August 12, 2010 06:58 PM UTC

Politics of Place

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• by: JO

One candidate whom we could name adopts a slogan: “Fight for Colorado.” What does this mean?

–Are the interests of the people of Colorado different than the people of Connecticut or California?

–What are the interests of the people of Colorado that sets them apart from people living in other states? What interests do they have in common?

–Does living in Colorado while using a New York (Chase) or California (Wells) bank; working for a corporation headquartered in Cincinnati, Hartford, or Minneapolis; communicating over the internet with relatives living in South Jersey, Oregon, or Georgia; reading newspapers and blogs from many places (or no particular place) make a voter a “Coloradoan” in some meaningful sense?

–Is the function of the United States Senate to push the interests of individual states (by which we mean the perceived economic interests located in those states), rather than to promote the interest of the entire nation–even at the expense of companies/workers/enterprises in the home state? One example: dependence on coal as an energy source.

–What does “fighting for Colorado” imply when local interests clash, e.g. tourism versus mineral extraction; clean energy versus oil shale?

–At what point does technology bear on politics? Horse-and-buggy versus jet plane; mail delivery on horseback versus internet; depositing gold bars in a local bank versus ATMs, debit cards, automatic deposit of paychecks to cite but three.

–In an era when television and digital images on the net are the closest that most voters get to a candidate, when those media are the primary means of communicating with the bulk of citizens (including those who don’t turn out for living room chats or street corner rallies), does it matter whether the candidate is standing in Washington County or Washington, DC? Do we even know where he’s standing, given video technology that allows producers to insert background images later?

–Is class conflict imaginary? Which class tends to benefit when the concept is ignored? Do the wealthiest 1-2% have the interests of the rest of the society at the top of their interests?

–Is it time to reconsider a political structure designed by people living in a pre-industrial, agricultural society situated on a relatively narrow strip of land on the eastern edge of North America?