That video of Manhattan

That I posted a few days ago has started me thinking.  Why has this nation fallen for the notion of the "Real America" as a rural, agrarian; small, one stoplight, farming community?

The City at night.

Nixon's Southern Strategy is now so embedded in to the psyche of the Right Wing of this country that it is used by nearly every politician of the Right (and some Left) and is endlessly repeated ad nauseam by Fox News and Conservative (moderate, my ass) pundits like Applebee's Salad Bar David Brooks.

I always thought that it was the Great Cities of nations and empires that made them so important and special and prosperous.

And in the case of the United States, it is the Coastal states with the largest cities that actually provide more to the commonweal of our modern nation today.  The "fly over"/Southern states are the ones that actually take in more from the government than they contribute (despite recently being whipped in to a teabagging fury that they would rather not be helped by the government, at all.  Which is insane.)

Hell, remember, even the Situationists had no problems with Great Cities, per se.  They had problems with the way the Capitalistic Work/Leisure society had forced the cities to be built:  That they were divided in to sections, those designed strictly for work, and those designed strictly for leisure.  A park is fine, but why was not the whole city a park? "Beneath the paving stones, the beach!" They created the term psychogeography which referred to the very limited personal "geography" of typical Work/Leisure citizens, i.e. your commute.  The Situationists objected to the fact that the Great Cities were not being explored and utilized in different ways, that the Great Cities belonged to all its citizens and should never be closed off to anyone for any reason at any time.

This notion that our Great Cities are bad or evil or not part of the Real America is very dangerous.