During the election, this idea kept circulating that the “Blue States”, particularly cities such as New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles live in a “Liberal bubble”. The implication that these cities or regions are some sort of isolated enclaves that are out of touch with the realities of the rest of the world and hold a disproportionate influence over the rest of the country.
I think this is a mischaracterization based on an ignorant misinterpretation of the geographical area these cities occupy.
The population of California and the New York Metro area represent over 50 million people. They also represent about 25% of the GDP of the United States. These cities are diverse global population and transportation hubs with strong ties to the international community. They are centers of wealth, culture, education, and innovation.
In contrast, the “Trump regions” tend to be isolated, homogenous in demographics and thought, less educated and less connected to the rest of the world. From what I can tell, the mindset tends to be “we like our little world the way it is and we don’t want anything intruding on it”. Which, to me, is the definition of a “bubble”.
In a very real sense, and painting with a very broad brush here, rural conservatives are geographically isolated from certain issues they seem to care very deeply about.
Brexit voters who seemed to have a problem with open immigration tended to live outside of London and other urban centers where there aren’t a lot of immigrants, while urban voters who tended to interact with immigrants much more frequently were in favor of immigration.
Jon Stewart famously pointed out during Palin’s “Real America” stumping days that rural conservatives seem to care a whole lot about terrorism, personally identifying with the 9/11 attacks, despite largely living in sparsely populated areas where terrorist attacks are unlikely. This while unironically decrying “coastal liberal elites” for not being Real Americans who are hard on terrorism even though they’re the ones most likely to have to face it.
To a degree, yes. But part of the urban/liberal bubble that you are overlooking has to do with the news media and Hollywood. You can live in rural GA or KY and be surrounded by similar people with similar outlooks. But if you watch TV, you are getting news and entertainment that is created by and reflects liberal, coastal outlooks. Virtually all news and entertainment - including news channel prime time shows, late night shows, SNL, etc. - is created in NYC or LA, and reflects the inherent biases of those areas. Hell, people who live 100 miles NW of NYC are considered flyover by people in Manhattan.
So, it is far easier for a liberal who lives in a city up and down I-95 or up and down the west coast to spend all of their time in their bubble. Someone living in rural America is still bombarded with liberal thoughts/ideas/propaganda on a daily basis.
Don’t confuse lack of education with lack of intelligence.
But yes, I think you’re right. I do think there is a Trump bubble, just as I think there is a Liberal bubble. Different people have different perspectives. The problems arise when people refuse to look outside their respective bubbles.
How then does that make one or the other group the one in the “bubble”? Agreed, the liberal voice is more represented exactly as you describe but that’s a different issue. I’d say both groups are in their own bubble.
Both groups are in bubbles to a degree. But part of being in a bubble is having little or no understanding of how people outside the bubble really think and live. That is far easier to do for liberals living in urban coastal areas, for the reasons I posted.
How about liberals living in flyover territory? Are they in the bubble too? Do they have little or no understanding of how their neighbors and co-workers think and live?
I’m not sure about the OP’s definition of “bubble.” Liberals in big cities may access more information, have more diverse experiences, but they also surround themselves often with people who think like them, media that talks like them, and defriend people on Facebook who hold opposing views. It is 100% possible for a Manhattanite to be out of touch with corn farmers in Nebraska and vice versa.
I disagree entirely. It is the urban liberals who surround themselves with diversity of thought and opinion. They are surrounded by people who are entirely different than they are in appearance, culture, economic status, etc. Those in rural areas are by necessity cut off from this diversity. Now, while it may be possible for a manhattanite to be out of touch with a corn farmer, a corn farmer is out of touch with the poor, the middle class, and the wealthy, the white, black, hispanic, muslim, etc, the well educated and the poorly educated manhattanite, while his social circle is usually going to be pretty non-diverse.
The reason that the media draws from urban areas is because there is far more to be drawn upon in urban areas, far more perspectives and people. One night in manhattan generates more newsworthy events than what a year or even a decade in a nebraska farming community.
As a liberal in flyover country, with my neighbors all flying trump signs during the election (and some still have them up), I will agree that I am in the minority, but I don’t know that it is the minority of liberals who don’t live in cities. Hillary got more votes from outside of new york, la and chicago than from within those cities, so by definition, the majority of liberal voters do not live in those cities.
To be a liberal is simply to see other people as being worthy of respect and dignity, regardless of their background and culture. This isn’t a big city thing, but it is an easier perspective to come to, I suppose, if you are exposed to differences of culture and opinion, as most urban liberals are, and it is a harder perspective to come to if you are surrounded by and socialize with only people of the same basic socio-ethnic-economic class, as many conservatives are.
If the liberals have a bubble of their own, it is a much larger, richer, and more diverse bubble than that which the conservatives inhabit.
And that’s not even getting into which of the “bubbles” contains facts and underlying assumptions that are actually true, which I must admit a bias towards the liberal “bubble” in that regard.
You make a good point but the media’s portrayal of liberals is about as accurate as Hee-Haw is of folks living in rural areas. Surely no one thinks that the vast majority of liberals have anything like a celebrity lifestyle?Is Rush Limbaugh representative of the way most conservatives think and live? Again, your point is well taken, I’m just not sure how accurate an idea of each side has of the other.
Not to No-True-Scotsman you, but I think this is a case of “liberal” vs. liberal and “conservative” vs. conservative. It’s like saying,* “To be a conservative is simply to favor limited government, low taxation, a tight financial ship, personal responsibility, family values, wisdom and common sense.”* Sure, that may represent the idealized paradigm for a conservative to aspire to, but how many “conservatives” actually live up to it?
The qualities that you describe may be true of an idealized, hypothetical liberal, or may represent what liberalism is about, in theory. But there are a lot of liberals who do not live up to that in practice.
You’re not wrong, but I think the OP’s point is that the liberal bubble is, I guess, bigger and more diverse. So yes, liberals have plenty of access to liberal influences, but those influences are coming from immigrants, people of color, religious minorities, the LGBT community, all these walks of life that are prevalent in urban areas. The conservative bubble, by comparison, is more homogeneous.
I spent 5 years in a liberal east coast city, now I live in the midwest surrounded by conservatives. The local support for Trump’s Muslim ban seems buoyed by their insulation. I have friends back in the city who were affected by the travel ban, and are still concerned to travel because of the threat of ban 2.0. My midwest friends are completely unaffected, nor do they know anyway affected. But they say it’s necessary to protect “us” from terrorism, but who is “us”? It’s the people on the coasts, the ones who don’t want the travel ban. So out here the in the conservative bubble, they have strong opinions about an issue that basically doesn’t affect them in any meaningful way.
There’s a difference between “those cities” and “cities”. Most Hillary voters aren’t from Chicago, LA or NYC, but there’s also Boston, San Fran, Seattle, Denver, Portland, Houston, Dallas, New Orleans, Detroit, Washington DC, Miami, Milwaukee, Philadelphia, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, Charlotte, etc.
I can’t find the stats but I’m sure that the majority of Hillary’s vote came from urban areas as a whole.
Not sure what that had to do with my point about the bubbles in which we live, but sure, respecting other’s right to exist may be an ideal, but I don’t think it is only the idealized, hypothetical liberal who feels this way. Yes, I simplified it, but I simplified it to its root, rather than its extrapolation like you have done with your conservative definition. I would say to be a conservative would be to value the known and to be skeptical of the unknown, at its base, and I don’t think it would take a hypothetical idealized version of a conservative to live up to those values.
Now, if your contention is that there are those who call themselves liberals, and yet do not respect the value and dignity of others, then I will agree that there are people out there who misrepresent themselves, this is true, just as there are those who call themselves conservatives, but are looking to make sweeping changes to our country.
I think what would help to define a “bubble” is: Do people believe negative stereotypes about people on the other side - i.e., do rural folks negatively stereotype urban folks and vice versa? If so, chances are, they’re in a bubble.
‘Bubble’ only IMO applies to commentary by people from various regions, groups, walks of life etc. So to the extent all people are equally heard it all evens out. The political/social issue is that certain ‘bubbles’ are heard from more. The issue is brought up on the right on the basis of more people in media (and entertainment) being from left/blue ‘bubbles’. I think this is pretty obviously true, and the more valid rejoinder from the left would be ‘tough luck’ than denying it’s true or rather than making it a relative hall of mirrors (‘you’re in a bubble cause you’re not in my bubble’).
Secondarily, the true ‘diversity’ of the lifestyle of a lot of blue bubblers is questionable IMO, as someone who lives in a blue bubble myself, geographically. Upper middle class blue bubblers (again the voice heard in media etc, mainly) mainly deal socially with other upper middle class blue bubblers. OK maybe the typical upper middle class blue social bubble is a bit more racially diverse than the social circles of working class people in the hinterlands, but race as overwhelming measure of ‘diversity’ is itself the blue bubble’s subjective judgement not the only possible judgement. I’m less convinced the average blue bubbler has a so much more diverse social experience overall than red bubblers. Though again my comment is from a skeptic in the blue bubble. I’ve lived in rural areas of other countries, but only in NY (mainly), LA and San Diego areas in my native country the US. Although AFAICT many of the harshest critics of ‘red America’ have never lived there either.
I was talking about large cities. I live in a city of less than 50,000, it fairly overwhelmingly went for trump.
I live north of Cincy, and while I can’t find stats on the city itself, I know the county it is in went for trump, as did the state it is in. I would also question whether Cincinnati should be considered to be a coastal city, same as quite a number on your list, and it was coastal cities specifically that were being complained about. (Chicago is kinda a coastal city, being on the lakes). I am pretty sure a number of cities on your list probably went for trump as well.
So, you are correct in that the larger and more diverse a city, the richer its culture, the more news and other media is produced and consumed within it, the more likely it was that that city went for Hillary, and the converse, the smaller, the more insular, and the less diverse and more homogeneous areas went for Trump.
I don’t know that that’s a good argument that the ones in the larger, more diverse “bubble” are the ones who need to adapt to the ones in the smaller more homogeneous bubbles.
I find this laughable. While urban liberals might be surrounded by people different in appearance and culture, the uniformity of thought and opinion is pretty high. People in rural areas have lots of neighbors who have different thoughts, opinions and economic status, too.