Sam Smith – In writing a few days ago about the difference between living in DC and living in a small town in Maine, I got some good criticism from Betty Ann Kane, who was an excellent DC Council member for over a decade. She wrote:
I think you are comparing apples and oranges. In my 56 years in Washington my experience with shopkeepers, repairmen, doctors, etc. in my daily life has been just the same as you describe those interactions in Maine (and mine when in Maine as well).
I didn’t make clear that I was talking about Washington in its role as the federal capital city, and not about its neighborhoods many of which were wonderful places to live. The problem was that what happened downtown was quite different.
And the point I was trying to make was that our views and values are increasingly affected by national rather local standards, a good example being the media. A report last fall found that country will have lost 3,000 local newspapers by this year with just about 6,000 remaining. Some 43,000 journalists have lost their jobs.
As for local religious centers, in 2020, 47% of adults belonged to a local religious group, down more than 20% from 2000.
And the Boy Scouts have lost about three quarters of their members since the 1970s.
The point is that in terms of how we spend our day, who tells us what to do, and how we think has become far more influenced at a national rather than a local level. And we are paying a big price.
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