Op-ed in the Oregonian (Portland: fit in, health insurance, tax)

[GB1]

I don't agree with everything in this essay in the Oregonian, but some of it seems awfully familiar...

Every few years, in lefty mags like the Utne Reader, someone declares yet again that Portland is a bastion of "livability," a wonder of civic planning and a model of progressive politics. And, to some degree, it is all of those things. But when you've lived there for a while and then left, as I have, you start to wonder if Portland isn't more like one of those willfully anachronistic Amish or Mennonite communities: idyllic but isolated, utopian but irrelevant.

Okay, an exaggeration. But then I came to this:

I know half a dozen women in Portland who work in the media, but we never talk about the news. We talk about kids, dating, hiking. Another friend works for an alternative-energy company; we've never had a conversation about the election, the economy, the price of oil. In Portland there's no need to talk about these things. Everyone already agrees.

The city is so self-centered it forgets that dissenting views exist. This becomes obvious the moment a Portlander ventures beyond the city limits. In Boston, New York, even tiny Pueblo, Colo., people are talking about politics. They're talking about the war in Iraq. They're talking about religion, Wall Street, global warming, gay marriage. And they're not just talking about these things: They are arguing. Portlanders don't argue. They don't think they need to. But they're wrong.

It's an interesting take on the city from one who left, and the comments below it are angry, defensive, and "don't let the door hit you in the ass" sort of talk. (Including the inevitable "I guess it's an example of Californication run amok" -- no, dammit, it's Portland, and you can't lay off everything you don't like about it on another state.) This comment sums it up:

This isn't self-absorbed civic egoism, it's the way people who have seen the importance of cooperative action carry on with one another. So many here know that we are all in this boat together. It's just that there are more of us here than other places.

We aren't blind-sided by misinformation if we understand the human transition from adolescent conflict to collective maturity. We're all in process, and political talk has to fit the capacity of the people involved.

I have no idea what that means. But, yeah, "self-absorbed civic egoism"...yes, yes.

[suncat]

It's funny that someone tried to blame this bland uniformity on Californians. Sorry, but Californians tend to enjoy lively debates. Nice try.

Those comments are funny, and all over the place.

[scone]

It's not that Portland alone is becoming a "bubble," it's that many places in the U.S. are starting to become "bubbles." Conservative places become even more conservative as more liberal people move out, and vice versa. The Big Sort discusses this in detail. And I would not be surprised if City Data didn't have something to do with it, as everyone tries to find a place where they "fit in." The trouble with this trend is that everyone inside a given "bubble" starts to think more or less alike.

[subsound]

I wish this was real, but I'm not so sure. If everyone agrees on everything and knows everyone does, there should be no reason people should be coming up to me and telling me all about their viewpoints.

[Leisesturm]

Why this need to 'argue' with ones neighbors? Why this need to 'debate' politics and other topics of current events with total and near strangers. That is what the Internet is for dontcha know? What meaningful result has all the contentiousness about the bailout produced in the places where open debate on matters moral and immoral are the tenor of the day? The o.p. seems to agree with the author of the essay that debate is essential and one needs to always be in disagreement with those one encounters and bland, even banal, discourse is symptomatic of smugness. Listen to Billy Joel's song about the angry young man. Personally I find it upsetting that there are people out there who see nothing wrong with the fact that 50 million people are without health insurance (surely that is millions higher by now) or that executive compenation runs hundreds of times what rank and file remuneration does. Thankfully I don't encounter these people on the MAX train otherwise they might become ex-citizens and I would become a convicted felon. I LIKE being in a place where people can keep their opinions to themselves until it matters. I doubt very much that it means that PDX'ers are smug and don't care, it simply means that they don't have the need to proselytize or convert random strangers! Do you really think after you go toe to toe with a Republican over tax cuts in a one off conversation that you have converted her/him to the 'right way'?? So what is the point of such excecise? Sounds to me like the o.p. really misses PDX but it wasn't 'angry' enough. That's the way the endorphins crumble. Spock once said "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one". Apparently more people need PDX to be civil and non-confrontational than need it to be feisty and thus it has become so. That still leaves plenty of places for one to get their rant on. Might I recommend New York or New Jersey.

H