Now that the white working class has enabled a Manhattan billionaire to dick-swing his way into the White House, it’s time to realize the idea of a “liberal elite bubble” is a false one. The notion of such a bubble presumes that US cities, with diverse populations in close proximity to each other, are not representative of the actual American citizenry, but rather are an aberration.
Let’s extend that thesis through a few broad generalizations (and, heads up, I’ll be making generalizations throughout, because that is the only way to deal with big ideas such as one of a profoundly changing nation: in general terms). There’s a persistent idea that the real America cannot be found on our coasts or in our cities, but can only be located in the heartland, a geographically vague but enormous swath of country that can basically be diagrammed by locating the red states that won Trump the presidency. These states, as we’ve been told, are filled with working-class families (many of them white, but let’s put that to the side for one second) who emphasize family and religion and the value of a hard day’s work.
And yet, by all accounts, the population of these places are suffering from a lack of jobs, from systemic poverty, from widespread drug addiction, from a tragic and pronounced dearth of opportunity. This is unfair, and unfortunate, and their frustration has legitimacy. But how have they ended up like this, stripped of any means to recover themselves (bar a game-changing president who’s supposedly in their corner)? One could argue that, as their economies suffer, these non-liberal anti-bubbles (let’s call them that for now) have devolved into places of xenophobia and stagnation, places that have been left behind by a liberal elite that seeks to frame the country in its own progressive image. One could argue further that these non-liberal anti-bubbles have thus gotten themselves stuck in time, and as a result are missing out on the growth, the economic progress, the prosperity that the rest of the country is palpably experiencing. These arguments have validity. That our non-liberal anti-bubbles have refused to accept the cold, hard, undeniable reality that some sort of self-directed change is necessary to hoist themselves out of their terrible trough of poverty and blight is, well, kind of outrageous.
But against all logic, the idea of the liberal bubble persists. It’s a completely backward idea. How has the white working class—which, with this election, got its own back (to put it charitably), and/or held the rest of the nation hostage (to put it less so)—been credited for its “true” American qualities, when it’s far, far closer to the truth to say it’s existing in a bubble of its own?
Our so-called liberal bubbles—our cities, in other words—are thriving, economically. The national employment rate is at a nine-year low, with most of those jobs in our country’s population hubs. Our cities are not only becoming bigger by the day (something Portlanders have witnessed firsthand), many of them are growing more diverse as well, representing the US population as it truly exists—not as a white rural conservative wishes it would exist, but as it inarguably, in reality and actuality, exists. By necessity, cities are emphasizing the forward-looking ideals of environmentalism (city dwellers, by circumstance, must create a smaller carbon footprint than suburban or rural dwellers) and rejecting the restrictive, anti-humanitarian rules that conservatism has historically placed on the peoples it wishes to oppress. But these are ideological arguments, and not easy ones to win. So let’s look at the numbers: The growth sectors of the US economy, whether they come from new technologies or are in thriving existing markets, are found by and large within the nation’s cities. This is no bubble—this is as close as you can get to our current reality.
Therefore, the real bubbles are to be found in any of the white working class rural areas that are ignoring, ostrich-like, not just the future, but the present-day circumstances of our country as a whole. It’s a pipe dream to want America to remain as homogenous as possible; it’s even more of a pipe dream to wish for the return of the manufacturing and coal jobs. The country’s population will grow ever browner, no matter how strongly certain people don’t want it to. And manufacturing jobs are simply not going to return in any realistic capacity; those that do remain will do so at great expense to the nation as a whole (like Carrier’s enormous and well publicized tax break of $7 million to save 800 jobs, which, when broken down, comes to a whopping $8,750 per employee). How is failing to recognize these realities not living a bubble?
When you look at how the plurality of Americans chose to express themselves at the polls—by selecting Hillary Clinton by a margin of greater than 2.5 million votes and growing—it’s clear that the so-called city “elites” exist in larger numbers than the (presumably rural) Trump voter. As such, any actual bubble-like conditions should be attributed to places where voters went against the interests of the American people—not in our cities, but in the blighted rural areas that fell for Trump. There is no longer any reason whatsoever to accept the idea of a “liberal bubble,” or of the “coastal elite.” The real bubbles are to be found in the parts of the country that have refused, to their detriment, to accept the country’s current economic and demographic circumstances. When someone says “liberal bubble” to you, it’s time to pop that expired and outlandish phrase out of their vocabulary immediately.
Dead wrong Ned. When you flip-flop between “liberal elite bubble” and “liberal bubble,” you confuse the issue. There most certainly is an ELITE LIBERAL BUBBLE. Those are the clowns “leading” the cause of middle class americans on down. The middle class on down are the folks that make up the vast majority of Americans. Unfortunately, a lot them are too ignorant to understand they actually hold liberal values.
The fact that Hillary, and the elite liberals running her campaign couldn’t win this election, shows just how out of touch those folks are with average Americans. Yeah, there was questionable activity during the election. I.E. Fake news, Trump’s blatant play on ignorance and hate, & obvious FBI interference.
However… Running against an ignorant orangutan/tangerine hybrid with zero moral compass, AND LOSING, says a helluva lot about how unappealing Hillary was as a candidate. The left advanced their own establishment candidate, all the while ignoring the will of their base.
They got what they deserved and we true liberals, and a lot of unknowing faux-republicans (entitlement receiving rednecks), are the ones who will suffer from the elevation results.
Now don’t get me wrong, the elite righties are certainly out of touch with ALL reality, but let’s not pretend that the liberal establishment is closing in on them fast.
As someone who grew up in a rural area that once had a thriving mill economy, but now lives in a city for the sole purpose of obtaining employment I know the liberal bubble to be a real thing. Not all cities are liberal bubbles, however. Some cities host a variety of political ideas. But Portland certainly is.
Go home Portland Mercury You’re drunk.
Oh, dear. You’ve completely missed the mark. The bubbles we live in are not geographical. They are formed by our self-curation of information, made possible by the internet in 2016. Come on, use that big brain.
Spoken like someone from deep within the bubble….
I like the perspective and think it merits some further thought. The “liberal bubble” gets bandied about as though we’ve done something to ignore reality, I agree that those ignoring the reality may be those stuck in the conservative hell holes.
Defending oneself from the accusation of being in a bubble by blowing a bigger bubble around the perceived blowers of the first bubble is a pretty sad affirmation of said bubble. I don’t dispute that the “bubble” attack is lazy and contrived; and I don’t dispute that the particular ethno-nationalism of the rest of America constitutes its own form of delusion; but their delusion does not diminish your own.
Case in point: the author’s implication that Portland’s economic superiority has anything to do with its moral superiority. Mind-numbingly coarse. Portland is economically successful because of its Asia facing port. Everything else is circumstance. Such smug self-righteousness – particularly when the racial history of Portland is as abhorrent as any city in the country – is no different than the deluded nationalism that might lead a rural Ohioan to the belief that America’s economic success derives from some original superiority, some preternatural capacity for freedom and democracy. And it’s exactly the attitude that has led me – a longtime, now former Portlander (and previously an inhabitant of the bubble called San Francisco) – to the concrete belief that Portland is the archetype of THE liberal bubble.
It is true that the confines of a city enable a unique kind of diversity, diversity of industry, of ethnicity, of languages and cultural expressions, and all of that is fantastic. Living in rural Virginia, I miss it. But the claim that the city isn’t just as ideologically enclosed is betrayed the moment the author fails to empathize with the plight of a former coal or auto worker. It is betrayed when my friends in San Francisco dispute the claim that West Virginians voted in their self-interest with a citation of coal’s outsize carbon footprint. You can’t claim empathy-stemming-from-diversity as your calling card when such empathy doesn’t extend past the urban center.
Bradzuk writes: “Case in point: the author’s implication that Portland’s economic superiority has anything to do with its moral superiority.”
This comes from an otherwise smart comment, but this particular sentence seems an unfortunate misreading of what I wrote. I ordinarily wouldn’t comment on my own article (I’ve already stated my case, hopefully) but I guess if this is what someone took away from it, I need to clarify. I don’t believe there’s anything morally superior about a city having a functioning economy. (I don’t mention morality anywhere in the article.) I do believe, however, that a functioning economy is proof in itself of a willingness to adapt to the world as it is—i.e., to exist outside of a bubble, or at the very least to have the ability to see beyond its curved walls.
To address some other comments: The article is only tangentially about Portland (I mentioned it once in terms of population growth); rather, it was meant to address American cities as a whole. If I failed to make that clear, that’s my fault, and I apologize. I still contend that the very idea of a population center—particularly one that features diversity, inclusivity, and not merely economic opportunity but economic ADAPTABILITY—is antithetical to the concept of a bubble. If you beg to differ, that’s one thing, and we won’t agree on that particular point. But to not look past the fact that Portland, specifically, is lagging behind other major US cities in terms of diversity seems like a convenient way to ignore the bigger point here.
Another thing: It’s possible to have empathy for an out-of-work coal or auto worker while still asserting that the empty promise of bringing back their old jobs will do nothing to better anyone’s situation. It’s one thing to be empathetic; it’s another to accept, without challenge, all the bad information that has been spread throughout certain communities. I’ll do the former, but not the latter. Our marketplace has changed. Our economy has changed. Our world has changed. And to not change along with it, one could argue, is like being in some sort of bubble.
I’m starting to repeat points I already made in the article, so it’d probably be wise to stop here. I appreciate all the comments. Even Jake’s.
What I read in your piece Ned are different types of bubbles. You seem to be talking about something that has inflated and is going to pop, like a housing bubble. So people in the Rust Belt who swung this election might think of themselves as powerful now, but they are clearly grasping to a past that will not return and their views will ultimately become marginalized through time.
The SNL skit is using bubble to describe what we in Portland call silos, or elsewhere can be described as echo chambers or safe spaces.
I think you and SNL are both right.
The unemployment rate refers to people who are receiving unemployment benefits, which does NOT reflect what the true unemployment figure is. To think that it does means you are in a bubble.
To say that manufacturing in this country will never come back means you are in a bubble. Germany is the strongest economy in Europe and one of the leading economies in the world. It is also the leading manufacturing nations in Europe. The government works with the manufacturing industries to keep it healthy. It also supports labor unions, who work WITH their companies (as opposed to being an adversary).
Note also that our economy is a debt-driven economy. Germany’s economy is not. They were one of the few countries in the West that was unaffected by the last recession.
A country that has no manufacturing and bases its exports on raw materials is called a “third world nation.” We sell enormous logs from trees to Japan and they work with that wood in manufacturing facilities. Too bad there’s no way our brilliant leaders in government and industry can figure out how to work with that wood here at home to produce something more than a raw material.
Ned: I don’t mean to run too wild with my criticism, particularly because it is not necessary, but it doesn’t take much between the lines reading to defend my claim that you “imply that Portland’s economic superiority has anything to do with its moral superiority.” Perhaps you didn’t use the word “moral” but then, I used the word “imply”.
You wrote: “Our so-called liberal bubbles—our cities, in other words—are thriving, economically.” AND “cities are emphasizing the forward-looking ideals of environmentalism … and rejecting the restrictive, anti-humanitarian rules that conservatism has historically placed on the peoples it wishes to oppress.” in the same paragraph. We can pretend our ideals aren’t also moral tenets, but why should we? I think environmentalism is a moral cause, as is humanitarianism.
But you are probably right to believe I was overlaying some of my own experience onto your words. Im sorry for that. It is a counter-point unto itself, regardless of your support for it, that Portland – among many liberal cities (SF, NY and Chicago have been experienced firsthand, but I’m sure there are others) – absolutely reeks of a righteousness deriving from this false narrative. I hear it all the time, “why can’t they get with the times?”, “if it’s so bad why don’t they move?”. And I am merely pointing out that cities are “thriving economically” through no fault of our own. They are the centers of economic activity because trade has displaced manufacturing, and because of the economies of scale that they enable as a result. Environmental and humanitarian policy is a recent addition to this success, not a cause. And you said it yourself, much of this is “by necessity”: traffic motivates the use of bikes or public transit; riots motivate the pursuit of more humanitarian police and housing policy. But none of this policy pops the self-righteous bubble we confine ourselves to. My sister and her friends, residents of the North-Side Chicago bubble Lincoln Park, recently marveled to me about how amazing it is that everyone in their neighborhood is just like them! It’s like a big party, they said, aggressively ignoring the suffering just 30 minutes to their south. And when trump was elected, their marveling was redirected out, at the rest of the country, at how the rest of the world could be so stupid. These are Michigan grads; smart, liberal, mostly empathic young people working in non-profits and government and occasionally finance. I don’t hate them for their insularity, I love my sister, but I can’t read your post and not hear their righteousness.
The reality that SNL brings to the fore is that we are all, literally all of us, guarding ourselves from truths that we don’t have empathic room for. You say “It’s possible to have empathy for an out-of-work coal or auto worker while still asserting that the empty promise of bringing back their old jobs will do nothing to better anyone’s situation.” But you display no such empathy, and worse, you further the lie that these are all empty promises. Manufacturing could exist here if wages were allowed to drop, but that’s incompatible with the liberal push for a higher minimum wage. Coal could be lucrative(ish), but it’s incompatible with environmental concern. And that’s fine. Argue your side. I too push for a higher minimum wage and more stringent environmental regulations; but I do not kid myself that it wont hurt some people. And I do everything in my power to see the logic through their eyes, to avoid resorting to the lazy counter of “delusion” or “bubble”, because to do so merely reveals your own delusion.
The author, Ned L is so thin-skinned being that from within his insulated world-view he can’t even get the humor of “the Bubble” skit.
Instead, he attributes the failure of others to agree with his left-wing orthodoxies to stupidity and “fake news.”
I’m sure he’d fit right in. (If he can afford 1.9 million for a one-bedroom apartment. Remember, “It’s Brooklyn, with a bubble on it!”)
Look at the education (endoctrination) going on in our public schools and our universities. It takes a special kind of ‘smart’ to beleive hillary is the candidate of the people. It takes a special kind od ‘smart’ to believe war with russis is good.
When ‘war is peace’ and ‘peace is war’ you know you are in a bubble. Now trun NPR back on to be safe in your bubble. Biaaatch!
You are hilarious Ned. The satire is amazing. You really had everyone believing you were a clueless, untraveled, pompous ass.
You really had these guys going. As if anyone’s parents would let them grow up completely ignorant of the people outside their little social circle. A bubble some might call it. The notion is absurd.