New Geography

Author: Joel Kotkin

  • Election 2016: Peak Transformation

    Barack Obama came to office with a promise of “fundamentally transforming the United States.” Through what one admirer calls “a profound course correction engineered by relentless government activism,” Obama has, indeed, transformed the country and shifted it to what now passes for the Left agenda on America’s role in the world, the environment, gender issues, labor rights and untrammeled executive power over both Congress and local governments.

    As he leaves office, Obama is already being consecrated as a great president whose direction will naturally be followed by his successor. Given his greater popularity – his rankings have been rising for months – the far less popular Hillary Clinton’s pitch will be to portray herself as something like “Obama-plus.” The transformation is about to hit its peak.

    This progressive triumph is occurring despite mediocre economic growth, rising inequality and diminished global status. But it’s a record that can’t be successfully challenged by a GOP that has seen fit to nominate such a noxious candidate. With Trump at the top of the ticket, the Republican Party could also lose the Senate, and thus the Supreme Court, losing the last restraints on “the full monty” of the progressive agenda.

    Trump’s ugly presence is sure to swell the Democratic base – minorities, millennials, unmarried women, highly educated professionals – even as the unstable billionaire captures a larger share of older, working-class, white voters. Hillary, as the American Prospect has argued, inherits a party dedicated to microtargeting its voter base, rather than seeking to reach out to a perceived dying white suburban and small-town middle America. Harold Meyerson, the incisive editor of the Prospect, calls this “the first post-middle-class election.”

    A diminished white middle class is OK for a Democratic Party made up of college-for-free “Bernie bros,” urban hipsters, greens, racial minorities, feminists, public employees and gay activists. These groups won’t really challenge the real winners of the Obama years – the Wall Street and Silicon Valley oligarchs, who are willing to genuflect to the green and social agenda of the party, but can be even more sure, under the many-times-purchased Hillary, that their path to unreasonable, even dangerous, wealth and power will continue unimpeded.

    Read the entire piece at The Orange County Register.

    Joel Kotkin is executive editor of NewGeography.com. He is the Roger Hobbs Distinguished Fellow in Urban Studies at Chapman University and executive director of the Houston-based Center for Opportunity Urbanism. His newest book, The Human City: Urbanism for the rest of us, will be published in April by Agate. He is also author of The New Class Conflict, The City: A Global History, and The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050. He lives in Orange County, CA.

    Barack Obama photo by Bigstock.

  • The Meaning of the Baby Bust

    With a stronger economy and a growing number of women of child-bearing age, Americans should be producing offspring at a healthy clip. But the most recent data suggest that this is not happening, as the birthrate in 2015 dropped to a historic low. A new study from the University of New Hampshire suggests that these trends have resulted in 3.4 million fewer births since 2008, based on the pre-recession fertility rate, or roughly 15 percent fewer births than would have occurred at the 2007 birth rate.

    Once an exception to demographic decline, our country may be falling into the dismal pattern that is now common in other high-income countries, notably in East Asia and Europe. Europe’s demographic crisis is one reason European Union officials, particularly in Germany, opened the floodgates to mass migration from the Middle East and other unstable areas. In many parts of Europe, more people are dying than are being born.

    Now America may be joining the downward fertility spiral. Since the recession, the number of new children has plummeted, and it’s dropped the most precipitously for new mothers. The number of households with their own children in 2014 was 33 million, down from 35 million in 2005, even as the total number of households has shot up by nearly 6 million. By comparison, there are about 43 million households with dogs, according to the ASPCA’s low-end estimate.

    Shifts in child bearing will profoundly affect our geography, politics and economic future. Children, after all, define our future society, and provide the primary motivation for parents and grandparents. Without a strong familial structure, we will be facing a rather grim future, as an expanding older population grows ever more dependent on a shrinking base of young working-age people. Demographer Sami Karam notes that the 1980s Reagan boom benefited from demographics of that period, with a rising proportion of working people to retirees. With trends headed the opposite way, he suggests, no such expansion may even be possible today.

    To some, of course, an increasingly childless future represents something of an ideal. Many greens regard offspring as unwanted additional emitters of carbon, and historically have proposed limiting families. It also provides manna to those high-density developers who no longer will have to worry about renters seeking to establish themselves in homes best suited for raising children.

    Read the entire piece at The Orange County Register.

    Joel Kotkin is executive editor of NewGeography.com. He is the Roger Hobbs Distinguished Fellow in Urban Studies at Chapman University and executive director of the Houston-based Center for Opportunity Urbanism. His newest book, The Human City: Urbanism for the rest of us, will be published in April by Agate. He is also author of The New Class Conflict, The City: A Global History, and The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050. He lives in Orange County, CA.

  • Why the World Is Rebelling Against ‘Experts’

    An unconventional, sometimes incoherent, resistance arises to the elites who keep explaining why changes that hurt the middle class are actually for its own good.

    The Great Rebellion is on and where it leads nobody knows.

    Its expressions range from Brexit to the Trump phenomena and includes neo-nationalist and unconventional insurgent movement around the world. It shares no single leader, party or ideology. Its very incoherence, combined with the blindness of its elite opposition, has made it hard for the established parties across what’s left of the democratic world to contain it.

    What holds the rebels together is a single idea: the rejection of the neo-liberal crony capitalist order that has arisen since the fall of the Soviet Union. For two decades, this new ruling class could boast of great successes: rising living standards, limited warfare, rapid technological change and an optimism about the future spread of liberal democracy. Now, that’s all fading or failing.

    Living standards are stagnating, vicious wars raging, poverty-stricken migrants pouring across borders and class chasms growing. Amidst this, the crony capitalists and their bureaucratic allies have only grown more arrogant and demanding. But the failures of those who occupy what Lenin called “the commanding heights” are obvious to most of the citizens on whose behalf they claim to speak and act.

    The Great Rebellion draws on five disparate and sometimes contradictory causes that find common ground in frustration with the steady bureaucratic erosion of democratic self-governance: class resentment, racial concerns, geographic disparities, nationalism, cultural identity. Each of these strains appeals to different constituencies, but together they are creating a political Molotov cocktail.

    Class Conflict

    The Brexit vote reflected the class aspect of the Rebellion. The London Times post-election analysis , notes socialist author James Heartfield, found the upper classes 57 percent for remain, the upper middle class fairly divided, while everyone below them went roughly two-thirds for leave. It doesn’t get much plainer than that.

    This dissent reflect the consequences of the globalization celebrated by elites in both parties. Britain’s industrial workforce, once the wonder of the world, is half as large as it was as just two decades ago. The social status of the British worker, even among the Labour grandees who pay them lip service, has been greatly diminished, notes scholar Dick Hobbs, himself a product of blue collar east London. “There are parts of London,” he writes, “where the pubs are the only economy.”

    As labor has struggled, writes Heartfield, “the Labour Party became more distant, metropolitan and elitist. It sought to re-write the party’s policy to mirror its own concerns, and also to diminish working people’s aspirations for social democratic reform in their favour. “

    A similar scenario has emerged here in America, where corporations—especially those making consumer goods—have grown fat on access to Chinese, Mexican and other foreign labor. Like their British counterparts, the U.S. working class is falling into social chaos, with declining marriage and church attendance rates, growing drug addiction, poor school performance and even declining life expectancy. Even during the primary campaign, as both Sanders and Trump railed against globalization United Technologies saw fit to announce the movement of a large plant form Indianapolis, where about 1,500 jobs were lost, to Monterrey.

    And much as the leave wave crested in just those parts of the U.K. where trade with Europe is highest, so is Trump support highest in the Southern states that now dominate what remains of American manufacturing.

    Race and Ethnicity

    Ethnic minorities and immigrants have now become core constituents of progressive parties in many countries—the Socialists in France, the British Labour Party and the Democratic Party here in America. In Britain, it never occurred to party’s leaders that most new jobs created during the Blair and Brown regimes went to newcomers. One can admire the pluck of Polish plumbers, Latvian barmaids, Greek waiters and French technicians and still note that many of these jobs could have gone to native born British. This includes the children of the mostly non-white commonwealth immigrants who are now part of the country’s national culture.

     The parallels in America—a much larger, richer and more diverse country—are striking. Silicon Valley and corporate America loves to bring in glorified indentured servants from abroad, earning the assent of Hillary Clinton and the corporate shill wing of the GOP. Only Trump and Sanders have attacked this program, which has cost even trained American workers their jobs.

     As tends to occur when race and ethnicity intrude, ugliness here seeps into the Great Rebellion. Trump has consciously and irresponsibly stoked ethnic resentments tied to immigration. Anti-EU continental Europeans— notably in eastern Europe but also France’s Marine Le Pen— often outdo our TV billionaire’s provocations.

    Geographic Disparities

    The Brexit vote also revealed a chasm between the metropolitan core and the rest of the country. The urban centers of London, Manchester and Liverpool all voted Remain. Central London has benefited from being where the world’s super rich park their money. The devastation of the industrial economy in the periphery has hardly touched the posh precincts of the premier global city.

     In contrast the more distant, often working class, suburbs of London and other cities voted to Leave. Small towns followed suit. The Brexit vote, suggests analyst Aaron Renn, demonstrated that arrogant urbanites, seeing themselves as the exclusive centers of civilization, ignore those who live outside the “glamour zone” at their own peril.

    Similar voting patterns can be seen in the US. The countryside, except for retirement havens of the rich, has gone way to the right. The suburbs are tilting that way, and could become more rebellious as aggressive “disparate impact” policies force communities to reshape themselves to meet HUD’s social engineering standards —for example if they are too middle class or too white—even if there is no proof of actual discrimination.

    Needless to say, such policies could enhance the geographic base of the Great Rebellion, including among middle=class minorities who are now responsible for much of our current suburban growth. Already the small towns and outer suburbs have signed up with Trump; if he can make clear the threat to suburbia from the planners, he could, despite his boorish ugliness, win these areas and the election.

    Nationalism and Cultural Identity

    Nationalism gets a bad rap in Europe, for historically sound reasons. Yet these national cultures also have produced much of the world’s great literature and music, and the world’s most beautiful cities. Yet in contemporary Europe, these national cultures are diminishing. Instead the crony capitalist regime gives us Rem Koolhaas’ repetitiousgeneric city, often as stultifying as the most mindless suburban mall.

    Not just buildings, but historic values are also being undermined, as universities and even grade schools seek to replace cherished values with post-modernist, politically correct formulations. English students at Yale protest having to read Chaucer, Shakespeare or Milton, the foundation writers of the world’s common language whose greatest sin, it appears, was to be both English and male.

    Of course, cultural and political nationalism often shows an ugly side. But everyone who shouts for the British national soccer team or chants USA at the Olympics is not a fascist; they are just people who love their country. Yet academia, the shaper of the young and impressionable, now sometimes regard any positive assessment of America as the land of opportunity or even the American flag as “micro-aggressions.” Brits and Americans have much to be ashamed about in their history, but their glorious achievements remain inspirational to many, who find attempts to replace them with some tortured global syncretism foolish and counterproductive.

    Governance and Localism

    When Brits told pollsters why they had voted to leave the EU, notes James Heartfield, immigration and national identity ranked high but democracy and self-governance was at the top of the list. In contrast, classes who supported remain—the mainstream media, academia, the legal and financial establishments—increasingly see themselves as rightful rulers, the benighted masses be damned.

    This anti-EU rebellion is hardly limited to Britain. Since 2005 French, Danish and Dutchvoters have voted against closer EU ties. Hostility to the EU, as recorded by Pew, is actually stronger in many key European countries, including France, than it is in Britain. And after the Brexit vote, there are already moves for similar exit referenda in several European countries.

    But like Washington bureaucrats who can’t be bothered to pay much attention to the views of the underlings of the Heartland, the Eurocrats want to double down. But like Washington bureaucrats who can’t be bothered to pay much attention to the views of the underlings of the Heartland, the Eurocrats want to double down. The Germans, the effective rulers of Europe, have reacted to Brexit with talk about ways to “deepen” the EU, creating the basis for what some have argued would be essentially “a superstate”. This policy approach seems about as brilliant as that of Lord North, whose response to American agitation was to further tighten London’s screws. That certainly worked well.

    — bringing to mind Lord North, who responded to colonial agitation by further tightening London’s screws.

    This arrogance, in part, stems froms what one writer at the Atlantic has called the war on the stupid. In this formulation, those with elite degrees, including the hegemons on Wall Street and Silicon Valley, dismiss local control as rule by the Yahoos. The progressive ideal of government by experts—sometimes seen as “the technocracy”—may sounds good in Palo Alto or London, but often promise a dim future for the middle class. Expert regulation, often with green goals in mind, take hard-earned gains like car and home ownership and cheap air travel all but out of reach for the middle class, while keeping them around for the globe-trotting elites.

    Where does this go

    The Great Rebellion is, if nothing else, politically incoherent.

    Some conservatives hail it as a harbinger of the decline of progressivism. Traditional leftists hope for the return of state socialism, directed from national capitals. Racists see a vindication for their world view. Libertarians hail de-regulation while others, on the nationalist right, embrace the authoritarian nationalism of Vladimir Putin.

    Yet for all its divergent views, the Great Rebellion has accomplished this: the first serious blow to the relentless ascendency of neo-liberal crony capitalism. The revels have put the issue of the super-state and the cause of returning power closer to the people back on the agenda. The Great Rebellion allows localities relief from overweening regulations, cities to be as urban as they want, and the periphery choose how they wish to develop.

    The Rebellion also allows us to move beyond enforced standards of racial “balance” and reparations , replacing the chaos of unenforced borders and enforced “diversity” with something more gradual and organic in nature. Our hope on race and ethnicity lies not in rule-making from above , but in allowing the multiculturalism of the streets to occur, as is rapidly does, in suburban schoolyards, soccer pitches and Main Streets across the Western world.

    National cultures do not need to be annihilated but allowed to evolve. In Texas, California, and across the southwestern, Spanish phraseology, Mexican food and music are already very mainstream. Without lectures from the White House or preening professors, African-American strains will continue to define our national culture, particularly in the south. In Europe, few object to couscous on bistro menus, falafel on the streets and, in Britain, the obligatory curry at the pub.

    The Great Rebellion is much more than the triumph of nativism, stupidity and crudeness widely denounced in the mainstream media. Ethnic integration and even globalization will continue, but shaped by the wishes of democratic peoples, not corporate hegemons or bureaucratic know-it-alls. We can now once again aspire to a better world—better because it will be one that people, not autocrats, have decided to make.

    This piece originally appeared in The Daily Beast.

  • Trump’s Racial Firebombs Weaken U.S.

    The issue of race has scarred the entirety of U.S. history. Although sometimes overshadowed by the arguably more deep-seated issue of class, the racial divide is a festering wound that decent Americans, including politicians, genuinely want to heal.

    Decency and politics have a tenuous relationship, but this year, one candidate has exacerbated racial tensions in a way not seen since the days of segregationist George Wallace and Richard Nixon’s polarizing vice president, Spiro Agnew. Donald Trump, through his outbursts and incendiary rhetoric, opened the door to a new period of even greater racial antagonism.

    Trump promises to “make America great again,” but his divisive approach leaves us both weaker and even more afflicted with racial identity politics. Just as neo-Nazis and old-style racists have rallied to his cause, Trump’s intemperance also has energized ethnic nationalists, particularly in Hispanic communities. Among America’s growing Muslim population, perhaps no one has served as a better recruiter for Islamists, who agree with him that their religion and culture is anathema to America. The triumph of Brexit — in part driven by immigration — may encourage this further.

    Not all the blame for America’s racial discord falls to Trump, of course. Well before his rise to political prominence, Americans had grown pessimistic about race relations, which constitutes something of a failure by an administration that once promised greater racial unity. The president and Hillary Clinton, who have used racial politics to motivate minorities against the perceived racism of middle and working class whites, share responsibility for the deterioration. And liberal media, academics and elected officials can’t be particularly proud of their records of promoting tolerance and multiculturalism.

    White America Betrayed?

    In recent years, large swaths of working whites, like their British counterparts,have seen their jobs disappear and old social orders upended, fueling anger and a general sense of loss, reflected in rapidly rising morbidity and suicide rates. AsPittsburgh psychologist Kenneth Thompson puts it: “Their social habitat is strained, and the strain is showing up in a looming body count.”

    Trump has exploited their anger by turning it on immigrants, characterizing Mexicans as rapists and calling for border walls, immigration bans and tougher trade deals. However cruel and misguided, Trump’s racial divisiveness resonates with these blue-collar whites, as well as among some more affluent middle-class whites.

    In reality, Trump is not a classic racist, but rather an ugly opportunist willing to use ethnic divides for his own benefit. He’s been compared to Adolph Hitler, a monster whose philosophy revolved around race, but Trump has no real theory that extends beyond self-glorification, resentment, and attracting the fetching female; “The Art of the Deal” is not “Mein Kampf.”

    Trump will play the race card as a way to satisfy his narcissistic need for enthusiastic admirers. This does not mean his approach does not echo the racism of the past. His claim of bias by a U.S.-born judge of Mexican descent, as well as his suggestions that Muslim jurists are incapable of ruling independently, recall the worst of the pre-Civil Rights South. His proposals to ban Muslim immigrants in general recall approaches in the late 19th and early 20th centuries which targeted Chinese, Japanese and, ultimately eastern and southern Europeans.

    Other Negative Forces

    Progressives – including the media claque and academic elites — have shown little sympathy for the white working class and have been dismissive of its embrace of Trump’s candidacy, as characterized by Salon’s recent description: “White America’s sad last stand.”

    Instead of trying to understand the deep frustrations of the white middle class, it’s not unusual for progressives to express solidarity with racial minorities and condemn white privilege.

    Clinton takes it a step further, stoking minority fear-mongers to generate badly need enthusiasm. Accused of using “dog whistles” to attract racists against candidate Obama in 2008, Clinton now courts racial nationalists, including some in the Black Lives Matter movement, race-baiter supremo Al Sharpton, and La Raza.

    Interestingly, the fury against white “racism” is most fully throated and often mostviolent in white, deep-blue bastions such as Portland, Seattle, San Francisco andBoston. It’s in these cities, ironically, where minorities increasingly are victims of gentrification, forced out of their neighborhoods to make way for affluent whites.

    At the same time, liberal cities’ planning, energy and environmental policies do not improve life for the working- and middle-class populations, including many minorities. Yet while more highly paid blue-collar jobs disappear, working-class communities frequently are the ones absorbing large numbers of undocumented immigrants. The affluent, “enlightened” liberals in places like Chicago’s Gold Coast, west Los Angeles and the upper east side of Manhattan may get their servants from these populations, but rarely are they neighbors or competitors in the job market.

    These are fruits of America’s failed immigration system, an issue that even Latinos in this country are eager to resolve. Had Trump not crossed so many lines of decency, he might have seized the day and turned immigration policy into a huge plus, earning the support of the solid majority of Americans who agree that the border needs to be tightened.

    But by painting Latinos as drug dealers and criminals and suggesting that Muslims, per se, represent a security danger, Trump has made himself the issue and squandered the opportunity.

    Trump’s willingness to “tell it like it is” may have won over some segments of the population, but it’s fanciful to believe, as some right-wingers do, that it can carry him to the White House. His assaults on issues such as illegal immigration and the need to closely monitor potential terrorists may resonate, but his stridency, and lack of respect for basic decencies, have alienated much of the population.

    Multiculturalism of the Streets

    The good news is that while race seems to have paralyzed politics, society is becoming more integrated. Once lily-white suburbs are increasingly multi-racial, even as some core cities become less diverse. What the Mexican journalist Sergio Munoz once called “the multiculturalism of the streets” is thriving, even as politicians promote division.

    A key indicator is the rising rate of racial intermarriage. Pew surveys show that mixed-race couples account for 15 percent of marriages, including nearly 10 percent of white marriages, 17 percent of black, 26 percent of Hispanic and 28 percent of Asian marriages. This is sure to blur racial distinctions in the decades ahead. If you live in a diverse region like Southern California, you see this mixed-race reality all the time — at grade school graduations, Angels games, in restaurants and Fourth of July parades. This is the new America.

    This 21st century nation-of-immigrants picture is unlikely to stir the soul of the celebrity billionaire with a taste for 24-karat gold plating on everything from his seat belts to his sinks. Trump is in it only to win, because winning is everything to him. The problem is Trump’s vanity campaign will probably cost Republicans the White House, leaving America bluer, more regulated and less responsive to the needs of white workers. In this sense, Trumpism represents something akin to Marx’s “opium of the masses,” an emotional balm that only provides temporary relief.

    Clinton’s embrace of racial nationalists, on the other hand, forces her to lead from a position that is fundamentally partisan and mean-spirited. But it is Trump who threatens racial progress more directly, in a more irresponsible and inflammatory fashion. In this case, at least, the despicable is far preferable to the dangerous.

    The best hope here is that, once this awful and dangerous lout is dismissed from the national scene, our racial wounds will be allowed again to heal. The spark for this will not come from the venal political and media class, but through day-to-day interactions in the communities we increasingly share.

    This piece first appeared at Real Clear Politics.

    Joel Kotkin is executive editor of NewGeography.com. He is the Roger Hobbs Distinguished Fellow in Urban Studies at Chapman University and executive director of the Houston-based Center for Opportunity Urbanism. His newest book, The Human City: Urbanism for the rest of us, will be published in April by Agate. He is also author of The New Class Conflict, The City: A Global History, and The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050. He lives in Orange County, CA.

    Trump protest photo by i threw a guitar at him. (https://www.flickr.com/photos/becc/26879649373/) [CC BY 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons

  • Brits Opt Out

    The famous shot heard “’round the world” this time came from the other side of the Atlantic, but its longtime impact could be equally profound. By voting to leave the European Union and its intrusive bureaucracy, the British people have also risen up against a regime of crony capitalism that has encumbered and perverted democracy across the entire Western world.

    The implications, of course, are greatest for Britain and Europe, but they will affect politics here in North America. The Brexit raises to first priority the more general debate about the trajectory of global capitalism which, for all its many accomplishments, has grown to resemble, in its haughtiness and inbreeding, the very statist despotisms that it was supposed to overturn.

    Brexit also represents a shot across the bow to all the elites, not only in Brussels, but also in Westminster, both left and right, much as the Sen. Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump campaigns have been here in the U.S. The EU pushed policies aimed at the mundane pleasures of the middle class, such as affordable electricity, cheap air travel, cars and single-family housing. Those who opposed the edicts were often excoriated as unenlightened and even racist. The “betters” behind the “Remain” campaign waged a kind of class struggle against the British grassroots – and lost in shocking fashion.

    The Revolt of the Masses

    As the American author Fred Siegel has suggested, at the root of this rebellion lie the attitudes of our cognitive betters. Over the past half-century, he argues in his book “Revolt Against the Masses,” progressivism has become increasingly haughty and dictatorial, reaching its apex in the Obama administration and its penchant for ruling by decree.

    James Heartfield, a powerful thinker on Britain’s old left, described the vote as “a popular reaction against the elite.” The EU did not help its cause by failing to bring a long-promised prosperity to Europe. The recovery that did emerge somewhat in Britain largely benefited the asset-owning property and financial classes, the political base of David Cameron and his high-minded, politically correct brand of Toryism.

    Read the entire piece at The Orange County Register.

    Joel Kotkin is executive editor of NewGeography.com. He is the Roger Hobbs Distinguished Fellow in Urban Studies at Chapman University and executive director of the Houston-based Center for Opportunity Urbanism. His newest book, The Human City: Urbanism for the rest of us, will be published in April by Agate. He is also author of The New Class Conflict, The City: A Global History, and The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050. He lives in Orange County, CA.

    Map by Mirrorme22Nilfanion: English and Scottish council areas TUBS: Welsh council areas Sting: Gibraltar [CC BY-SA 3.0], via Wikimedia Commons

  • Brexit Will Be Britain’s Fourth of July

    The campaign to take the United Kingdom out of the European Union, widely known as “Brexit,” is potentially on the verge of a huge victory Thursday despite overwhelming opposition in the media and among the corporate and political establishment. The outcome matters not just as an expression of arcane British insularity, but as evidence of a growing rebellion against the ever greater consolidation and concentration of power now occurring across all of Europe, as well as here in the United States.

    In many ways, this rebellion’s antecedents include our own revolution, which sought to overturn a distant, and largely unaccountable, bureaucracy. Like Lord North, George III’s prime minister, today’s Eurocratic elites spoke of obligations and fealty to the wisdom of the central imperium. What shocked the centralizers then, and once again today, was the temerity of the governed to challenge the precepts of their betters.

    None of this suggests that Brexit will win this time around, given the massive odds of overcoming so much concentrated establishment power, and the reaction to the brutal slaying of a prominent, pro-EU Labor MP by a deranged neo-Nazi (is there any other kind?). But the fact that the anti-EU rebels have gotten this far (after the Brexiters had surged ahead, polls now show the country evenly split) suggests a growing desire to overturn hyper-centralization with a return to self-government and local control.

    Given the grisly history of internecine warfare on the old continent , the idea of European integration initially had a certain appealing logic. And indeed the early years of integration promised much: greater prosperity, adherence to democracy and even a guarantee that Europe would retain a powerful voice in the world economy and politics. That promise has faded, as Europe remains locked in what appears a more or less permanent cycle of secular decline and stagnation.

    Over the past decade, the EU has lagged in terms of both growth and innovation even by our mediocre standards. The EU’s poor performance is recognized well beyond Britain’s borders. Today more than 60 per cent of French voters now hold an unfavorable view of the Union while almost half the electorate in Germany, Spain and the Netherlands have also become Euroskeptic, notes a recent Pew study. In all, these countries’ rejection of the “European project” is even greater than in the UK’s.

    Rather than embrace a greater Europe bolstered by millions of newcomers, most Europeans now reject such demographic engineering. This sentiment has been rising, most portentously, among Europe’s diminished youth.

    These sentiments help explain the rise in support for Brexit. Much of Britain’s hard-pressed middle and working classes are disturbed by the current record immigration, much of it from other EU countries, which has occurred despite Prime Minister David Cameron’s repeated promises to reduce its growth.

    To this phenomena, one has to consider the recent EU sanctioned mass migration from the Middle East. This can be seen as not just an economic threat, but one that could undermine the hard-won rights achieved women and gays. The language spoken by the Eurocrats may seem liberal and progressive, but their effects on the ground seem profoundly both illiberal and authoritarian, as societies are forced to adapt to the quasi-medieval codes of the newcomers, notably in such matters as separating men and women in public pools.

    In terms of immigration, populist anger is most powerful in the poorer countries, such as in Eastern Europe, and among the already beleaguered working class in the more prosperous north. Despite Labour’s support for both large scale immigration and the EU, a recent YouGov poll finds the majority of working-class Brits favor leaving.

    This growing opposition also stems from growing resentment of an unaccountable, and often haughty, bureaucracy that seeks to impose regulation on everything from the borders to the schools, planning, environment policy, and, perhaps most insulting of all, laws that control the production and distribution of such critical European products as alcohol and cheese. Climate change regulations imposed from Brussels also threaten to further weaken the middle class, even making car ownership too expensive for most drivers.

    The European and British rebellions have clear parallels here in the United States. If there is any consistent theme to the current Administration, it has been implicit embrace of the European model. This includes the massive expansion both of executive branch regulatory power and a relentless, ever growing assault on the traditional rights of states and local communities to control their own fates.

    President Obama’s use of executive orders, much in the image of the EU bureaucracy, has enhanced federal power into many areas once was the purview of localities, such as public education and transportation, land use and, most absurdly, the regulation of bathroom access. Ultimately, every state, city or town may find—as is already the case in Europe—that their future lies in the hands of distant bureaucracies , in this case HUD, the EPA, and other federal agencies.

    As is increasingly true in Europe, the vaunting of the leviathan does not reflect popular will. According to numerous surveys, Americans now fear their own government more than they do than outside threats. In contrast, some 72 percent of Americans, according to Gallup, trust their local governments more than their state institutions. Even millennials, who maintain liberal positions on issues such as immigration and gay marriage, generally favor of community-based, local solutions to key problems. “Millennials are on a completely different page than most politicians in Washington, DC,” notes pollster John Della Volpe. “This is a more cynical generation when it comes to political institutions.”

    This rebellion against ever increasingly centralized power—what might be called “fashionable fascism”—is just beginning. It does not reside solely on the far right. Many on the left embrace the ideal of localism as a reaction against globalization and domination by large corporations. Grassroots progressives often embrace the idea of purchasing from local merchants and relying on locally produced agricultural products as an environmental win, and a form of resistance to ever-greater centralized big business control.

    Of course, prevailing progressive opinion on both sides of the Atlantic embraces central control, often in the form of favor of a “technocracy” determining energy, economic and land use policies. If the technocrats get their way, we can expect policies aimed at limiting the mundane pleasures of the middle class such as affordable electricity, cheap air travel, cars, and single-family housing.

    One might hope that progressives who favor the concentration of power when their side is in power might rethink matters if central power were invested in the likes of Ted Cruz, Donald Trump, or France’s Marine Le Pen. After all, Vladimir Putin is an elected leader who has shown how power can be in profoundly illiberal ways.

    So let’s hear it for Brexit, or at least the spirit that animates it: a desire to regain control of our lives, families and communities. What we need —- as the British increasingly demand —- is tolerance for diverse forms of expression and governance, allowing people, as much as is feasible, to choose how to live. As even the French, who invented modern centralization, increasingly recognize: vive la difference!

    This piece first appeared at The Daily Beast.

    Joel Kotkin is executive editor of NewGeography.com. He is the Roger Hobbs Distinguished Fellow in Urban Studies at Chapman University and executive director of the Houston-based Center for Opportunity Urbanism. His newest book, The Human City: Urbanism for the rest of us, will be published in April by Agate. He is also author of The New Class Conflict, The City: A Global History, and The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050. He lives in Orange County, CA.

    Photo by Xavier Häpe – http://www.flickr.com/photos/vier/192493917/, CC BY 2.0

  • California’s State Religion

    In a state ruled by a former Jesuit, perhaps we should not be shocked to find ourselves in the grip of an incipient state religion. Of course, this religion is not actually Christianity, or even anything close to the dogma of Catholicism, but something that increasingly resembles the former Soviet Union, or present-day Iran and Saudi Arabia, than the supposed world center of free, untrammeled expression.

    Two pieces of legislation introduced in the Legislature last session, but not yet enacted, show the power of the new religion. One is Senate Bill 1146, which seeks to limit the historically broad exemptions the state and federal governments have provided religious schools to, well, be religious.

    Under the rubric of official “tolerance,” the bill would only allow religiously focused schools to deviate from the secular orthodoxy required at nonreligious schools, including support for transgender bathrooms or limitations on expressions of faith by students and even Christian university presidents, in a much narrower range of educational activity than ever before. Many schools believe the bill would needlessly risk their mission and funding to “solve” gender and social equity problems on their campuses that currently don’t exist.

    The second piece of legislation, thankfully temporarily tabled, Senate Bill 1161, the Orwellian-named “California Climate Science Truth and Accountability Act of 2016,” would have dramatically extended the period of time that state officials could prosecute anyone who dared challenge the climate orthodoxy, including statements made decades ago. It would have sought “redress for unfair competition practices committed by entities that have deceived, confused or misled the public on the risks of climate change or financially supported activities that have deceived, confused or misled the public on those risks.”

    Although advocates tended to focus on the hated energy companies, the law could conceivably also extend to skeptics who may either reject the prevailing notions of man-made climate change, or might believe that policies concocted to “arrest” the phenomena may be themselves less than cost-effective or even not effective at all. So, fellow Californians, sign onto Gov. Torquemada’s program or face possible prosecution and the fires of hell.

    Read the entire piece at The Orange County Register.

    Joel Kotkin is executive editor of NewGeography.com. He is the Roger Hobbs Distinguished Fellow in Urban Studies at Chapman University and executive director of the Houston-based Center for Opportunity Urbanism. His newest book, The Human City: Urbanism for the rest of us, will be published in April by Agate. He is also author of The New Class Conflict, The City: A Global History, and The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050. He lives in Orange County, CA.

    Photo: Troy Holden

  • It Could Have Been Huge

    With Bernie Sanders now dispatched by Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party machine, Donald Trump has emerged as the unlikely populist standard-bearer. Not since the patrician Julius Caesar rallied the Roman plebeians, or the aristocratic Franklin Roosevelt spoke for the “forgotten man,” has someone so detached from everyday struggles won over such a large part of the working and middle classes.

    Crass, superficial and materialistic to a fault, Trump, sadly, shares little of the virtues of either Caesar or Roosevelt, more resembling another creepy billionaire, the former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi. Yet, like his wealthy political counterparts, Trump has crafted a message, however crude, that has demolished the Republican corporate establishment and turned conservative intellectuals into virtual irrelevancies.

    The great tragedy for Trump is that the basis for a grass-roots-led Republican victory lay within his grasp. He could have been, like Ronald Reagan in 1980, the instrument of populist revolt had he shown the same wit, self-control and positive eloquence. Instead, his crudity, his barely disguised racial stereotyping and his obsession with himself has taken from the GOP, at least for this election cycle, the possibility of reaping an enormous windfall from the widespread alienation of the populace from the political and economic ruling class.

    Race and Immigration

    Racially tinged issues, notably immigration, propelled Trump’s rise. This reflects the sad reality that race relations in this country have been headed in the wrong direction the past several years. His opposition to illegal immigration – including his absurd, shock-jock-style advocacy of a southern border wall – resonates with a large part of the Anglo population, some African Americans and even some Latinos, a group whose mass desertion from the party may now seal its demise.

    If negotiated with grace and some sensitivity, illegal immigration could have proven a winning issue this fall, as it was in the spring. The killing of Kate Steinle in San Francisco by an illegal immigrant felon, who was protected by that city’s “sanctuary” status, followed by terrorist massacres in Paris and San Bernardino, all played into this theme. Recent revelations about higher-than-reported criminal recidivism among undocumented felons aid the Trump cause.

    Read the entire piece at The Orange County Register.

    Joel Kotkin is executive editor of NewGeography.com. He is the Roger Hobbs Distinguished Fellow in Urban Studies at Chapman University and executive director of the Houston-based Center for Opportunity Urbanism. His newest book, The Human City: Urbanism for the rest of us, will be published in April by Agate. He is also author of The New Class Conflict, The City: A Global History, and The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050. He lives in Orange County, CA.

    Photo by Gage Skidmore [CC BY-SA 3.0], via Wikimedia Commons

  • A Berning Rift Growing Among Democrats

    The mainstream media are having a field day, and rightfully so, chronicling the meltdown of the once-formidable Republican Party. Less focus has been placed on what may be equally, or greater, divisions emerging among Democrats, both in California and around the country.

    The largest gap within the party was revealed recently in Orange County, where Bernie Sanders denounced the Walt Disney Co. for paying “starvation wages” to most of its workers while rewarding the CEO with $46 million this year. To Sanders supporters, Disney is a clear “class enemy,” but to Hillary Clinton, the Disney brass represent a source of campaign cash, part of the fairly uniform support for her among establishment Democrats across the board.

    Increasingly, the Democratic Party is divided between two elements of its coalition – an oligarchy that supports Clinton and a base of workers, many of them younger, who favor Sanders. To the Clintonites, her positions on gay rights, the environment and feminism make her an acceptable progressive. However, to those who back Bernie, her embrace of, and by, the oligarchs, amid rising economic inequality, represents a glaring contradiction with someone supposedly leading “the party of the people.”

    Corporate Liberalism vs. Social Democracy

    Clinton’s ascendency reflects the gentrification of the Democratic Party. Since the 1990s, argues historian Michael Lind, the Democrats have evolved from the party of the people to become, increasingly, an instrument of those in media, technology, entertainment and finance who dominate our post-industrial economy. In contrast, Republicans, increasingly isolated from these rising corporate powers, are being forced, often unwillingly, to become the party of populist American nationalism.

    Certainly, Clinton, more than any other candidate in modern times, symbolizes the convergence of economic and political power. She enjoys across-the-board support from Hollywood, Silicon Valley, Washington’s K Street lobbyists and Wall Street. Clinton also personally collected a cool $21 million in speaking fees from a host of powerful Wall Street financial and other big corporate interests during 2013-15. She certainly appears like a future president bought and paid for.

    Read the entire piece at the Orange County Register.

    Joel Kotkin is executive editor of NewGeography.com. He is the Roger Hobbs Distinguished Fellow in Urban Studies at Chapman University and executive director of the Houston-based Center for Opportunity Urbanism. His newest book, The Human City: Urbanism for the rest of us, will be published in April by Agate. He is also author of The New Class Conflict, The City: A Global History, and The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050. He lives in Orange County, CA.

    Photo by Michael Vadon (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0], via Wikimedia Commons

  • Trump’s Industrial Belt Appeal

    In his still improbable path to the White House, Donald Trump has an opening, right through the middle of the country. From the Appalachians to the Rockies, much of the American heartland is experiencing a steady decline in its fortunes, with growing fears about its prospects in a Democratic-dominated future. This could prove the road to victory for Trump.

    The media  like to explain Trump’s appeal by focusing on the racial and nationalistic sentiments of his primarily white supporters in places like the Midwest and in small towns. Perhaps more determinative are the mounting economic challenges facing voters in that part of the country. Much of this has to do with an industrial structure facing growing challenges from a high dollar, decreasing commodity prices and a pending tsunami of environmental regulation.

    Unlike the Democrats’ coastal strongholds, which depend increasingly on such professions as media, software, finance, and high-end business services, the middle swath of the country depends far more on manufacturing, resource extraction, and agriculture. All these so-called “tangible” industries are facing serious declines, which in a close election could swing some critical states such as Ohio, Colorado, Wisconsin, Indiana, Michigan, and Iowa into the Republican column. Seven of the 10 most manufacturing-dependent metro areas in America are in the Midwest battleground states. Another lies in yet another purple state, North Carolina. 

    Economic Slowdown in Mid-America

    When President Obama ran for re-election in 2012, the tangible economy was on a roll. Super-charged by the federal bailout, the car industry was roaring back, restoring jobs and confidence in the country’s midsection. The president was even described by The Washington Post as a “man on a mission” to save American manufacturing. And the two states then with the fastest declines in unemployment since the onset of the Great Recession—Ohio and Michigan—are in the Midwest.

    At the same time, Obama benefited from the resurgence of domestic oil and gas production that   stimulated growth in steel, heavy equipment, and industrial sector employment. This fortunate confluence was fortuitous for the Democrats, who carried most of the states outside the South buoyed by this nascent industrial rebirth. Good times in coal country helped the president in parts of Virginia; the energy boom helped lock up Colorado for him.

    Hillary Clinton likely will not enjoy a similar tailwind this year. Manufacturing indexes have tended downward over the past year, and the energy sector has been in full-scale retreat. This not only impacts oil patch bastions Texas, Louisiana, and Oklahoma, which are unlikely to vote Democratic anyway, but also the battlegrounds states Pennsylvania and Ohio. Agricultural economies in the midsection are also reeling.

    Clinton will argue that job growth is on the rise nearly everywhere, but more than half of the increase has come in low-wage sectors such as retail and food service, which is one key reason  for persistently weak income growth.

    The damage is not yet universal, but can be seen clearly in many areas. Many Rust Belt and Appalachian regions are once again hemorrhaging residents. In a recent survey of metropolitan economies for Forbes, economist Michael Shires and I traced the job growth in communities across the country. The bottom 10 among the 70 largest metropolitan areas reads like a stroll down Rust Belt Lane: Hartford, Conn., Milwaukee, Detroit, Albany, N.Y., Newport News, Va., Birmingham, Ala., Cleveland, Newark, N.J., Pittsburgh, Buffalo and — in last place — Rochester, once one of the beacons of industrial innovation in the country and now part of New York’s upstate disaster area.

    Last year, amid some decent employment growth nationally, almost all these areas suffered sub-1 percent job declines after enjoying growth rates well above that in previous years. More grievously affected are a host of smaller communities, many of them in the Midwest and industrial Northeast, several already seeing negative job growth. At the bottom of the list are places like Johnstown, Pa., and Elmira, N.Y., where the Democrats’ “hope and change” promise has failed to reverse dismal local economies.

    Enter Trump 

    Throughout his divisive campaign, Donald Trump has fattened up on these voters, winning by landslides in places like upstate New York, central and western Pennsylvania, the industrial suburbs of Detroit, northern Indiana and the resource-dependent parts of Colorado. In hard-hit Erie County, N.Y., home to Buffalo, Trump won two-thirds of the primary vote.

    Also appealing to similar populist sentiment, Bernie Sanders has won some of the same areas, often decisively. For his part, Trump’s only serious Rust Belt setbacks occurred in Ohio (where John Kasich ran as a virtual favorite son candidate), Iowa (where evangelicals still wield outsized influence) and Minnesota, which is arguably the most post-industrial of the central states. Recent announcements by such large companies as Ford and United Technologies  to move jobs to Mexico have reinforced Trump’s appeal.

    Trump’s support, as Nate Silver has shown, is not comprised only of knuckle-dragging Neanderthals. On average, they earn above-average incomes and boast education levels that also exceed the national average. Some are professionals and merchants on Main Street, who acutely ride the ups and downs of the tangible economy. These voters may also be susceptible to rants about Mexican “rapists” and certainly would not favor a massive incursion of Muslim refugees. But their primary concerns are economic, not social. If they really favored regressive social policies, Ted Cruz was their man.

    The trajectory of the Democratic race—as well as that of the economy—could help Trump expand his appeal to such voters. Hillary Clinton once tended to be supportive of industrial and energy development; her State Department gave tacit approval to the Keystone XL Pipeline. Now, under pressure from Bernie Sanders’ left-wing legions, she has backed away from support for this organized-labor-backed project. The divisions between the public sector unions and those in the industrial sector could boost Trump’s turnout in states where manufacturing and energy still matter.

    To make matters more difficult, Clinton may be saddled at the convention with a ban on fracking. This stance warms the hearts of bicoastal enviros, but is unpopular in large parts of the nation’s heartland. Likewise, the Obama administration’s all-out assault on fossil fuels has already cost Clinton any shot at formerly Democratic-leaning West Virginia, and is likely to hurt her across  theAppalachian belt, which includes portions of Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Virginia and Ohio. Even if oil and gas prices rise, the Obama proposals for higher taxes and regulation of energy seem destined to slow any recovery in this high-paying, largely blue-collar industry.

    In addition, Trump is showing unanticipated strength in several key states dependent on coal-fired electricity. He’s currently running even with Clinton in Ohio and Pennsylvania, both of which twice went for Obama. This should be enough to keep Clinton’s advisers, who are planning to deploy massive resources to these states, awake at night.      

    In this respect, Clinton faces a difficult situation. Ever more dependent on her party’s post-industrial urban core, she will be hard-pressed to moderate her stance on environmental issues.  Her predecessor and her husband were able to finesse this ground by feinting toward the moderate middle in campaign years, but such ideological contortionism is getting harder to pull off.

    Megabuck donors like San Francisco’s Tom Steyer are committed to forcing Clinton to embrace   progressive green orthodoxy. This will leave many mid-America workers and businesspeople feeling abandoned and, thus, potentially more receptive to Trump’s pitch. Ultimately, suggests historian Michael Lind, Trump could presage the transformation of the GOP into a middle-class populist party, with a strong Midwestern as well as Southern base, while the Democrats rest their hopes on an unlikely coalition of the coastal gentry, the hyper-educated, minorities, and the poor.

    So far, the crass New York billionaire has played brilliantly on middle-American resentments, many of them well-founded. He promises repeatedly to cut a “better deal” for them. If he can convincingly make his case, Donald Trump also might yet close the most successful real estate deal of his lifetime: occupancy of the White House.

    This piece originally appeared at Real Clear Politics.

    Joel Kotkin is executive editor of NewGeography.com. He is the Roger Hobbs Distinguished Fellow in Urban Studies at Chapman University and executive director of the Houston-based Center for Opportunity Urbanism. His newest book, The Human City: Urbanism for the rest of us, will be published in April by Agate. He is also author of The New Class Conflict, The City: A Global History, and The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050. He lives in Orange County, CA.