One of the most significant trends of the past 30 years has been the steady leftwing shift of the suburbs. Starting first in the Pacific Northwest and the Bay, before moving to the Northeast and, finally, picking up steam in the past several years, and expanding to the rest of the country, even to Alabama. Since I became a voter, Jefferson County (Birmingham) has gone a solidly Republican county to a solidly Democratic one. The city of Birmingham has not grown that much, but there has been a steady leftwing shift of the voters outside of Birmingham itself. This same trend can be seen in Georgia. In the span of a few years, suburban Atlanta went from being represented by someone like Larry McDonald to Newt Gingrich. Today, suburban Atlanta is one of the chief engines turning Georgia into a blue state. Outside of Dixie, this trend can also be observed – look at Orange County, California, once a bastion of the John Birch Society and was represented by Bob Dornan (one of the two honorable men, along with Ron Paul, to serve in Congress during my lifetime). Today, it’s a purple county.
I have come to the conclusion that what has happened over the past 30 years is simply the nature of the suburbs coming to fruition. The suburbs organically become leftwing over a period of time. Part of this is because the very nature of suburban living tends to replace identity with, at best, generic “whiteness” and, at worst, a consumer identity. Those who live in rural areas, especially where identity runs strong, as in Dixie, understand who they are – they are Dixians and they are living on land their families have lived on for generations. It establishes a strong link to the land. Urban living (as in actual urban living, not in a gentrified hipster neighborhood) does the same. Growing up in a 100% Italian neighborhood reminds someone of their unique identity, something that a suburban neighborhood cannot maintain.
The suburbs also create a sanitized, safe environment that shields people from the harsh realities of life, a perfect breeding ground for leftism. Growing up in a rural environment lets one know just how dangerous the world is – animals are dangerous, farm equipment is dangerous, guns are dangerous (albeit a tool) and getting lost in the woods is dangerous. It’s common sense that every farm boy knows that is lost on the suburbanite. All kidding aside, I learned this back when Harambe was shot. I sided with the zoo – I knew how dangerous wild animals can be, while most of the people around me apparently thought gorillas behave like they do in Disney movies. Urban living can do the same, you have to know stuff like what colors not to wear (or a certain skin color) in particular neighborhoods, something that requires a bit of common sense that the suburbanite does not understand. Recently, Camille Paglia mocked the #metoo movement by pointing out how sheltered these women are, and they are almost always from the suburbs. Paglia went on to explain that since she grew up in a fairly violent Italian ghetto, she had no such illusions about what the world was really like.
So, why is it that the suburbs were once known as a bastion of the Right not all that long ago? I think it has to do with the generational divide of the suburbanite. Remember, during the heyday of the rightwing suburbs (from after World War II to the late 1980s), they were made up of people who were first, or second, generation suburbanites. They were people who either came from a hard life on the farm or once lived in the cities before they were forced out by rising crime rates. Though they worked hard to create a safe environment for their families, they knew from personal experience (or, at least, stories from their parents) just how fleeting this safety could be. This enforced rightwing views, as they worked to maintain what they had created. But, as we have moved farther and farther way from that first generation, the safety of the suburbs have moved from being an aberration that must be defended to being an underappreciated standard of living that is anti-reality.
The suburbs, by killing any actual identity, as well as, an attachment to land and also by shielding people from the realities of a harsh world, create an environment that will, overtime, become increasingly leftist. The nature of the men that built the first wave of suburbanization were able to create a rightwing movement. However, in the long-run, the nature of the suburbs overcame their efforts. Those men died and were replaced by people who had no identity beyond being a generic white guy (if not, something even worse) and no idea just how dangerous the world can be. The suburbs were sold to post-War Americans as the best of both worlds. In reality, they were the worst.
Karl Marx talked about ending the distinction between town and country. Now we know why.
-By Harmonica
O I’m a good old rebel, now that’s just what I am. For this “fair land of freedom” I do not care at all. I’m glad I fit against it, I only wish we’d won, And I don’t want no pardon for anything I done.
I remember the obnoxious Dornan gushing over having sat at the foot of “MLK” to hear his “wisdom”. Americans are natural Leftist. He was Israel first also.
For Metro Atlanta, the reason why the Suburbs became solidly blue is due to more uppity Blacks and Yankees invading other county. The whites in Henry, Douglas, and Rockdale County still voted for Red. The reason many of these counties become Blue is due to a Negro invasion. The whites from Henry County are actually first or second generation migrant from fleeing Clayton County (once majority white county which turns majority black in one generation).
I agree it certainly creates an ivory tower mentality, where everything has to be explained as if talking to a child even when speaking to apparently grown men. This leads to something I have long worried about, the cowards multiplying while the men fight. They stand behind the lines of poverty, jail, persecution, indoctrination and all of the rest while those without the money to join them in white flight have to stand and fight. Those fighting have this notion that those behind them are fighting as well, doing things for our people, that we are on the same team and they are holding the line while those behind them are strategizing, keeping our history, organizing and all of the rest.
We no longer have that foolish notion, the people behind us did what amounts to nothing of significance. When I heard the SCV picks up trash on the side of the road during a time we were flooding their sites and shutting down their phone line when they were removing Jackson from New Orleans, we wanted to know the plan, where to meet, what to do etc. They just said, we don’t do that, and went back to picking up trash. That may sound like a dig on the SCV, but they were the only ones doing anything at all, even if it was just picking up trash so that the carpet baggers would have a nice view as they stole our home.
So what are the people with resources doing? Nothing, nothing at all. We don’t even educate our children! A letter could have spared me as a child, just a letter explaining who I was and why all of this evil was being done to me. Instead I just had to suffer and we were left to piece it together on our own, it took decades and cost us an untold amount of mental anguish.
That’s why people don’t fight anymore, I will never go guard a statue just so some slob can have another weekend at the golf course or hunting camp, fuck them. That is the prevalent feeling among most of us, we look back at what we are fighting for and see a bunch of cowards who have this expectation that we will just keep protecting them forever, that they can always just run to the next suburb.
This has lead me to the idea of pivoting and I am sure that is what others are doing as well as me. That we are just letting the horde through to their home, letting it wash around us and right into the cowards homes. Everything we endure they must be made to endure as soon as it happens. I can think of no other way to undo the damage of the boat shoe cowards who stand behind us with the women and children, only concerned with themselves.
The suburbs are for women and children, that’s it. If you are spending your time there instead of on the edge of white flight where the fight is, then you are a coward and do not deserve the protection of those people. The only solution to the suburbs that I can see is to pave a highway right into them for the horde, to pivot aside and let them have it. That everything and everyone they abandoned will just happen to them again as soon as their feet touch the ground in their new subdivision, where they just teach their kids Yankee lies anyway, God forbid they expose their own cowardice. Maybe when running does no good, when people like me are not throwing their life away to buy them time anymore, when the consequences of their inaction are instant, when the pain we feel on the front hits them at the same time it hits us, maybe then the cowards will find their feet.