hollowed-out shell of what the town had once been. The roof of our high school leaked when it rained. Cities can make up for the loss of manufacturing jobs with service jobs — small towns cannot. That model doesn’t work below a certain population density.
If you don’t live in one of these small towns, you can’t understand the hopelessness. The vast majority of possible careers involve moving to the city, and around every city is now a hundred-foot wall called “Cost of Living.” Let’s say you’re a smart kid making $8 an hour at Walgreen’s and aspire to greater things. Fine, get ready to move yourself and your new baby into a 700-square-foot apartment for $1,200 a month, and to then pay double what you’re paying now for utilities, groceries, and babysitters. Unless, of course, you’re planning to move to one of “those” neighborhoods (hope you like being set on fire!).
Links
NYT responds to Trump’s libel threat: We can’t ruin your reputation, you already did
Link“You want to sue us?” they paper essentially asked. “Bring it.”
So You Want to Live in an All-White Utopia?
LinkDepending on how good you are at avoiding some of the grimier parts of the internet, you may have heard the term “white genocide.” It’s a favorite of the alt-right, but like most alt-right terms the actual words here have different meanings other than what Merriam-Webster and I are using.
The genocide they refer to is an erasure of white culture to be supplanted with a non-white one. The culture being erased that they apply this term to includes; feminists speaking out against Islamophobia, the last Star Wars film having a black male and white female protagonist, non-white people attending Harvard, and… Jews ruining The Legend of Zelda, apparently (content warning: may cause day drinking).
Bob Dylan Is a Genius of Almost Unparalleled Influence, but He Shouldn’t Have Gotten the Nobel
LinkEveryone cares about the Nobel Prize in Literature, even though no one, in the long run, can take it seriously—not for how often it is awarded awkwardly, politically, or with nothing more apparent than one committee’s high-minded obscurantism in mind. Bob Dylan is a genius, and for his genius, he’s been rewarded in every way; with fame, money, acclaim. He deserves all of it, but he doesn’t deserve the Nobel. It may be that Dylan’s claim to posterity will be larger than Murakami’s or Roth’s (or Wilbur’s or Didion’s), but that isn’t what is at issue in awarding the highest prize in literature to a pop musician. The objection here hinges in the definition of the word literature. You wouldn’t give the literary prize to an economist or a political saint. You shouldn’t give it to Bob Dylan.
Team Because vs. Team Despite
LinkMy framework for viewing Donald Trump’s campaign in the 2016 general election involves seeing his supporters in two distinct groups: Despite and Because.
Some people are still supporting Trump despite all the awful things he has said and done. Despite his “grab them by the pussy” boasts of sexual assault, despite his fantasies about Mexican rapists pouring over the border, despite his enthusiasm for torture, despite his calls for unconstitutional religious bans, despite his wanting to build a ridiculous wall, despite his awkwardly transparent attempts to pander to religious audiences, despite his sleazy track-record of litigiousness and stiffing contractors, despite his bankruptcies, despite his long history of vile racism and misogyny, despite his evident ignorance and his constant flip-flop-flipping and vacillating that makes it impossible to know what policies he really supports or opposes. They don’t like any of that and find it all embarrassing and unfortunate, but despite it all they’re still leaning Trump because of abortion, or because they hate Hillary Clinton, or because of the Supreme Court, or just because they’re Republicans and Trump these days carries an “R” by his name.
The Despite voters didn’t support Donald Trump in the Republican primaries, but their vote in those contests was scattered among the 16 other candidates in that contest. Now, after all those other options are off the table, these folks will, they guess, be forced to support their party’s nominee, despite everything.
Trump won those primaries without the help of Team Despite because he had the unwavering allegiance of Team Because. These are the folks who look at that whole long list above and love every bit of it. They love and support Donald Trump because of his crude language, because of his anti-immigrant slurs, because of his enthusiasm for torture, because he has promised (and un-promised, and re-promised, endlessly) to ban Muslims, because he wants to build a ridiculous wall, because of his sleazy business history, because of his racism and misogyny, because of his puffed-up ignorance, because of his disdain for constitutional restrictions and his disdain for basic mores, manners and fundamental decency.
Former Miss Arizona: Trump ‘just came strolling right in’ on naked contestants
LinkOn an April 11, 2005, airing of “The Howard Stern Show,” Donald Trump bragged about some of the special perks he enjoyed while he was owner of the Miss USA pageant. They came not in a locker room but a dressing room.
“I’ll go backstage before a show, and everyone’s getting dressed and ready and everything else,” he said. “And you know, no men are anywhere. And I’m allowed to go in because I’m the owner of the pageant. And therefore I’m inspecting it.”
Stern replied, “You’re like a doctor.”
Trump responded: “Is everyone okay? You know they’re standing there with no clothes. And you see these incredible-looking women. And so I sort of get away with things like that.”