Ezra Klein thinks Kurt Andersen is wrong

Talking about maps and demographics.

This topic reminds me of dear ol' José Ortega y Gassett and his La Rebelión de las masas. A political classic.

Well, Ezra, you are now wearing a tie and looking older and so on...but you are missing the point.

Kurt Andersen's piece on NYMag offers thoughtful insight about political noise and demographics. His point: the nation might have demographically outgrown its political institutions, and this is what creates the political noise coming from the ideological extremes.

Ezra's response is simply irrelevant. Obvious or false. His point: the House is noisier and 'crazier' than the Senate. And it 'works' more efficiently ('better') because of that.

So what?

The point is the NOISE. Its growth. The static. The FULLNESS of it all. Everything seems cramped-up, full, noisy, extreme, extremeful....full of everything, and of course full of shit.

When I lived in Québec, Canada, it dawned on me how irrelevant the rest of the country seemed to be, on a day to day level. How the Feds were just like irrelevant on a daily basis. They were there, we were here. Very different from Puerto Rico, were the governor is as powerful as the President is here, and as near to everybody as a small town mayor is.

When I got to NYC ten years ago, it seemed that barring a war (or two or three wars), the mayor had a more direct impact on my life than the President. At least that seemed to be the case here in NYC, coz the city was/is rich and it generates its own micro climate of dollars, and can/could afford a certain degree of independence. Not anymore. The political noise is everywhere. Especially the federalized noise.

Ezra, however, thrives in this 'federal' noise (or adding to it), while I hate it. Ezra's check depends on it. On the 'crazier' part of politics. Yet, precisely when life becomes full of politics, craziness and noise, when there remains no space or time for anything else, that's when we have to begin pondering about what went wrong.

It seems to be about the demographic weight of it all; and complicating it is the complexity of those demographics. Maps, maps, maps.

We need space and time to deal with out own local political noise. And not running the risk that by temporarily ignoring the federal noise the country is gonna go down the drain while we take care of our local business. Kurt is speaking about THAT.

An ideological or theoretical explanation might be sexier, but if it turns out that sheer demographics IS distorting the political responsiveness and optimal-ness of the system, then....everything should be on the table. And that's what Andersen is pointing to.