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Why Suburban Swing Voters May Be Less Common Than You Think – CityLab – Pocket

Andy | June 7, 2019

Why Suburban Swing Voters May Be Less Common Than You Think – CityLab – Pocket

The popular image of America’s suburbs as a realm of swing voters, moderates, and independents is wrong, a recent poll suggests. In fact, suburban voters are much less likely to be political independents than either urban or rural voters. Only 15 percent of the poll’s suburban respondents were independents, lower than the rate among rural or urban residents.

What makes the suburbs politically distinct in America may not be moderation, but rather a more even split between Democrats and Republicans than exists in left-leaning cities or right-leaning rural areas.

My perception is that suburbanites are generally more educated, and the more formal education a person has, the more likely they are to have a solid conception of how the world works, and the better that they are finding facts that support their own opinion.

A Place of Your Own – James Howard Kunstler – Medium

Andy | March 8, 2019

A Place of Your Own – James Howard Kunstler – Medium

"Human beings need a place in the social order, in the economic order, and in actual geography in order to function optimally in a life fraught with the normal challenges and difficulties that reality presents. Let’s take these places in reverse order."

"It’s a fact that most Americans live in everyday environments that are, at best, not worth caring about, and at worst actively punishing to human neurology. Have you taken a good look at the American landscape and townscape lately? How do you feel venturing down the six-lane commercial boulevards lined with cartoon architecture? Either anxious or numb, would be my guess. Or a Main Street of empty storefronts? Or an avenue of looming, despotic glass skyscrapers? Or a vast subdivision of identical McHouses where the buffalo once roamed? Is it any wonder that Americans require more antidepressant medication than people in other lands? Or, that failing to find treatment, they self-medicate with alcohol, opiates, sugary snacks, and anything else that takes them out of the soul-crushing reality of their surroundings."

"I don’t think you can overstate the damage we’ve done to ourselves in the sheer material arrangement of our national life. A decade ago, I sat in on many zoning board meetings called to approve new WalMarts and other chain-stores around my region of upstate New York and southern Vermont. Inevitably, the companies organized a claque of locals in the meeting hall — itself a depressing, low-ceilinged chamber of cinder blocks and fluorescent lighting — to fill the seats and yell in support of “bargain shopping.”

Lawns Are an Ecological Disaster

Andy | May 21, 2018

Lawns Are an Ecological Disaster

"To understand the sheer inanity of devoting 40 million acres, nearly half as much land as we set aside for our biggest crops, to an inedible carpet, we need to back up—beyond the modern lawn’s origins with a real estate family peddling the “American Dream” as Whites-only cookie-cutter suburbs—to the evolution of grass."

"Most plants grow from the top, according to Santa Barbara Botanic Garden Director Steve Windhager. “Grasses, on the other hand, always grow from the base,” he told Earther. From the plant’s perspective, this was a great strategy for dealing with grazers who’d randomly hit the same patch every few months. But Americans, true to form, are more gluttonous."

"We mow our lawns every few weeks. This coaxes our grass into growing its roots outwards, rather than down, spawning more sprawling shoots, in hopes of enabling any one blade to avoid overzealous grazers. However, the $47.8 billion to $82 billion we spend annually on overcutting and landscaping (FYI: we spend $49.47 billion in foreign aid) effectively amounts to trying to kill the grass while offering it life support. We trap it in prepubescence—too young to reseed, racing desperately ever-outward to find reproductive refuges that doesn’t exist."

"We cut ourselves equally: Thirty-five thousand people, 4,800 of which are children, are treated annually for mower-related injuries—resulting in 600 youth amputations. The Royal Statistical Society even awarded the fact that nearly eight times more Americans are killed by lawnmowers than Islamic terrorists International Statistic Of The Year."