ABSTRACT
Drove up to Madison last Saturday. Me and about 70,000 other people were there. It is, but shouldn’t be, a somewhat revelatory moment when you experience the range of people who can come together when the organizing principle is economic (and political) rather than something else (that shall remain nameless). It’s a sad commentary on the sad state of our public life that this is not the common experience of our citizenry. But it is also, as those professing a viewpoint now supposedly relegated to the ashheap of history used to put it, no accident. It’s American atomization by design. Anyway, I was there about two hours, with a drive each way of about three. It was worth the gas….
