COASTAL ELITE, RUST BELT CONSERVATIVE: NO DIFFERENCE.
One fine day, I walked across Times Square with a beautiful six-string acoustic guitar. I’d been in a session in the Edison Studios, and we needed it for the track we were recording, so I went across the square to Rudy’s Guitar on 48th Street and borrowed it. Then we used it, price tag still dangling, and after the session, I returned it.
I was thinking about this time in my life when I was reading an article in the Wall Street Journal. This piece was called Trump Backers Want Action, Jobs. The WSJ sent journalists out all across America to check in with Trump supporters, to see what motivated them to vote for Trump and to check in to see how they judged his performance so far. It was a well-written piece and had been sent to me as something to read to promote understanding of the issues from another perspective.
“Government doesn’t create jobs, they create the condition so that the entrepreneur can come in and create jobs.” Emory Terensky, Monessen
Most of the responses from these folks followed the Trump line. The government is too big; DC is uncaring, we need our factories back, regulations are killing coal, steel, politicians don’t care, we’ve been abandoned, we need to put America first. It’s heartbreaking to read these interviews. It’s tough out there. No doubt. After the election, many progressives beat their chest in anguish, and one repeated suggestion was the Democratic Party had been ignoring its natural base, the working people.
“Our jobs are sent overseas to China. People got fed up. I voted for Trump without hesitation, and I’m a registered Democrat.” John Golomb, Monessen
The WSJ does us all a favor by putting real writers and real editors on pieces like this. We need to hear these stories, but the underlying idea struck me as cliche and false. The idea that somehow the suffering in the middle of the nation is not understood by a mythical coastal liberal elite. That’s when I started thinking about carrying that guitar across Times Square.
I live in New York City. The changes in this city in the last 20 years would make your head spin. If you’re a born and raised New Yorker, change is our daily fare in this fantastic place, but maybe not change like this. Edison Studios is no longer there. In fact, the entire network of studios and studio professionals is gone. Rudy’s is no longer there either. Rudy’s was on 48th Street, and that section of 48, between 6th and 7th Avenue, used to be nothing but music stores: Manny’s, Sam Ash, a dozen others. It was the place to buy any musical instrument, or just hang out. Not only buy, but repair your instrument, or maintain your gear, network. It’s a street of empty shop windows now.
The entire industry I worked in is gone. Studios filled with engineers, assistants, receptionists, musicians, singers, producers, business people, all of it, gone. Duplication houses, technicians, designers, companies making and selling gear. Nothing left.
During the day most of this dynamic industry was supported by advertising agencies and TV networks, film editors, movie companies. At night the business moved to music for labels, artists, clubs, live performance. But the advertising agencies fled the city for cheaper production in places like South Africa. Radical advances in technology wiped out entire fields. Unions, once a bulwark in the center of all this, lost their power, became shells of their former selves. Night clubs were tossed by landlords, the record industry collapsed. And in a city of rising rents and spiraling out of control cost-of-living, wages and fees plummeted.
The reasons behind all this were the same as the reasons in the WSJ article. The journalists didn’t have to travel all that far to get the full story they were writing. A lot of it was sitting across from them on the subway. The real difference between the rust belt and liberal coasts was nobody was promising to bring any jobs back to New York City. Trump sits up in his golden tower, and for all I know, he hasn’t a clue about any of the struggle going on far beneath his manicured toes. His vision seems to skip over the reality all around him and focuses on far-flung Wyoming.
“We have to get Americans back to work so people have a chance to have those dreams again.” Patti Thompson, Sun City
If I could ask one question of this hyperbolic landlord who rules us all it would be this: Donald Landlord, why do you keep raising rents in your buildings?
I get paid the same today as I got paid in the 90s, but my rent is through the roof. Columbus Avenue, where I live, is a turnstile of empty shop windows. Most of my friends have moved on to other jobs. Some of the most talented people I know are now selling real estate to Saudi Arabians.
Trump comes from this world. He helped create it. His golden tower rests on the ruins of the city that once was. But not one single time did I hear him mention any of this; it was all about coal miners and cattle ranchers like bus drivers and sanitation workers didn’t count. He drove a big wedge between the states and the citizens to create power blocks he could use to win votes. But this clever politicizing can’t change the truth. There is in fact precious little difference between the essential struggle of the plains people and the Brooklyn people.
The solutions we are looking for come from hard truths, not spin. We are all in this struggle together and the sooner we come together, the better we will all be. We need leaders who unite us, not drive us apart with lies and empty promises. We need jobs in Kentucky. We need jobs in Queens too. We need to compete with Southeast Asians and their workers, not build walls and pretend they don’t exist. We need to get out there and join in the global community, not call people up on the phone and yell at them.
I guess there is one big difference between the city and the country. We don’t expect Trump to solve a damn thing. He’s the problem, not the solution. He charges us too damn much to live here. His buildings are the pits. His rents are too high. He’s a landlord, and one thing that unites all New Yorkers is a dislike of landlords. We know Donald Trump. He’s been our neighbor our whole lives. I don’t think it’s a coincidence 90% of New Yorkers voted against him. I think the last thing he’d ever want is for me to sit down with some folks from Kentucky and talk things over. He’d rather we were in different rooms, and he can control who hears what.
And if we had that conversation, if folks from Wyoming and Mississippi and New York and California, all got together and talked it out, I’d think it would only take five minutes for us to find a whole lot of common ground, and that’s the last thing Trump wants, because the next thing would be us showing him the door.
