November 22, 2004

So how do we live and what are we for? Look around you, urbanite, at the multiplicity of cultures, ethnicities, and tribes that are smashed together in every urban center (yes, even Seattle): We're for that. We're for pluralism of thought, race, and identity. We're for a freedom of religion that includes the freedom from religion--not as some crazy aberration, but as an equally valid approach to life. We are for the right to choose one's own sexual and recreational behavior, to control one's own body and what one puts inside it. We are for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The people who just elected George W. Bush to a second term are frankly against every single idea outlined above.

That's an excerpt from"Urban Archipelago" by the editors of The Stranger. It's the first non-satirical political piece I've read since the election that me feeling anything other than abject hopelessness.

Kind of jives with my own personal theory about bubbles. How we (me and most of my friends) live in urban bubbles and for the most part simply move between them. It explains how I have more in common with someone who lives 2500 miles away on the other coast than someone 250 miles away in the same state. I mean, have you taken a cross country trip in the last few years? The square states are a frightening collection of big box retail and theme restaurant chains. It doesn't matter if you're in Nevada, Missouri or Pennsylvania. It's frighteningly homogenous, stupefyingly boring and depressingly tacky. (Not to mention filthy. Hygiene and maintenance standards are shockingly lax in commercial establishments along the interstate.)