13/ The Big Sky part is not just a bunch of toxic conversations and partisan discourses in DC and the media. It is not ephemera on top of the sum-of-little-towns populated by self-absorbed WHCD attendees.
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14/ This is where the analogy to 1831 breaks down. Trump = Jackson, Fallows = Tocqueville, but 1831 economy != 2018 economy. 1831 was peak Jefferson, trough Hamilton. 2018 is the exact opposite.
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15/ I laid out this thesis in my 2015 Aeon article, American Cloud. https://aeon.co/essays/america-still-has-a-heartland-it-s-just-an-artificial-one …
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16/ This means a) that the problems at Big Sky Country level are FAR more consequential than just some discourse toxicity, and b) Little Sky Country ain't gonna save us.
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17/ The core issue here is where you think American strength truly lies: in the romanticized Tocqueville small-town yeomanry with its storied highlight moments like the homesteading movement? (Jeffersonianism) Or the talent for scale? (Hamiltonianism)
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18/ I think the evidence of history is unequivocal. The *average* mediocre gold-rushing, land-grabbing, manifest-destinying American contributed far less to America's greatness than the Hamiltonian types who dreamed Big Sky dreams.
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19/ From the mass manufacturing revolution at Springfield and Harper's Ferry, through the wartime mobilization, to the Internet and Apollo, America's great contributions have been, well, Big things involving massively large-scale collaboration. Not narcissistic homesteading.
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20/ And perhaps no greater Big Sky project exists in America than the great coastal cities. The Interstate system of the human soul, if I may be forgiven a bit poetry.
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21/ I mean, I'm sympathetic to the plight of the little guy, seeking his (and it's mostly men) little homestead-scale American dream, and wish him all the best in carving out a little place to call his own in the emerging economic landscape...
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Replying to @vgr
How do you think the self-focused little guy can break out of his paradigm (or how can another break him out)? My first thought is to reduce individuality as a function of emotion/desire (e.g. "I feel therefore I am [me]")
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Move to a big city, for as long as you can afford it. The mind-expansion is permanent even if you don't stay there permanently.
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Replying to @vgr
That's why people talk about their small hometowns being stifling, isn't it? Makes sense!
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