Sam Smith - Among the atypical aspects of my existence has been that I have shared my time writing about national issues while also living and learning from a local life. I spent my first summer vacation in a small town in Maine when I was nine and then moved there full time 18 years ago. During much of the rest of my life I lived in DC, covering national politics yet being deeply involved in a city with strong communities and much better bi-ethnic relations then one found elsewhere in America.
The reason this has come to my mind lately, is that I have been once again been repeatedly reminded of how different is what I write about and what I live. For example, I can't think of anyone in my Maine town who has ever lied to me or whose personal dreams have been based on power and visibility rather than significant mutual achievement.
In DC, where I lived most of my life, I started out as a radio reporter and on a typical day I would cover both local and national stories. Later I was an elected advisory neighborhood commissioner for a while, worked with Marion Barry when we were both in our 20s and played in local jazz bands for decades. In Maine, I was driving a tractor when I was 13 and double clutching a six wheel truck as I learned about farming. Now, at 88, this old guy thinks of such moments far more frequently than some false thing a politician told me.
I have come to think that the national-local divide helps to explain how someone like Donald Trump got to the top. We are surrounded by leaders who rose there not because of real achievement but because they found the right words to use at the right time, finding smart ways to collect money, and recasting reality into self-serving myths.
None of this happens in my Maine village. But thanks to mass media and the false alternatives it provides, we hardly talk about our loss of reality. For example, I have heard little about the big difference in the way ICE officers and the way ordinary local cops act. One thing I learned in Maine as a teen from sailing and farming was that you actually had to solve problems. You couldn't just talk your way out of a situation like being on a TV program. But this is what the most important figures around us do every day.
This gap between community and the national, the personal and the powerful, has been going on a long time. Although I often think of the 1980s as a major shift, in fact the change from community to large institutions began decades earlier. Our communities and the groups that built them became out matched by ever growing institutions like corporations, advertising, public relations, and mass media. Truth and decency fell by the wayside. Which is why so many are conned by Donald Trump.
We need to rediscover our communities, their local institutions and the values and cooperation that made them work. Our purpose in life is not to control others but to work with them towards common good. After all, if success is defined by a lifestyle that ends up with half the country hating you, then probably you should try something different as even Donald Trump may find out.
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