The Real Bubbles in a Globalized World

In the two months, since Donald Trump claimed the presidency with a toxic campaign filled with hate and lies, there have been cries of dismay from confused liberals, many of whom claim that they failed to understand rural America, because they are coastal elites. They — we , I am a “liberal” who just relocated from New York to Washington, DC — live in bubbles. But more about me later.

As honest and well-intentioned as these attempts at reflection are, they are misplaced and self-defeating. Coastal liberals aren’t the bubble dwellers, the Trump voters in middle America are.

I do not intend to demean or insult. Economic hardship in the heartland is real. Middle age whites are the only demographic group in the nation to experience a rising death rate based on the most recently collected data. I’m neither dismissing nor poking fun at real concerns. But to pretend these concerns are isolated to red America, or that only red America deserves solutions is untrue and unfair; there is nothing more American about being from the South East than the South Bronx, and when we pretend otherwise, we are only widening the rift.

But that doesn’t mean the bubble narrative is correct. In fact, the harsh conditions I described above exist in part because of rural bubbles.

Poverty is real in red America, but it is real in blue America too. New York City may have Manhattan, but it also has the South Bronx and East New York, Brooklyn. California may have Silicon Valley, but it also has Watts and Compton. Many of the same problems exist in blue states as in red, but in blue states people have an exposure to, and share problems with, those who are different than them. As a result, they are simultaneously more likely to be tolerant, and to benefit from the opportunities presented by myriad forms of diversity.

In a piece written just two days after the election, Patrick Thornton made an excellent point about how denying rights to those who aren’t like them is an abstract concept to many rural Americans, a point he claims he is well-poised to make as a Midwesterner. As a native Mississippian I couldn’t agree with him more, and I was fortunate to grow up in perhaps the most progressive town in all of Mississippi, Oxford, home to a university that enrolls students from around the country and the world. Oxford is the center of a vibrant Mississippi literary tradition, home to Faulkner. During my childhood a mosque was built in town.

And yet it was not until I left Mississippi for boarding school in New England at age 16 that I met anyone Jewish or anyone openly gay. In fact, prior to attending boarding school, I used “gay” casually as a way to dismiss things I thought were lame and uncool, a practice I dropped when I made my first gay friends. Until then I had never understood the term as offensive; I hadn’t known anyone offended by it.

Though discussed separately, the economic and social bubbles are closely related. Although it has always been true that cities are centers of innovation — certainly imperfect and often failed, but innovation nonetheless — this trend is exacerbated by the rapid escalation of technological development. So while blue Americans and red Americans share economic problems, blue Americans also have more opportunities because they are exposed to more people and more ideas. Diversity is not a silver bullet for alleviating economic malaise, but it does encourage — in addition to empathy and compassion — new thinking, new markets, new opportunities for niche suppliers and supply chains. The South Bronx is poor neighborhood, but it has a vibrant, buzzing local economy that is more than many Mississippians in the state’s delta region can hope for.

A recent article in the Economist highlights the benefits of diversity of thought while also foreshadowing how the same trends that create these benefits can cannibalize themselves, resulting in severe and violent nationalist backlash. Another unsettling parallel to a time we hope is behind us.

The piece details how Vienna, capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, became an important hotbed of thought on a range of topics that have shaped western ideas and ideals because it was a diverse, imperial city rather than a national capital. Then, as now, the ideas and advancements benefited some while isolating others. Urban “elites” advanced thinking that improved lives, but disproportionately shared the rewards. While the ideas generated in Vienna fueled innovation, the melting pot also forced out and isolated the working class Germans with close national ties to the area. The ultimate result was the Anschluss, and the rest is history, ugly history.

The free flow of people and ideas that Hillary Clinton detailed in her speech to a Brazilian bank — a hemispheric common market, with open borders — is where the the world is moving. The global economy is too intertwined, people too connected for this to change. Donald Trump and other nationalists may offer different prescriptions, but diversity of thought breeds economic success, and diversity of thought exists where there is diversity of people. A wall won’t protect our personal or professional livelihoods, it will offer the illusion of safety as a blanket to cover economic stagnation, an untenable scenario.

Clinton’s ideas, oversimplified in the term globalization, have failed too many, but not because they are fundamentally wrong, but rather because the implementation and procedure are corrupted. The system breeds innovation economic growth and wealth, but funnels it to the top rather than spreading it widely. It does not have to be that way.

Changing this structure so that it works for more people will not be easy. Such endeavors never are, but even if Donald Trump can somehow revive mining and manufacturing briefly — and he can’t — he isn’t creating a broad and sustainable economic future, he’s sacrificing the innovation and growth spurred by the competition of a wide, diverse market.

The bubble narrative, that coastal Americans are immune to or unaware of the concerns of our fellow citizens in the middle of country, threatens this economic and social foundation not just because it has helped legitimize hate, but because it can only lead to the stagnant economic conditions that will make such hate permanent, which necessarily culminates destructively.

Looking forward, democrats, liberals, whatever we call ourselves must adapt, not to turn our economy inward, but how to spread the benefits of a global market more diffusely. Imagining a better path forward and considering the real and legitimate concerns of rural Americans doesn’t involve saving lost manufacturing jobs any more than it means blaming immigrants for social ills. Instead we must find a way to incorporate our countrymen into an imperfect economic system, thus capitalizing on their strengths and abilities as well as exposing them to the ideas, opportunities, and people that will build stronger social and economic bonds.

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