As my friend, conservative Canadian substacker Damien Penny frequently says when he comments on things south of the border, “It’s not the Red States vs. the Blue States - it’s rural vs. urban.” He’s right. And most of us are missing that “forest” while staring at the “trees.”
You nailed it. I come from Western MA (still lots of trees and green space) and I now live near Boston. Parts of my old stomping grounds are just now getting decent internet service. A few towns are still waiting. And guess which part of the state has the pickups with big flags and Trump stickers.
It's really complicated. I would be happy if Texas went back to Mexico. Except we have cousins we love who live in Austin. Florida is loaded with bigots and undereducated nutcases. But my wife's wonderful family lives there. Utah is the fastest growing state population wise and flips the bird at conserving water. They could secede for my money, buy my terrific brother in law and family live there. Oy, oy and oy.
There is so much work to do in terms of properly connecting with each other. What good is "remote working" if you can't connect? You are so right. We don't talk about this enough. But President Biden is. You go Joe.
For landscape, Utah is my favorite state (although there are a handful of close runners-up). I would not want our country to lose Utah. But they need to stop the growth of their population, as they DO'NT HAVE THE WATER, and with the huge vistas, they'll wreck the views. One town in Utah has actually banned new construction because of the water situation, and there was an article in the NYT about it last year.
Of course, there's a lot of western Mass that's quite beautiful, especially west of the Connecticut River. I love Rt. 2 from there to Williamstown. (And Williamstown has the one coffee house in the state where they've preserved espresso goodness for many years [Tunnel City Coffee].)
The same is pretty much true of every western state that is part of the Colorado River Compact, the basic terms of which were written in the 1920s when the river was at a 500-year high of flow. If every state in the compact took the water they are "guaranteed" by the agreement, it would be 500% of what is available. Arizona and California being the two biggestproblems - the Coachella Valley in California would be a desert, and no one wants to talk about spending all the money to set up drip irrigation, which would save them.
And at the same time, the Indians who once had a great water system have gotten their water rights back and rebuilt their 50-year old system and are experiencing great success. All those sprayers may be "cheap," but the price of the water wasted, even at the low federal rates, can pay for a drip system. But they don't want to know that. There is nobody in this country dumber than American farmers.
When we lived in Tucson in '76 it was easy to see the future dry up without new rules, controls and techniques of water and population management. Oh, well (no oun intended).
As I did say a number of places above here, Tunnel City Coffee in Williamstown has a long history of good espresso--since ~'04 in my experience. Now, I only get there a couple of times a year, but it hasn't disappointed.
None of the places I've frequented in the past have it--unless they've done a 180 in the last few years. The 1369, where I had some of the best of my life 5 and 6 years ago--I had to spit it out three years ago, I think it was. The Barismo in Arlington never has good espresso anymore. And the one in Cambridge never did have good espresso. I havne't tried Simon's in years--that IS a possibility. The Paradiso was closed a number of years ago, much to the chagrin of Taughm and Ray Magliozzi (I bumped into them one evening, sitting in front of the placed--boarded up--and mourning its passing.) Nero is mediocre--it's drinkable, but it doesn't give you any pleasure. Its sort of like driving an old Hyundai or something.
Now, there may be others. If you know of any, let me know! If you find any, you can contact me directly at supernova1@aol.com.
But high speed internet is not just for entertainment. It’s necessary for everything from doing your taxes to doing your homework to paying bills and making doctor's appointments.
And all those folks commuting 4 hours a day? Maybe some of them could work remotely with proper internet service.
Hot damn! Thank you for helping me understand why my internet is ok (not fast) sometimes, and so frustratingly slow at others! I was beginning to think something was wrong with my computer. Like Karen, I also live in a remote area of the Sierras, where the MAGAs roam.
Phone calls between cell phones here are often just dropped.
I am so very thankful for all of the dot-connecting you do for me, not just for technical stuff that I have given up trying to understand, but for your clear-eyed explanations of all the shit going down in politics.
Since about 1977 (sorry to bring this up in Pres. Carter’s final days), and especially since 1981, neo-liberalism and the reliance on “market-based solutions” has captured public policy all across America. Because of this we have lost 45 years of infrastructure development, right during a time that our concept of infrastructure has been expanding in type to include electronic connectivity and renewable energy. And, frankly, the goal of right leaning neo-liberalism has been to disadvantage people to cause them to loose faith in the concept of self-governance. It’s been very effective. Restoration of a New Deal approach to governance, including helping those people who are determined to bite a helping hand, would be a major assist to preserving our nation and democratic governance.
I remember when it was like that in LA Tom, 2000-2005 in Thousand Oaks and Westlake Village. If I remember correctly we had Adelphi cable service which sucked, it was owned by a family, maybe from Pennsylvania, again fuzzy memory, but I think the father and his sons all went to prison for fraud. I lived surrounded by multimillionaires and we all had shit service boith cable and cellular. It drove me crazy , we were just starting the transition from wire lines and the service sucked. Adelphi had the market locked and were trying to squeeze every drop out of that lemon without priming the pump in any way.
I went to Asheville over the weekend with my youngest daughter and there was no question what so ever that we were transiting red state GA and NC. Asheville is sane like ATL, but most everywhere in between would make you wonder. I don't know how we are going to do it legally, but we need to break Rupert and Fux news, they spew utter bullshit 24-7 to the largest audience in America, who believe it because it's on their TV's. If the media were held accountable to only speak the truth I think a lot of our problems would go away. Faster connectivity will help, but only if what is being communicated faster is based on truth, otherwise it's just faster bullshit, and we already have enough problems with that as it is.
you'd think with these recent disclosures about what really goes on in FucksNoose, they'd be losing some support. but so far, what I hear from friends with "friends" and the couple of neighbors I have on THAT side, it's all "bullshit propaganda" engineered by "Communists."
very good point. and speaking of cults, I watched this very recent documentary series on Hulu about that cult that began at Sarah Lawrence and continued for ten years, masterminded by one of the students' sociopathic dad. one of the most upsetting things I've ever seen, for reasons that are both obvious (the craziness) and maybe not-so-obvious (possibly something about the generation involved).
I'm in no way a fan of True Crime as a genre and I'm not at all usually interested in the inner workings of cults. but I've had friends who went to Sarah Lawrence and it's the sort of school I might've been interested in attending if I was a completely different person. so when the story hit the papers, I was very interested (as in "how could a bunch of smart, sophisticated college students..." etc.).
but this is really SOMETHING.
and no, the cult was completely moronic and nobody knew it was a cult. a few of the kids caught on early and split. but the rest...
Lots of cults don't start out to be, and if you were to point out to the people who were benefiting from the cult what they had done in creating it, they would deny they had done so. Almost anyone who has a set of convictions about achieving goal - whatever that goal might be - will attract followers, who see that goal as something good. And since most people think they are weak (though they won't admit the belief) they're quite happy to turn over their power and submit to the authority of the person who articulates a goal. And those people, whether they do it consciously or unconsciously, come to like the power they've been given, and to consider themselves deserving of having it.
I've seen it happen up close an personal in both a "New Age" spiritual group and an "antique airplane museum." It can happen anywhere.
in the Sarah Lawrence case, it seems a little bit different because the parent involved started out as a fabulist and seems to have been one quite a bit before he showed up at Sarah Lawrence. the kids ended up insisting that their parents were trying to poison them as part of a conspiracy with Bernie Kerik. one of the most affected was in a psychiatry residency, which would support your thesis (which I agree with) that the "helping professionals" need the most help. when I was a kid, it became a truism that the craziest kids had psychiatrist fathers (back then, as you recall, most physicians of any kind were men and 35 years ago at Payne Whitney more than half the psychiatric residents were women).
these kids at Sarah Lawrence were altogether too easily fooled. the weirder thing is that so were their parents, and for YEARS.
New Age spiritual groups are, of course, notorious. I had a friend who was involved with that Mel Lyman group in Boston in the '70s (Lyman was the ex-guitarist in the Jim Kweskin Jug Band).
Biden said he was the President for all citizens, not just Blue States. Infrastructure like communication towers should be a Federal responsibility, not a private business decision
at the risk of riling you up, Tom, I've gotta say that I represent serious competition in the successful post-marriage department. in my case, she lived upstairs. on the other side of the building, but still upstairs.
I'm having 2 successful post marriages. That's my limit though as I have vowed never to marry again 🙃. I just get along with them so much better by not being married to either of them anymore.
Victoria, I also live in rural Arkansas (Baxter County, 8 miles NW of Mountain Home). My At&T cell sucks at home but when I'm in town shopping it is very good. Where are you located?
Victoria, when we moved here 21 years ago the house already had underground lines for telephone (Centurylink) and cable TV (Suddenlink). Both were overpriced. As time went on, the phone company added internet and TV while the cable company added internet and phone service. We flipped back and forth as they had lower priced intro offers. For the last few years we have had only internet, no cable TV package and no landline. We use an Ooma Telo voice-over-internet for our home phone and Roku for streaming to our TV. Our monthly charges are much lower and we do not miss anything except St. Louis Cardinals baseball games ;) We have become so used reliable internet that we would really miss that if we moved to an area where it was not available.
Oh wow indeed - we share the same soap box..... I have been aware of this for years, and there is also a real cultural aspect (several actually). A lot of rural people from Appalachia live in an honor culture, much like those of Latino and Arab cultures. This can be a real problem, since in a honor culture, any perceived insult or slight to your personal reputation or standing must be avenged, usually violently. And they do not understand those who do not have this same ethos. Another difference is that they value what we call blue-collar work - work with the hands - construction, truck driving, working the land, mining work. many of them are unfortunately ill-equipped by education or culture to do well in a modern technical society. They loathe office work (it's not real work) and think that urbanites are not "real men", they are people who can't do real work..... An additional dessert is their general distrust of outsiders and the well-educated. The result is that the more ambitious and forward-looking students move away, never to return - leaving the less ambitious and poorly educated to fester in poverty. It is a national tragedy. Biden and the Dems are at least trying to push the dead elephant out of the way and get on with rebuilding the country. If we can elect Democratic presidents for the next 2-3 terms and get stuff done, we may be able to break the neo-liberal cycle that is tearing the country apart.
Yep, that about sums it up - a particularly fine mess. 😉 It makes me think of my cousins in East TX and the FM (farm to market) roads leading to their farms; we were the "city slickers" who had it made. Seriously, though, if ya drive 'cross country (or state, even CA), there are looong dead zones for cell and radio service - except the ubiquitous AM talk station. While driving, I wonder about emergency service - not only phone but the closing of rural hospitals and other medical services. I guess I've always been cognizant of the rural/urban divide and appreciate your writing (👏) about it.
Maybe another part of the issue is that the goal of companies has been and is even more so nowadays to MAKE MONEY and who cares if everyone or anyone for that matter has access to internet and phone service that actually means you can do something. There are so many dead zones in Michigan it is a wonder anyone was able to do anything during the pandemic. And of course lots of kids and others couldn't do diddly squat. There used to be such a thing as regulations that made communication companies do the necessary work to see that people were connected wherever they lived. The Post Office must deliver everywhere despite the effort to privatize it to death and try to make it "run like a business" - because everyone KNOWS businesses know how to run. (NOT). Yes - the government could do more about such matters and we can hope that the IRA will get communication companies on board. The next issue though is how to foot the bills they send you. Somehow making money, especially the folks at the top of the pyramid, and the shareholders somewhere in the middle, continually leave most everyone else out of equation. I've always said the rule of capitalism is this: you can have it if you can pay for it. If you can't pay for it (i.e. university or college or God knows what) then go into debt for the rest of your life. As long as making a huge (and I do mean HUGE) profit is the only thing that matters then we will continue to be a nation of a few haves and many have nots, and the have nots are scattered from one coast to the other, in urban and rural settings. And now of course hospitals and clinics are closing in more rural areas and the ones in urban areas cost so much to access, even with some kind of insurance, most people just are taking their chances and hoping whatever is going on they do not need to go to any kind of medical facility. There's something incredibly flawed and deeply immoral about the economic system that has the world tied up in little knots regardless of where you may be living.
in my experience with hospitals, it seems like the ones most like incompetently run prisons (and this is by no means a function of the famous hospital "networks" running these places) give patients the most trouble with issues like billing.
I recently had to make some visits to a world-famous hospital, where I was treated like some kind of Saudi prince and had to pay about fifteen bucks a visit with my humble UFT health insurance. the nurses would bring me whatever I asked for within about a minute. later, I was talking to an old friend who'd also been a patient there and she told me that the nurses there weren't unionized. I found this explanation (which is probably correct, alas) very upsetting.
I guess I'm not exactly "rural", maybe suburban country? - farms around me but many residences too - I live pretty much in the middle of my four acres. Cell service isnt all that great but I dont use my cell phone much anyway - depend on my landline - like it better! I'm really fortunate that we have a smaller cable company which provides my phone-cable-internet. I dropped many of the cable channels a while ago - funny that I cant get rid of the Faux channels from my "package". Seems to be a true "package" deal!!!
for some reason, it's impossible to dump them...they seem hard-wired into even the most basic cable packages. I wonder what kind of foul deal they've managed to work out, but I'm sure there is one.
My cable bill got so high I bought an antenna and then called to cancel the cable. They begged me to stay and offered 100 more channels for free. I laughed and said the 100 I have now are worthless, don’t need more, cancel my subscription. They came back with an offer to significantly lower my bill by allowing me 10 channels only, plus the local network channels and PBS. I laughed and said I only needed 9 of the 10. Saved 60 dollars a month
Threaten them. They’ll play along
Bottom line? No Fox News. Cut them off at the knees
that used to work when I had Time/Warner. for thirty years, I had ONE outage that lasted half a day. they even had a "Retention Department" to make those kinds of sweetheart offers.
now, with Spectrum, I have an outage every day (most of them for less than an hour, but still). and no retention department. no sweetheart deals. the competition is Verizon, but I hear from their subscribers that they also really suck.
some time ago, RCN was offering a much better package, but they very quickly got put out of business.
until the last ten years or so (during which Verizon was installed), there was no cable choice whatsoever in NYC. the boroughs were divided up by Time/Warner (their employees LOVED working for them) and Cablevision (which EVERYBODY hates).
Say what you will - and there's sure a lot to be said - about ATT and DirectTV, but the last time I experienced an outage it was because the clouds were so thick it blocked the satellite reception, and it got solved in bout 20 minutes. I hate them both, but they do the one thing that's important. They work.
I wouldn't use Spectrum if they were the only one in the business. Get Verizon just because it ISN'T @#$$#@$#@!!!!!!! Spectrum.
Oh yes, Verizon is the phone service (cell) here too. Depends on where you live - my cell will get service if I go out the door across the driveway then across a field to the upper driveway - or at least my son tells me it would. IF I used it that much. Of course my son, daughter, grandkids, great grandkids ALL use their cells all the time for all things. I am remaining an old stick-in the mud!
They've had 40 years I know of to get things right out here (used to be Warner Cable, then time-Warner Cable, then Spectrum) and they still run like it's their first week in business.
Spectrum is the biggie in this area. I'm so lucky with my small cable guys. My son put up an antenna - still has cable but can get quite a lot of the same channels on his antenna!
I think you're 100% right about the political necessity of improving lives through better infrastructure, and reducing some of the resentment at elites who seem alternately patronizing and indifferent.
It has to be paired with clear messaging. Biden spent his first two years thinking that if he just made life enough better for those folks, they'd realize his "bottom up and middle out" approach worked better for them than the right wing's trickle down, but then as his policies bore fruit Repubs just posed next to bridges and new roads and told constituents that the libs forcing unacceptable lifestyles on them were really why they were so angry. I think Biden has finally fully accepted that he's going to have to spell it out, "toot his own horn" and call out hypocrisy and lies.
Not one Republican I know would thank the present administration for new roads or internet. They'd just use improved connectivity to watch more hours of Fox, where they would be told some alternate version of reality where their R representatives had fought to bring them benefits despite the depraved liberal opposition.
So: Messaging with every project and appealing, reliable news available on a continuing basis as an alternative to the right wing media often monopolizing those communities. I just mistrust the general human population's ability to change their minds in the face of inconvenient facts, or feel gratitude through a crust of habits of suspicion.
Funny you should mention TVA - I can hear my father's voice talking about the arrival of electric lights in East Tennessee. It made a world of difference. And so will the infrastructure bills, if we can hang on long enough to see them through. Not that TN is any glowing example of the effects of positive government on the future. (Rep. Ogles, anyone?)
Wow. Probably the best analysis I've seen on the divide issue and probably far too accurate for anyone in the political world to pay attention to with heart palpitations.
point well taken. it's ironic, of course, that the rural people who LOVE TFF (and will support him to their graves) are the ones who are ultimately getting the most fucked by his "policies" and "party."
during the early days of the New Deal (as I recall from my reading), those programs weren't especially popular with the folks who stood to benefit most radically from them.
it's funny, but the drunk guy I sometimes talk about called me the other night and I stayed on with him (out of some twisted, self-denying sense of politeness) while he steadily slurred more and more, but was talking about precisely this stuff. all I could do was try to point out that the Repugs might appeal to the rural people he was so worried about (he's actually from Dallas, which isn't exactly rural) when they're running, but haven't ever come through in any kind of meaningful way. I also tried to disabuse him of some of that hired-wired Alamo bullshit, but gave up when I realized he wasn't going to remember the conversation at all.
and, almost as if by design, this is today's post. ha!
I have a few old friends who live in small towns upstate, but they're close enough to serious yuppie/old hippie/retired academic enclaves that their electronic infrastructure is impeccable. nobody in or around Woodstock or Great Barrington is going to tolerate anything different.
I have one really good friend in Florida, and she's an unreconstructed radical who perennially flirts with splitting.
I have some family left in Houston but haven't spoken to any of them in more than twenty years, mostly "more." the Houston people once lived in places in Louisiana you could only get to with two-lane roads, but they left in the '70s.
Not all of us rural dwellers love that lying blob of orange slime & fat. We have foregathered a small tribe of (mostly) boomer-age folk (some younger; some a bit older) some life-long Mainiacs and some transplants and we are all bright blue and live in rural areas which tend to be red.
We like to hang together because listening to the ridiculous conspiracy theories and hateful political BS of our red neighbors was causing all sorts of anxiety, anger and high blood pressure issues.
You nailed it. I come from Western MA (still lots of trees and green space) and I now live near Boston. Parts of my old stomping grounds are just now getting decent internet service. A few towns are still waiting. And guess which part of the state has the pickups with big flags and Trump stickers.
It's really complicated. I would be happy if Texas went back to Mexico. Except we have cousins we love who live in Austin. Florida is loaded with bigots and undereducated nutcases. But my wife's wonderful family lives there. Utah is the fastest growing state population wise and flips the bird at conserving water. They could secede for my money, buy my terrific brother in law and family live there. Oy, oy and oy.
There is so much work to do in terms of properly connecting with each other. What good is "remote working" if you can't connect? You are so right. We don't talk about this enough. But President Biden is. You go Joe.
For landscape, Utah is my favorite state (although there are a handful of close runners-up). I would not want our country to lose Utah. But they need to stop the growth of their population, as they DO'NT HAVE THE WATER, and with the huge vistas, they'll wreck the views. One town in Utah has actually banned new construction because of the water situation, and there was an article in the NYT about it last year.
Of course, there's a lot of western Mass that's quite beautiful, especially west of the Connecticut River. I love Rt. 2 from there to Williamstown. (And Williamstown has the one coffee house in the state where they've preserved espresso goodness for many years [Tunnel City Coffee].)
The same is pretty much true of every western state that is part of the Colorado River Compact, the basic terms of which were written in the 1920s when the river was at a 500-year high of flow. If every state in the compact took the water they are "guaranteed" by the agreement, it would be 500% of what is available. Arizona and California being the two biggestproblems - the Coachella Valley in California would be a desert, and no one wants to talk about spending all the money to set up drip irrigation, which would save them.
And Arizona already has towns being denied water, and fighting over it. It's crazy. And the Colorado River has long ceased reaching the Gulf of Baha
And at the same time, the Indians who once had a great water system have gotten their water rights back and rebuilt their 50-year old system and are experiencing great success. All those sprayers may be "cheap," but the price of the water wasted, even at the low federal rates, can pay for a drip system. But they don't want to know that. There is nobody in this country dumber than American farmers.
Our country lacks a culture of conservation, alas.
No kidding, the assisted living facility where I live is the trashiest place I have ever lived, should be a crime…
And I always thought they were the smartest, maybe their vision is pointed down. Soon they will only see dust…
Oh I don't know. How about the Department of Agriculture?
When we lived in Tucson in '76 it was easy to see the future dry up without new rules, controls and techniques of water and population management. Oh, well (no oun intended).
P.S. President Carter was our champion then.
of course they do...there's an important college there.
are you including Boston? no good espresso in Boston??
Of course, I AM the World's Fussiest Espresso Drinker.
I sorta figured...
As I did say a number of places above here, Tunnel City Coffee in Williamstown has a long history of good espresso--since ~'04 in my experience. Now, I only get there a couple of times a year, but it hasn't disappointed.
my comment about plummeting quality notwithstanding, the Blue Bottle in Harvard Square is decent. Or it was when I was there last, maybe 4 months ago.
I'm telling you though--the quality has plummeted!
No shit!
None of the places I've frequented in the past have it--unless they've done a 180 in the last few years. The 1369, where I had some of the best of my life 5 and 6 years ago--I had to spit it out three years ago, I think it was. The Barismo in Arlington never has good espresso anymore. And the one in Cambridge never did have good espresso. I havne't tried Simon's in years--that IS a possibility. The Paradiso was closed a number of years ago, much to the chagrin of Taughm and Ray Magliozzi (I bumped into them one evening, sitting in front of the placed--boarded up--and mourning its passing.) Nero is mediocre--it's drinkable, but it doesn't give you any pleasure. Its sort of like driving an old Hyundai or something.
Now, there may be others. If you know of any, let me know! If you find any, you can contact me directly at supernova1@aol.com.
Hope somebody tells them, or proves it to them.
But high speed internet is not just for entertainment. It’s necessary for everything from doing your taxes to doing your homework to paying bills and making doctor's appointments.
And all those folks commuting 4 hours a day? Maybe some of them could work remotely with proper internet service.
Hot damn! Thank you for helping me understand why my internet is ok (not fast) sometimes, and so frustratingly slow at others! I was beginning to think something was wrong with my computer. Like Karen, I also live in a remote area of the Sierras, where the MAGAs roam.
Phone calls between cell phones here are often just dropped.
I am so very thankful for all of the dot-connecting you do for me, not just for technical stuff that I have given up trying to understand, but for your clear-eyed explanations of all the shit going down in politics.
Since about 1977 (sorry to bring this up in Pres. Carter’s final days), and especially since 1981, neo-liberalism and the reliance on “market-based solutions” has captured public policy all across America. Because of this we have lost 45 years of infrastructure development, right during a time that our concept of infrastructure has been expanding in type to include electronic connectivity and renewable energy. And, frankly, the goal of right leaning neo-liberalism has been to disadvantage people to cause them to loose faith in the concept of self-governance. It’s been very effective. Restoration of a New Deal approach to governance, including helping those people who are determined to bite a helping hand, would be a major assist to preserving our nation and democratic governance.
45 years lost. Whole generations deprived while the Oligarchs thrived...on their yachts and private islands.
I remember when it was like that in LA Tom, 2000-2005 in Thousand Oaks and Westlake Village. If I remember correctly we had Adelphi cable service which sucked, it was owned by a family, maybe from Pennsylvania, again fuzzy memory, but I think the father and his sons all went to prison for fraud. I lived surrounded by multimillionaires and we all had shit service boith cable and cellular. It drove me crazy , we were just starting the transition from wire lines and the service sucked. Adelphi had the market locked and were trying to squeeze every drop out of that lemon without priming the pump in any way.
I went to Asheville over the weekend with my youngest daughter and there was no question what so ever that we were transiting red state GA and NC. Asheville is sane like ATL, but most everywhere in between would make you wonder. I don't know how we are going to do it legally, but we need to break Rupert and Fux news, they spew utter bullshit 24-7 to the largest audience in America, who believe it because it's on their TV's. If the media were held accountable to only speak the truth I think a lot of our problems would go away. Faster connectivity will help, but only if what is being communicated faster is based on truth, otherwise it's just faster bullshit, and we already have enough problems with that as it is.
Very true.
you'd think with these recent disclosures about what really goes on in FucksNoose, they'd be losing some support. but so far, what I hear from friends with "friends" and the couple of neighbors I have on THAT side, it's all "bullshit propaganda" engineered by "Communists."
(sigh)
Cults don’t know they are cults
very good point. and speaking of cults, I watched this very recent documentary series on Hulu about that cult that began at Sarah Lawrence and continued for ten years, masterminded by one of the students' sociopathic dad. one of the most upsetting things I've ever seen, for reasons that are both obvious (the craziness) and maybe not-so-obvious (possibly something about the generation involved).
I'm in no way a fan of True Crime as a genre and I'm not at all usually interested in the inner workings of cults. but I've had friends who went to Sarah Lawrence and it's the sort of school I might've been interested in attending if I was a completely different person. so when the story hit the papers, I was very interested (as in "how could a bunch of smart, sophisticated college students..." etc.).
but this is really SOMETHING.
and no, the cult was completely moronic and nobody knew it was a cult. a few of the kids caught on early and split. but the rest...
oy.
Lots of cults don't start out to be, and if you were to point out to the people who were benefiting from the cult what they had done in creating it, they would deny they had done so. Almost anyone who has a set of convictions about achieving goal - whatever that goal might be - will attract followers, who see that goal as something good. And since most people think they are weak (though they won't admit the belief) they're quite happy to turn over their power and submit to the authority of the person who articulates a goal. And those people, whether they do it consciously or unconsciously, come to like the power they've been given, and to consider themselves deserving of having it.
I've seen it happen up close an personal in both a "New Age" spiritual group and an "antique airplane museum." It can happen anywhere.
that counts as a brilliant summary, Tom.
in the Sarah Lawrence case, it seems a little bit different because the parent involved started out as a fabulist and seems to have been one quite a bit before he showed up at Sarah Lawrence. the kids ended up insisting that their parents were trying to poison them as part of a conspiracy with Bernie Kerik. one of the most affected was in a psychiatry residency, which would support your thesis (which I agree with) that the "helping professionals" need the most help. when I was a kid, it became a truism that the craziest kids had psychiatrist fathers (back then, as you recall, most physicians of any kind were men and 35 years ago at Payne Whitney more than half the psychiatric residents were women).
these kids at Sarah Lawrence were altogether too easily fooled. the weirder thing is that so were their parents, and for YEARS.
New Age spiritual groups are, of course, notorious. I had a friend who was involved with that Mel Lyman group in Boston in the '70s (Lyman was the ex-guitarist in the Jim Kweskin Jug Band).
...it's called "Stolen Youth." sorry I left that out.
Yep.
Spew it from the rooftops, Rupert’s not news has been the prime driver for this disaster, with republicans at the wheel…
as a defense, Fucks seems to be doubling down with (of all things!) 2020 election denial stuff. they know their fans are idiots.
and--I've asked this before, but it seems to be getting worse--what the FUCK is it with Chris Hedges??
Chris Hedges is the living breathing definition of the term LEFTY BRAINDEAD MORON. He's been useless to anyone for decades.
Biden said he was the President for all citizens, not just Blue States. Infrastructure like communication towers should be a Federal responsibility, not a private business decision
It's nice you reconnected with Karen, who seems to know and understand you well. One can't have too many good friends.
Jimmy Carter had the most successful post-presidency. Karen and I have had the most successful post-marriage. :-)
Having a successful post-marriage is no small feat.
Very true!
at the risk of riling you up, Tom, I've gotta say that I represent serious competition in the successful post-marriage department. in my case, she lived upstairs. on the other side of the building, but still upstairs.
and it's the thing in my life I most regret.
Here also.
I'm having 2 successful post marriages. That's my limit though as I have vowed never to marry again 🙃. I just get along with them so much better by not being married to either of them anymore.
Tom:
❤️
Yes indeed, you nailed it TC. I live in
rural Arkansas and my cell provider
is AT&T based in Dallas, TX. I can see the cell tower from up here. 1 cell tower that is 2G though I'm
billed for 5G service. Some days I
Ihave no Internet connection. 3 miles down the mountain is a
acorporate cement office. AT&T
put in fiber optic all along their
boundary. Nothing for any of the
other 100 people who live scattered
up here. You have to have cable TV
with Internet access. I've written a
letter to President Biden about this,
as I doubt Sanders will move
against one of her donors to do
anything.
Victoria, I also live in rural Arkansas (Baxter County, 8 miles NW of Mountain Home). My At&T cell sucks at home but when I'm in town shopping it is very good. Where are you located?
Hi Karen! I'm in Garland Cnty
Sullivan's Mountain just a valley
away from the Quachita Nat'l
Forest. I get great cell in town
when shopping too. It'd be nice
to have it all the time. Did you get AT&T 's outrageous offer to
have dedicated WiFi in your home? $200 for setup and $80
a month use? I don't think that's
part of Biden's Infrastructure
Plan.😉
Victoria, when we moved here 21 years ago the house already had underground lines for telephone (Centurylink) and cable TV (Suddenlink). Both were overpriced. As time went on, the phone company added internet and TV while the cable company added internet and phone service. We flipped back and forth as they had lower priced intro offers. For the last few years we have had only internet, no cable TV package and no landline. We use an Ooma Telo voice-over-internet for our home phone and Roku for streaming to our TV. Our monthly charges are much lower and we do not miss anything except St. Louis Cardinals baseball games ;) We have become so used reliable internet that we would really miss that if we moved to an area where it was not available.
Oh wow indeed - we share the same soap box..... I have been aware of this for years, and there is also a real cultural aspect (several actually). A lot of rural people from Appalachia live in an honor culture, much like those of Latino and Arab cultures. This can be a real problem, since in a honor culture, any perceived insult or slight to your personal reputation or standing must be avenged, usually violently. And they do not understand those who do not have this same ethos. Another difference is that they value what we call blue-collar work - work with the hands - construction, truck driving, working the land, mining work. many of them are unfortunately ill-equipped by education or culture to do well in a modern technical society. They loathe office work (it's not real work) and think that urbanites are not "real men", they are people who can't do real work..... An additional dessert is their general distrust of outsiders and the well-educated. The result is that the more ambitious and forward-looking students move away, never to return - leaving the less ambitious and poorly educated to fester in poverty. It is a national tragedy. Biden and the Dems are at least trying to push the dead elephant out of the way and get on with rebuilding the country. If we can elect Democratic presidents for the next 2-3 terms and get stuff done, we may be able to break the neo-liberal cycle that is tearing the country apart.
A correct perception of the poverty culture, Bruce. Very resourceful but tied to an obsolescent reality through generational poverty.
The right kind of assistance, and not termed “help”, must be brought to these communities.
I learned a lot about poverty through studying the work of Dr. Ruby Payne. It changed my classrooms and schools that I managed tremendously.
Salud.
🗽
Yep, that about sums it up - a particularly fine mess. 😉 It makes me think of my cousins in East TX and the FM (farm to market) roads leading to their farms; we were the "city slickers" who had it made. Seriously, though, if ya drive 'cross country (or state, even CA), there are looong dead zones for cell and radio service - except the ubiquitous AM talk station. While driving, I wonder about emergency service - not only phone but the closing of rural hospitals and other medical services. I guess I've always been cognizant of the rural/urban divide and appreciate your writing (👏) about it.
Maybe another part of the issue is that the goal of companies has been and is even more so nowadays to MAKE MONEY and who cares if everyone or anyone for that matter has access to internet and phone service that actually means you can do something. There are so many dead zones in Michigan it is a wonder anyone was able to do anything during the pandemic. And of course lots of kids and others couldn't do diddly squat. There used to be such a thing as regulations that made communication companies do the necessary work to see that people were connected wherever they lived. The Post Office must deliver everywhere despite the effort to privatize it to death and try to make it "run like a business" - because everyone KNOWS businesses know how to run. (NOT). Yes - the government could do more about such matters and we can hope that the IRA will get communication companies on board. The next issue though is how to foot the bills they send you. Somehow making money, especially the folks at the top of the pyramid, and the shareholders somewhere in the middle, continually leave most everyone else out of equation. I've always said the rule of capitalism is this: you can have it if you can pay for it. If you can't pay for it (i.e. university or college or God knows what) then go into debt for the rest of your life. As long as making a huge (and I do mean HUGE) profit is the only thing that matters then we will continue to be a nation of a few haves and many have nots, and the have nots are scattered from one coast to the other, in urban and rural settings. And now of course hospitals and clinics are closing in more rural areas and the ones in urban areas cost so much to access, even with some kind of insurance, most people just are taking their chances and hoping whatever is going on they do not need to go to any kind of medical facility. There's something incredibly flawed and deeply immoral about the economic system that has the world tied up in little knots regardless of where you may be living.
in my experience with hospitals, it seems like the ones most like incompetently run prisons (and this is by no means a function of the famous hospital "networks" running these places) give patients the most trouble with issues like billing.
I recently had to make some visits to a world-famous hospital, where I was treated like some kind of Saudi prince and had to pay about fifteen bucks a visit with my humble UFT health insurance. the nurses would bring me whatever I asked for within about a minute. later, I was talking to an old friend who'd also been a patient there and she told me that the nurses there weren't unionized. I found this explanation (which is probably correct, alas) very upsetting.
I guess I'm not exactly "rural", maybe suburban country? - farms around me but many residences too - I live pretty much in the middle of my four acres. Cell service isnt all that great but I dont use my cell phone much anyway - depend on my landline - like it better! I'm really fortunate that we have a smaller cable company which provides my phone-cable-internet. I dropped many of the cable channels a while ago - funny that I cant get rid of the Faux channels from my "package". Seems to be a true "package" deal!!!
for some reason, it's impossible to dump them...they seem hard-wired into even the most basic cable packages. I wonder what kind of foul deal they've managed to work out, but I'm sure there is one.
My cable bill got so high I bought an antenna and then called to cancel the cable. They begged me to stay and offered 100 more channels for free. I laughed and said the 100 I have now are worthless, don’t need more, cancel my subscription. They came back with an offer to significantly lower my bill by allowing me 10 channels only, plus the local network channels and PBS. I laughed and said I only needed 9 of the 10. Saved 60 dollars a month
Threaten them. They’ll play along
Bottom line? No Fox News. Cut them off at the knees
that used to work when I had Time/Warner. for thirty years, I had ONE outage that lasted half a day. they even had a "Retention Department" to make those kinds of sweetheart offers.
now, with Spectrum, I have an outage every day (most of them for less than an hour, but still). and no retention department. no sweetheart deals. the competition is Verizon, but I hear from their subscribers that they also really suck.
some time ago, RCN was offering a much better package, but they very quickly got put out of business.
until the last ten years or so (during which Verizon was installed), there was no cable choice whatsoever in NYC. the boroughs were divided up by Time/Warner (their employees LOVED working for them) and Cablevision (which EVERYBODY hates).
Say what you will - and there's sure a lot to be said - about ATT and DirectTV, but the last time I experienced an outage it was because the clouds were so thick it blocked the satellite reception, and it got solved in bout 20 minutes. I hate them both, but they do the one thing that's important. They work.
I wouldn't use Spectrum if they were the only one in the business. Get Verizon just because it ISN'T @#$$#@$#@!!!!!!! Spectrum.
Oh yes, Verizon is the phone service (cell) here too. Depends on where you live - my cell will get service if I go out the door across the driveway then across a field to the upper driveway - or at least my son tells me it would. IF I used it that much. Of course my son, daughter, grandkids, great grandkids ALL use their cells all the time for all things. I am remaining an old stick-in the mud!
I'm certainly considering it. wifi outages every night for the last five nights.
They've had 40 years I know of to get things right out here (used to be Warner Cable, then time-Warner Cable, then Spectrum) and they still run like it's their first week in business.
I got sucked into Spectrum but went scrambling back to AT&T two weeks later. I pay more and curse less.
Spectrum is the biggie in this area. I'm so lucky with my small cable guys. My son put up an antenna - still has cable but can get quite a lot of the same channels on his antenna!
Rupert knows how to squeeze every dime…
Yet another reason the culture wars are a scam.
One of your best.
I think you're 100% right about the political necessity of improving lives through better infrastructure, and reducing some of the resentment at elites who seem alternately patronizing and indifferent.
It has to be paired with clear messaging. Biden spent his first two years thinking that if he just made life enough better for those folks, they'd realize his "bottom up and middle out" approach worked better for them than the right wing's trickle down, but then as his policies bore fruit Repubs just posed next to bridges and new roads and told constituents that the libs forcing unacceptable lifestyles on them were really why they were so angry. I think Biden has finally fully accepted that he's going to have to spell it out, "toot his own horn" and call out hypocrisy and lies.
Not one Republican I know would thank the present administration for new roads or internet. They'd just use improved connectivity to watch more hours of Fox, where they would be told some alternate version of reality where their R representatives had fought to bring them benefits despite the depraved liberal opposition.
So: Messaging with every project and appealing, reliable news available on a continuing basis as an alternative to the right wing media often monopolizing those communities. I just mistrust the general human population's ability to change their minds in the face of inconvenient facts, or feel gratitude through a crust of habits of suspicion.
Those last to paragraphs are an excellent description of The Problem.
But I believe one that can be solved. Especially with the generation of “youngers” coming from the entrenched older resentfuls living in poverty.
🗽
Funny you should mention TVA - I can hear my father's voice talking about the arrival of electric lights in East Tennessee. It made a world of difference. And so will the infrastructure bills, if we can hang on long enough to see them through. Not that TN is any glowing example of the effects of positive government on the future. (Rep. Ogles, anyone?)
Wow. Probably the best analysis I've seen on the divide issue and probably far too accurate for anyone in the political world to pay attention to with heart palpitations.
point well taken. it's ironic, of course, that the rural people who LOVE TFF (and will support him to their graves) are the ones who are ultimately getting the most fucked by his "policies" and "party."
during the early days of the New Deal (as I recall from my reading), those programs weren't especially popular with the folks who stood to benefit most radically from them.
it's funny, but the drunk guy I sometimes talk about called me the other night and I stayed on with him (out of some twisted, self-denying sense of politeness) while he steadily slurred more and more, but was talking about precisely this stuff. all I could do was try to point out that the Repugs might appeal to the rural people he was so worried about (he's actually from Dallas, which isn't exactly rural) when they're running, but haven't ever come through in any kind of meaningful way. I also tried to disabuse him of some of that hired-wired Alamo bullshit, but gave up when I realized he wasn't going to remember the conversation at all.
and, almost as if by design, this is today's post. ha!
I have a few old friends who live in small towns upstate, but they're close enough to serious yuppie/old hippie/retired academic enclaves that their electronic infrastructure is impeccable. nobody in or around Woodstock or Great Barrington is going to tolerate anything different.
I have one really good friend in Florida, and she's an unreconstructed radical who perennially flirts with splitting.
I have some family left in Houston but haven't spoken to any of them in more than twenty years, mostly "more." the Houston people once lived in places in Louisiana you could only get to with two-lane roads, but they left in the '70s.
Not all of us rural dwellers love that lying blob of orange slime & fat. We have foregathered a small tribe of (mostly) boomer-age folk (some younger; some a bit older) some life-long Mainiacs and some transplants and we are all bright blue and live in rural areas which tend to be red.
We like to hang together because listening to the ridiculous conspiracy theories and hateful political BS of our red neighbors was causing all sorts of anxiety, anger and high blood pressure issues.