I have a hypothesis (not a theory by the scientific method), that seems to think that politicians in the 20th century, hand in hand with business, wised up to true affiliation, and decided to spread us out. Divide and conquer, b*tches. Most politicians aren't really in the governing people business as they may have once been. What happened to impassioned union members? What happened to neighborhood groups? No average Joe really wants to affiliate and effect change except mouthbreathing Righties who want to get this or that banned on "moral grounds" instead of focusing on real problems, like who's going to fix the sewers. Because they can just go buy a new vinyl box out in the sticks, hidden away from those godless lowlifes in the urban jungle. You know, where their kids might actually meet a person different from them and realize there really isn't much to be afraid of. Anyone who does try to organize for political change gets branded as an ineffective hippie or naive and misguided idealist.
I seem to remember growing up in the godless, liberal wilds of New Jersey a saying along the lines of, "No man is an island." You pay taxes and put up with the slights of your neighbor(s) and you elect people who will govern with making people's lives better, not just businesses' lives better at the expense of the actual people. Because to some of us, life itself is more important than the trappings of lifestyles.
American culture is business-crafted lifestyle categories gussied up as life. Why did Fight Club strike such a chord with people? Because we're all being homogenized, and disconnected from each other when they keep saying "people are more different than ever." If I were a marketer with a large transnational trying to be all things to all people, I certainly would be overwhelmed with the different tastes of different areas of the country/world. Trying to get everyone to fit into some uniform category would be a tempting goal. I certainly wouldn't try to keep local preferences and regional differences alive. Too messy, too niche. There's often no money in small niches unless you yourself are a small mom and pop just trying to get a small percentage to cover your nut.
The average American works 50-some hours a week to buy more things they don't need. They go deeper and deeper into debt (more expensive but cheaply built homes in "safe" areas), bigger and more expensive-to-run cars (SUVs) and take pride somehow in their rugged "individuality."
People lose money by eating out all the time because they're too tired to make dinner after being at work 10-12 hours a day. Kids are raised by babysitters who just want to keep the kid alive long enough to get paid for wasting the day away hanging out with some demanding, attention-starved kids.
So who has any power in this scenario? Businesses. They give you a way to make a "living," but is it really any kinda life? Politicians find the will of the people is too messy and fractured to make any sense of, so they focus on keeping the peace by focusing on business. Keep people in line by keeping them under the spell that without a job, you're nothing. While there is some truth to that (nobody wants to date someone who's "in between things right now" and how are you going to pay the rent unless you keep showing up when you don't feel like it? By not brown-nosing your boss and not spending most of your day with people you loathe?)
The housing market in this town is about to implode. Indiana is notorious for not protecting its citizens from predatory lenders. Great hands off approach to our "rugged individualist" adherents who think that if you are stupid enough to get one, shame on you. There is some wisdom to teaching people a hard financial lesson. But we are all going to pay for those mistakes when our houses aren't worth anything because too high a percentage of our neighbors' are all in default and the bank needs to unload the houses at firesale prices. Maybe if people weren't blowing $.43/mile on commutes to jobs they just might get laid off from anyway, they could afford the usurious mortgage payments.
Maybe if people lived in closer proximity to one another, they would take pride in the business down the street, and care about what happens to a neighborhood they're not just going to move from in 5 years. Where's the government tax abatement business get for staying to keep a community stable when keeping primary-residence homeowners planted a little longer might work just as well?
Maybe if we hired politicians that focused on the people who make up the businesses rather than the businesses that pervert and contort people to its will, we'd find an attractive and more productive workforce. Not a bunch of people acting like rats trapped in a cage.
Not too many people with college educations say, "Hmm, after graduation I'm moving to Indiana" because its sexy. It's usually just because housing is cheap here. I know that's why I swallowed my nausea and moved here. Indianapolis is like Detroit because it has always been more business-based, not quality-of-life-based.
A beautiful city full of trees, with old buildings full of character, people different than me...that's what makes a place attractive. When you focus on business too much, what's gonna happen when the money party is over? People are going to pack up and leave. No one is going to stick around in Nowheresville, trying to look for new ways to bring money back into the nest if the nest is a bland, bloated subdivision built on the flat nasty remains of a mosquito-infested midwestern swamp.
Who knows? Maybe Governor Daniels is onto something by decentralizing Indianapolis further. I mean, this is the same guy who as Budget Director at the White House said that the invasion and occupation of Iraq was going to maybe cost 50 or 60 billion, tops. Maybe he was just talking about the initial outlay of funds KBR was going to have to spend before getting their no-bid contracts. "Major Moves" must be code for "brainfart."
