On Hometowns (And Mine In Particular)

In this essay about economic depression and recovery around America, found in National Affairs, Michael Cooper, Jr., a journalist and attorney, argues in favor of the idea of re-involvement with one’s community, saying this:

“The political system has to work on the ground before Americans will trust it to work on Capitol Hill. And that’s why the real rebuilding will not begin in Washington but at the local level, by restoring the bonds of community and the middle layers of society through subsidiarity and a recommitment to PTA meetings, church fellowship, and civic participation.”

So now, with enough academic cover & transferred credibility to excuse a return to my own story, let me tell you a bit about where I am from.

Morris County is an emerald embedded square in the middle of northern New Jersey. Not quite urban sprawl, not quite rural hinterland, Morris County is verdant with its rolling hills criss-crossed by smart suburbia – enough to feel civilized, enough to still catch a breeze whisper through sun-drenched leaves in the spring.

Today, it’s a stone’s throw from the Acela Corridor, but as I’ve written before, those major transit routes have always existed in some form. As a result, these green hills have seen a good deal of political & economic action throughout our nation’s history. George Washington and his men found cover in these hillsides, setting up headquarters here for multiple winters during his war. Alexander Hamilton met his wife around here, and Thomas Edison did some tinkering too.

More recently, the county has seen two interstates scratch across it (Routes 80 & 287) and a railway connect it directly with Midtown. Its proximity to New York City, as well as its accessibility to the rest of the region, has undoubtedly been a boon for the people here, and on a per capita personal income basis as of 2015, Morris was the wealthiest county in New Jersey and the 24^th wealthiest in the United States.

My own family has participated in some of this success: my mother grew up here, she met my father when he moved in next door, and though they took a detour to South Carolina for a while in the middle, it’s where I myself have lived for nearly twenty years.

While I have grown up comfortably here in Morris County, let me also state that my brother and I worked at the local country club; we did not belong to it (and it was a great summer job, btw). What we did belong to, however, was a large and loving family, an energetic school & church community, township baseball teams, public pools, the county library system, and a free movie Tuesday program at the theater downtown.

According to the 2010 census, Morris County was 83% white, and that was four percentage points lower than it was in 2000. Mostly white and mostly wealthy – you can probably guess what political party has dominated this place over the last few decades. All of our seven freeholders (think of them like county councilmen) are Republicans, and of the thirty-nine towns, all but six have Republican mayors.

This is not a bad thing, in my opinion (though you might want to check my First Principles), and you can probably reason why a suburb connected to the financial hub of the world (via multiple routes) might consider low taxes, a balanced budget, and an unfettered economy as firmly within their own best interests.

Morris County is hardly like the region from which Michael Cooper, Jr., the author quoted at the beginning of this essay, hails. If Wilkes County in North Carolina is, as Michael describes it, “the face of the losing side of globalization”, and Morris County is probably the winning side. And yet, both counties voted for Donald Trump in 2016.

Here we arrive at the great tension of my own political identity. Put simply, I’ve grown up around Republicans, and thanks to those Republicans (such as my own parents), I’ve been given a relatively comfortable life. For that I am exceptionally thankful, but perhaps because those same Republicans also gave me my Catholic faith, I cannot help to feel a twinge of guilt.

That guilt is a result of the acknowledgement that this comfort could be considered an accident of birth, that I am, put simply, lucky to live where I do. The majority of my fellow citizens are hardly as fortunate; I’ve never been laid off, have never applied for unemployment benefits, have never been saddled with student debt or unpaid credit card bills, have never personally dealt with addiction, discrimination, racism, poverty, and the unending layers of disappointment, despair, and trial that too often accompany the lives of Americans.

This fortunate unfamiliarity with the struggles faced by others yields two dramatic questions that I must try to answer. First: am I qualified to address & consider issues that have not and do not affect me directly? Second: are my efforts on the local level, whatever shape they may take, wasted in a relatively well-off county such as Morris, my home? Let us address each in turn, applying the same rules as to my previously stated Essential Questions (in short – I do not know the answer, but only by grappling with it can we approach one).

Am I qualified to address, discuss & act on issues that have not and do not affect me directly?

For what it is worth, I sure hope the answer to that question is yes. Without a firm yes, I’m not sure I’d ever understand how an individual could lead and govern a community. Going yet one step forward, I have an unproven feeling that the core of the identity politics idea is that the answer here is a no – that only someone who shares my identity is qualified to identify with me, and therefore qualified to govern me. This essay is not the place to confront in its entirety the repulsion that that declarative statement on the right side of the em-dash in that last sentence inspires within me, but if you’ll excuse the brief aside…

In his remarkably astute essay “Notes on Nationalism”, George Orwell put to paper the notion of identity politics before the term existed. Admitting that he knew of no proper phrase for the phenomenon, he called it “nationalism”, describing it as “the habit of assuming that human beings can be classified like insects and that whole blocks of millions or tens of millions of people can be confidently labelled ‘good’ or ‘bad’”. Does that not sound frustratingly familiar?

On my discussion of identity politics, I’ll stop here and simply tip my cap towards the inherent divisions, the chains of logical fallacies, and the strangling Edenic fruit that follow this kind of “nationalism”.

But, such assumptions can damage and ruin one’s credibility, particularly one interested in solving complex and broad-based political and social issues. Though I cannot and will not apologize for the circumstances of my life (though I will admit to the probably presence of a few blind spots), the presence of identity politics and my inherited identity as a “privileged” white male suddenly, however, become issues that affect me directly, and so I seek to solve them.

I asked a friend of mine, the best I have from Morris County, what she thought of all this, and her answer is thoughtful enough to warrant more than a paraphrase, so I’ll let her do the talking:

“For me, the most important element in gauging how to weigh in on issues that are not mine has been to passively engage with the people whose issues they are (mostly online, through activist social media accounts like @undocumedia, @jaqthestripper, and @brownissues on Instagram). I consciously use the word “passively” because something I have become acutely aware of is the mental load of activism. It is incumbent on me as a white, cis, able, hetero woman to do my own independent research on issues of race, gender, sexuality, ability/disability, sex worker rights, decolonization, etc. so that the burden of knowledge and education doesn’t fall to those groups. After doing my research, I think of how I can use my own privilege to help. Bottom line, I think the best way to contribute is to use your privilege to actively promote representation.”

Actively promote representation. Hang on to that idea for a minute.

Are my efforts on the local level, whatever shape they may take, wasted in a relatively well-off county such as Morris?

There are really two questions here, and I’ll do my best to address them succinctly, since we’re already 1,500 words in on this essay.  [Disclaimer from the author: For what it’s worth, this essay was originally supposed to be only about those efforts I can take in this town, but the cool thing about writing is that ideas can zoom in and out in real-time, and the cool thing about this website is that I am free to zoom in and out as I please, since there is no limit on characters on the Internet (except/especially on Twitter) and also this is my website and I have no editor.]

Q1: Given that Morris County is wealthy, well-connected, and the winning face of globalization, is my “privilege” wasted here in Morris County? Q2: If no, what methods are most appropriate for me, as an individual, to employ?

A1: Nothing in this country is perfect. Nothing in this country is meant to be perfect – that’s why our founders went searching for a “more perfect Union”, not a perfect one. Morris County, for all its beauty, has its flaws, and “flaw” is simply a way to describe those quandaries communities of all stripes encounter: big things like income inequality and immigration intolerance, public vs. private education, and encroaching tax rates, and little things like potholes on the roads, liquor licenses, power outages, and different philosophies on lawn care. All this is to say, there is so much to be done here at home.

But those problems are simple compared to the existential crises plaguing my fellow citizens elsewhere: the economic plight bankrupting middle America (farmers and coal-miners alike), the violence tearing at urban neighborhoods, the opioid addiction creeping thievingly into our communities, the rising sea levels battering coastal towns, the disintegration of public education handicapping children all over. If I were to do something, why would I not face these big issues head on?

This question is a good one, and I have but a simple answer: this is my home, and these are my people. Blood is thicker than water, and there is at least some value in political boundaries: we share a history like we share a municipal tax regime. The communities within which I was raised are good, in my opinion, and so they should be perpetuated. If I don’t do it, why should I expect someone else will?

Brain drain has often been cited as a cause for the depression in parts of our country, and Mr. Cooper lays that responsibility on the youth who flee, though not without due understanding of their decision to do so. Still, he says,

“We need to ask talented young people to take responsibility for the places they grew up. We should start building lasting connections by engaging kids who are still at home, giving students public responsibilities while they’re still in high school. We should provide incentives for college graduates to come home to teach school or start a business.”

Fair enough – besides the fact that my family is here, there is a real reason to help my home. But how?

A2: If you couldn’t yet tell, I’m taking a political route, involving myself in a Congressional campaign, the Young Republicans, town halls, debates & policy. But that’s certainly not the only – or even best­­ ­– way to improve your home. I could become a public school teacher, aiding those among us who need the most help. Or a social worker. Or an entrepreneur on Main Street. Or an electrician or builder or volunteer or pastor or or or or or.

Politics – that’s my path? Why? Is that the most effective? I hear all the time from freeholder candidates are inspired to serve their community, but it’s hardly tangible when they are speaking in a room with folding chairs, coffee in the back, on a weeknight, preparing for the next fundraiser, instead of rescuing an undocumented family from an ICE threat, instead of running an after-school program for children whose parents work two jobs, instead of organizing a canned foods drive to donate to the local homeless shelter, instead of paving over those potholes out on the county roads.

I suppose there are two reasons. One – I have a skillset, naturally endowed. I can write, I can speak, I can talk to people, I can (hopefully) think critically and impartially on major issues (please let me know if I’m not doing that). Furthermore, I am passionate about rules and fair play (did you know I love the board game  Settlers of Catan?), and I hope I can direct that intensity and interest to governance in a way that I could not quite do via philanthropy, entrepreneurship, or other modes of service.

And second – I have a deep and abiding appreciation for those communities within which I was raised, and I seek to emulate that at ever-expanding circles of civil life. This is not to say that I seek to impose the methods of a Catholic church, a private all-boys high school, the routines of a country club, or the values of a German-Irish family upon an entire populace, but that I recognize the value those things played in my life, the value that community can play in the lives of others, and the value of civil institutions like public schools, political & activist clubs, and town parades – premised on citizenship, to the municipality, to the county, to the state, to the country – can have in bringing all those communities together under one multi-colored umbrella.

Politics, I suspect, is my own best chance to actively promote representation, and to celebrate it.

—

There’s little I love doing more than driving the roads of Morris County – they twist and turn around hillsides and hidden ponds, they can be shaded by a parasol of leaves or laid bare by the open sun over a meadow. They connect vibrant downtown districts, they run under train tracks and interstates. They provide access to the beautiful lakes, historical parks, wildlife refuges, and golf courses that are here in these rolling hills of Morris. I’ve lived here for twenty years, but I’ve seen more of it in the last two months than ever before – I’ve driven new roads.

It is home and I’m glad to be here. So let’s go fix some potholes.

– John Jay