A Second Hand Conjecture

For those of us not living in the concentrated sprawl of the coastal and Midwestern metropoli, it is often extremely perplexing how urban Democratic mayors in places like Chicago and Philadelphia can compile lengthy and embarrassing records of incompetent and failed policies, yet remain wildly popular within their urban constituencies. Even as these mayors accumulate massive public debts while governing with a seeming indifference to economic and developmental realities, there is often a certain immutability to their popularity. It is doubly surprising how mayoral characters of this sort are consistently reelected to office in enormous majorities, frequently over vastly superior Republican opponents.

It occurs to me that as the United States becomes ever more urban concentrated, is it not conceivable that we should expect to see this bizarre phenomenon replicated in national politics?

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A survey finds that public perspectives in Russia are turning sharply anti-Western in matters of international relations. But what’s particularly interesting about this, is that such sentiments have grown fastest and strongest in Russia’s most cosmopolitan and urban regions, whereas a pro-Western orientation remains strongest in the Urals and rural Far East of all places.

It’s conceivable that this may be a corollary to a new kind of state-controlled media saturation, which would be more pronounced in the cities. That is, a media environment where there remain multiple competitive outlets for news and information, but all of which increasingly convey a consonant nationalist, anti-Western and xenophobic message in accord with government policy, amplified through volume.

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(photo: photosan0)

Yesterday I suggested that it was unwise for Obama to have titled and predicated a video on a line from a rather slanted New York Times editorial, given the growing public perception of media bias in his favor. But he has now built an entire microsite and subcampaign on the title of that editorial, which was and is called the “Low-Road Express” (Times editorial | Obama campaign microsite). It’s a natural question to ask which preceded which in authorship, or whether this sort of thing is now coordinated, or just the inadvertent consonance of devoted admirers.

The phrase itself is fourteen hours old in penetrating the leftblogs and is doing well. Ironically enough it was a pro-McCain blog (citing the Times) that can claim inauguration of the trend.

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In much of the former Soviet Union, urban heating is still managed at the block rather than per-building level. This is causing some protest from a population growing accustomed to a new ethos of individual convenience. Something we’ve always taken for granted in the the largely non-centrally planned West.

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There’s a moment in Mark Steyn’s book America Alone, where he relates the truism that we’ve all experienced conversations with a mild-mannered, educated and seemingly rational person from the Arab world, where quite unexpectedly they say something nutty in the most casual way. “Of course the Jews planned 9-11″ for instance. As Steyn notes, when this happens it’s a peculiar form of media and culture-shock, and you’re not quite certain what to say in response. But this strange cultural dissonance can also be experienced between Europeans and Americans just as easily on certain issues.

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