the future is here

April 26, 2018 12:26 PM

James Fallows travels the USA and says "Americans don’t realize how fast the country is moving toward becoming a better version of itself."
posted by the man of twists and turns (29 comments total)

The people, organizations, and ideas reshaping the country. A journey piloted by James Fallows with Deborah Fallows. on his American Futures trips.
posted by the man of twists and turns at 12:35 PM on April 26, 2018 [4 favorites]

Thanks for a post that offers a different, and perhaps more hopeful, perspective. Much appreciated.
posted by rmhsinc at 1:51 PM on April 26, 2018 [3 favorites]

I want to believe but I just can’t.
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 1:55 PM on April 26, 2018 [15 favorites]

Contradictory outlooks? Yes. But to us the incoherence of these views said less about the people holding them than about the gulf between many Americans’ outlook on national partisan issues—polarized, tribal, symbolic—and the practical-mindedness with which most people in most regions approach decisions about their own communities.

I mean... they're describing fascism here, right? Tight-knit local success stories with populist underpinnings that are successful at the expense of a convenient cast of Others. I'd answer the above question with a second question, "for who?" I don't think that the main point of divergence between the minutely examined trump voter and progressives is a desire for a functioning society - it's a direct disagreement (handwaved away in the essay as 'national politics') about who that functioning society should be available for.
posted by codacorolla at 2:08 PM on April 26, 2018 [24 favorites]

That is possibly the most Atlantic article possible.

You can have a very pleasant road trip in a country that is a mess.
posted by benzenedream at 2:34 PM on April 26, 2018 [34 favorites]

I lost interest in Fallows when he showed up in Seattle enthusing over the coming era of flying cars and rhapsodizing about his experience flying single engine planes.

All without a mention of the thousands and probably tens of thousands of plebs on the ground who might have been disturbed by his noise, and completely oblivious about Global Warming.

Fallows is of, supported by, and for the global Elite.
posted by jamjam at 2:51 PM on April 26, 2018 [6 favorites]

Oh god he visited my high school. Look, I know it looks great, but everyone there is running away from their home towns it is not a beacon of the future it is the only well-funded public school in Mississippi anyone can go to. Fund the public schools. Please.
posted by domo at 2:52 PM on April 26, 2018 [10 favorites]

I read this article the other day and my eye's still twitching. Look, enthuse about America and how it'd rebuild itself and so but since the author's a white older guy unironically using the phrase "Real America", I'll take it cum grano salis and keep in mind that America has always been dysfunctional to some degree from day one.

signed, a midwesterner
posted by lineofsight at 3:02 PM on April 26, 2018 [3 favorites]

The phrase "Real America" occurs zero times in the FPP.
posted by ReadEvalPost at 3:07 PM on April 26, 2018 [4 favorites]

"Welllllll, these folks believe that narrative that black people are statistically less wealthy because they're lazy, and the idea that transgendered people are less-than human under the law, BUT this local library got a 3D printer recently!"
posted by codacorolla at 3:20 PM on April 26, 2018 [21 favorites]

America is becoming more like itself again. More Americans are trying to make it so, in more places, than most Americans are aware. Even as the country is becoming worse in obvious ways—angrier, more divided, less able to do the basic business of governing itself—it is becoming distinctly better on a range of other indicators that are harder to perceive.

"It's all getting better, you just can't see it because of all the obvious terrible things." OK. This article is the walking corpse of the politics of inevitability that helped to get us in this situation. It's the cult of worship of a nonexistent arc of history and it does nobody any good.
posted by Rust Moranis at 3:21 PM on April 26, 2018 [19 favorites]

I'm only partially through this read but so much of this optimism is going to depend on which America you live inside of, and how your community/neighbors view you. If you're dehumanized because of your gender, sexuality, race, immigration status, welp, there are going to be other more pressing concerns and not so rosy an outlook. It's exhausting to live in a world where your very identity is consistently challenged or threatened. It's much easier to travel and see the good when you have a bit of safety and privilege to not worry about your own space in the world.
posted by Fizz at 3:30 PM on April 26, 2018 [16 favorites]

I miss the Atlantic comments section.
posted by bookman117 at 3:38 PM on April 26, 2018

So James Fallows is a fucking moron, then.
posted by medusa at 3:44 PM on April 26, 2018 [7 favorites]

Well, he tried to be more thorough than the time David Brooks discovered middle America on a day trip to Breezewood, PA.
posted by ardgedee at 4:53 PM on April 26, 2018 [2 favorites]

Starting in 2013, that is what we did, flying from town to town in our small propeller plane, which itself provided a close-up view of how cities fit into the American landscape

Yeah. OK. Absolutely, your private plane is giving you a close up view of America! I myself am just finishing up driving around America and alas I cannot replicate his findings. But then I was on the ground, where I saw lots and lots of scared and confused Americans right next to way way too many living on the streets, in cars, in tents and in RVs. I guess it’s hard to notice them from the air or even at the private airport. . .
posted by mygothlaundry at 5:03 PM on April 26, 2018 [15 favorites]

"A small propeller plane" is not necessarily the private jet that you or others may be envisioning here. A Cessna 150 can be yours for $10,000-20,000, and even a newer (1980s-1990s) Cessna 206 can run between $100-200K, which is in the general price range for a nice used RV. In a lot of non-rich rural areas of North America, it's a great way to get from place to place.

More to the point, I feel like a lot of people in this thread are piling onto the tl;dr version of this story, and sketching a cartoon version of the author that they can then pillory, rather than taking the story for what it is, and where it's coming from. It's (psychologically, at least) easy to dismiss a veteran reporter's three-year project traveling to towns and cities across the country talking to people about the future of their own communities, because his conclusions about the big picture don't match what we think we know about the direction of the country. It's harder to answer the question that Follows set out to grapple with, which is: Why does an overwhelming majority of the American public think that the country is on the wrong course, while an even more overwhelming majority are simultaneously satisfied with their own lives and optimistic about their local communities' futures?

This would be at least a more interesting topic to discuss than the author's fondness for piloting small planes.
posted by skoosh at 7:06 PM on April 26, 2018 [13 favorites]

" does an overwhelming majority of the American public think that the country is on the wrong course, while an even more overwhelming majority are simultaneously satisfied with their own lives and optimistic about their local communities' futures?"
Good question. I think it's because most americans don't live in humvees or become politicans .
posted by clavdivs at 7:31 PM on April 26, 2018

This Canadian doesn’t realize it, either.
posted by The Card Cheat at 7:53 PM on April 26, 2018 [1 favorite]

It occurred to me that you could write a very similar article right before the Civil War, "Look at all this dynamism and energy all over the nation! All these towns bustling with innovation and new forms of economy like railroads and manufactories. Such strong, interconnected communities too! Sure we have some intense partisanship in Washington, but you can't help but be optimistic if you're looking at the local level."
posted by Ndwright at 7:58 PM on April 26, 2018 [9 favorites]

The interesting follow-up I want him to do is this:

How much of the progress that comes with local engagement turns out to be contingent on support (or simple tolerance) from the federal government? I mean, he devotes a chunk in the middle to discussing communities that were revitalised by immigration and refugee settlement. Are they still on a positive trajectory now, after the last year of ICE midnight raids? And even the whiter communities he visited had to have been relying on federal grants that will likely dry up soon, if they haven't already.

Because I feel like most of what he documented was basically all the invisible nice stuff that comes with having a president who, while not without his flaws, was at least not an amoral monster from the Amoral Monster Party.
posted by tobascodagama at 8:04 PM on April 26, 2018 [4 favorites]

Aren't people often pleased about their own communities because of polarization and sorting into increasingly like-minded communities? "I'm glad to live where I live in (the city / a small town), it's pretty good, mostly my kind of people. I'm sure glad I don't live in (a small town / the city). :shakes head We're even making some progress towards our values around here, while over there they're getting worse and worse."

Not to say that the city/town is great for everybody in it, but for the privileged, their place is getting more and more culturally comfy, while enemies loom in the national picture. He's looking at two sides of the same coin.
posted by away for regrooving at 12:40 AM on April 27, 2018

Wow. This is like some Thomas Friedman-level of Missing The Point. Publicly post that you’re looking for some inspiring success stories, go visit those places, then generalize that things aren’t so bad and there’s some exciting shit just on the horizon that is going to revolutionize everything. I’m sorry, textile mills that found a way to stay open, fancy new libraries, and private organizations buying land for conservation is not going to make up for the repeal of pollution standards, your health insurance company making record profits by allowing you to die, mass repeal of regulations that were put in place for Very Good Reason, and white supremacists openly marching in the street with firearms.

From the article:

It means that the obligation of an equitably growing economy is both to support people who have suffered economic damage and to do everything possible to improve prospects for their children.

It’s glossed over without even a small reflection. That right there, succinctly, is exactly what’s gone so horribly wrong in America and it’s a really Big Fucking Deal that negates every damn positive thing you can say about Trumpistan. If they are allowed to dismantle the safety net, it matters fuck-all whether there’s a tech start up in Bend and all those fancy new libraries are nothing more than homeless shelters with internet access and books. It’s like reading an article about how sturdy and well made the lifeboats on the Titanic were.
posted by Slarty Bartfast at 12:44 AM on April 27, 2018 [10 favorites]

TL;DR - Everybody thinks the country is going to hell, but their part of it is doing fine. So really the country is doing fine. The problems are just fake news.

I think he skipped Flint MI in his whirlwind tour.
posted by panglos at 4:57 AM on April 27, 2018

Everybody thinks the country is going to hell, but their part of it is doing fine.

Isn't this just a new look at the well-established Got Mine voting bloc?
posted by rokusan at 5:59 AM on April 27, 2018 [1 favorite]

He comes so close to hitting the point, but just does a gravity-assist slingshot away, instead.

Folks who live in Republican areas care greatly for their own communities, the environment, and can even be tolerant of immigrants when they actually meet real immigrants. They just repeatedly vote against all of those things when it comes time for politics.

I'm not sure how many different ways authors can dance around "they vote against their own interests."
posted by explosion at 6:25 AM on April 27, 2018 [7 favorites]

Possibly controversial opinion: what if the only way a lot of people could be convinced to stop voting against their interests is for white middle-class journalists to tell them that they're doing ok, actually, without ever explicitly telling them that the folks trying to convince them otherwise are cynical manipulators?

I don't know if that's true, and I certainly won't like it if it's true, but... Given what we know about the way the human brain likes to shut down in the face of direct criticism? I dunno, shit like this might be the only way to inoculate some people against the appeal of fascists who thrive on the "everything is terrible and only empowering me to deal with all of those people can fix it" narrative.
posted by tobascodagama at 7:02 AM on April 27, 2018 [3 favorites]

I'd say that it might also be a way of pleading with the readers of The Atlantic not to write off entire swaths of America as inevitably doomed/utterly senseless because of their colors on national election maps. In general, because of the two-party system, the (re)rise of nakedly partisan media, and the history of race and racism in this country, we've gotten more and more entrenched in our stereotyped views of the political Other, and the further away they are geographically, the more stereotypical they seem. This series from Fallows, I think, helps paint a more complicated, but hopefully more accurate, picture.
posted by skoosh at 7:49 AM on April 27, 2018 [4 favorites]

Let me see what has changed since I as born--whether this makes a better or just different America you can decide. And I have never seen this crowd hesitant to express opinions:
1) Advent of Medicare and Medicaid
2) Civil/Voting Rights Act and a momentous shift from White Only--of course there remain problems but visit the United Sates in 1950
3) Women's Rights and a fundamental cultural change in the role(s) of women.
4) Cultural Diversity/Tolerance that was unimaginable
5) Advent of public housing and rent subsidies
6) American with Disabilities Act--curb cuts/ramps/employment forget it
7) Elimination of polio and advent of broad spectrum antibiotics
8 Complete reformulation of what anuclear family and household is.
9) Gay rights, marriage equality--trust me--it was no fun to be gay in 1950--Get married , ah, I don't think so
10) The ability to maintain meaningful friendships regardless of distances and the development of virtual communities
11) The resurgence of urban neighborhoods/communities and neighborhood intimacy/identification
FWIW--Whether all this means a return to the Real America I don't know. But I think I can attest that other than in small towns (less than 20,000 population) there is a greater sense of community, an immeasurable increase in the welcoming of ethnic/cultural diversity, the ability and freedom of all all minorities to form real and virtual communities of support/acceptance and a middle class that is much more tolerant/diverse than 60 years ago. On the other hand I also think that America as a "United" States is a thing of the past. America is too large, too diverse and too segmented economically, educationally, culturally to ever regain its sense of collective identity. Perhaps a healthy return to City States, State based regional authorities, etc. Not unlike the devolution of the UK. And I now live in ireland where I feel most at home.
posted by rmhsinc at 9:56 AM on April 27, 2018 [3 favorites]