Mark Phillips: The American Question
1/11/03: Heartland.
Right-wing politicians sometimes speak of "The American Heartland"
in tones that seem religious. In this
narrative
the Heartland is the
"real" America, the fountainhead of those spiritual and ethical values
which are most distinctly American.
Implied is the unspoken yet inescapable corollary that urban
America is outside this mainstream, or, at best, secondary to it.
It's reasonable to phrase it like this: if Heartland America is the real America,
then non-Heartland America isn't.
This discourse radically contradicts Americans' traditional commitment to
democracy. More than three quarters of Americans live in
big cities. Half of Americans live in our country's ten largest metropolitan areas.
These three quarters of our people are "real" Americans.
Right-wing ideological discourse is built around these kinds of manipulative
narratives. Trouble Tickets has begun slowly
cataloging
them, in an as yet unsystematic way. Please
write
me if you'd like to suggest examples.
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