Rural minority wields clout over urbanites in culture wars
Around here, sea-level rise has seemed inarguable since knee-deep waters started washing over South Florida streets on cloudless days. The brackish water flowing across Las Olas Boulevard pretty well ended the debate.
But they don’t see that way over there, on the other side of the cultural abyss. On the angry side of our great urban-rural divide, climate change and its attendant maladies are dismissed as exaggerations of progressive ideologues. Rural folk, Trump voters most of them, are convinced that godless urbanites (in league with a cabal of international scientists) are out to con them.
Risings oceans may be seen an existential threat in America’s seaside cities, but not in the heartland. In the age of us-versus-them, the “them” regards the global climate crisis as just another skirmish in the culture wars. Like the wrangling over assault weapons, abortion, gay marriage, transgender bathrooms, Confederate statues, prayer in the classroom, police brutality, sentencing reform, sanctuary cities, taking a knee during the national anthem and immigration, except when farmers run short of cheap labor.
Our country cousins may be outnumbered but their wants matter more because of the peculiar numerology of American democracy. They’re afforded disproportionate clout. Which, for example, means Washington and Tallahassee can ignore the 72 percent majority who, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll taken last June, want the U.S. to take “aggressive action to slow global warming.”
Unhappily, that 72 percent majority is crammed into metropolitan communities, places with diminished political punch. So legislation designed to stanch climate change and sea-level rise has no more chance of passage in Congress than a proposal to ban the sale of AR-15s.
Most urbanites (except gangbangers who favor assault rifles to settle turf wars) are appalled by the notion of so much firepower in civilian hands. But voters on the other side of the divide, with their disproportionate political muscle, consider the Second Amendment as sacrosanct as biblical verse.
It’s a fluke written into U.S. Constitution back when 95 percent of the national population was rural. When we were an agrarian society.
Nowadays, we have a state like Wyoming, with 1.33 million fewer residents than Broward County alone, but whose citizens have considerably more voting power than us piddling Floridians.
A half-million Wyoming citizens elect two U.S. senators, same number allocated for 19 million Floridians or 37 million Californians. Just as residents of other sparse, gun-toting, drillbaby-drill states are endowed with two or three times the representational power in the U.S. Senate. Which means very conservative Wyoming, Alaska, North Dakota sensibilities trump progressive values embraced by New York and California.
Meanwhile, our cities are growing. Rural communities are dwindling away. David Birdsell, a political science professor and dean at Baruch College, told CityLimits.org that by 2040, 30 percent of Americans will be represented by 70 U.S. senators. And 70 percent, most of them from the urban side of the equation, will elect only 30 senators.
The disparity in American political power might explain why, after 9/11, the Department of Homeland Security allocated Wyoming, which Al Qaeda couldn’t find on a map, seven times more terrorism prevention money, per capita, than New York.
The distribution of voting power in the electoral college is similarly skewed to advantage the least populated, least diverse states. Which accounted for Donald Trump’s election, despite receiving three million fewer votes than Hillary Clinton. That was the second time in 16 years that the Electoral College picked a president who had lost the popular vote. Because we have a system that confers 143,000 Wyomingites with as much say in picking a president as 510,000 Floridians.
The urban-rural conflict also plays out in Tallahassee, evidenced by the Legislature’s penchant for passing so-called “preemption laws” contrived to undo those citified ordinances passed by local governments. Preemption statutes prohibit cities from passing laws banning guns in parks and playgrounds. Or to do much else to interfere with the NRA agenda.
Cities can’t outlaw smoking in music venues, patio dining areas, parks, beaches. City governments can’t require restaurants to post nutritional content. Can’t mess with vacation rentals. Can’t ensure beach access. Can’t ban plastic bags or Styrofoam containers, regulate drones or beekeeping or the disposal of medical waste. Or, for heaven’s sake, enact a living wage ordinance.
The city mice don’t have a chance in this updated version of Aesop’s fable. Angry country mice aim to turn democracy upside down. And they’ve got the clout to do it.
Fred Grimm (@grimm_fred or leogrimm@gmail.com), a longtime resident of Fort Lauderdale, has worked as a reporter or columnist in South Florida since 1976.