[VIDEO] #AmericanCarnage: The Dystopian Rhetoric of Trump’s Inauguration Speech
Posted: January 21, 2017 Filed under: Entertainment, Humor, Mediasphere, White House | Tags: American Carnage, Carnage, Donald Trump, Dystopia, Horror, Inauguration Speech, ISIS, media, news, POTUS, Reason.tv, Urban, video, zombie apocalypse, Zombies Leave a commentTraffic Lights Installed in Prague’s Narrowest Street
Posted: October 25, 2015 Filed under: Asia, Global, Mediasphere | Tags: ABI Research, Architecture, CCTV, Daily Mail, EUROPE, Prague, Traffic light, Urban Leave a commentHow Martin O’Malley Created Today’s #Baltimore
Posted: May 6, 2015 Filed under: Crime & Corruption, Law & Justice, Politics, U.S. News | Tags: Baltimore, Baltimore Riots, Democratic Party, Inner City, Martin O'Malley, Maryland, National Review, Poverty, Progressivism, Urban Leave a comment[NRO]
[PHOTO] Vintage Vinyl Records
Posted: January 19, 2015 Filed under: Art & Culture, Entertainment | Tags: Music, Neon, Photography, Records, street life, Urban, vintage, Vinyl 1 CommentMagazine Illustration: Lonely Woman
Posted: January 1, 2015 Filed under: Art & Culture, Entertainment | Tags: design, Illustration, Magazine, New Years, New York, Urban, vintage, Watercolor Leave a commentCity of the Future
Posted: November 17, 2014 Filed under: Art & Culture, Mediasphere, Science & Technology | Tags: Architecture, design, Futurism, Illustration, Science fiction, Space Age, technology, Urban, Utopia 3 CommentsLA Desk: ‘The Pope of Broadway,’ Towering Mural of Actor Anthony Quinn, to be Restored
Posted: October 29, 2014 Filed under: Art & Culture, History, Mediasphere, U.S. News | Tags: Anthony Quinn, Architecture, Los Angeles, Mural, Robert Holguin, Street art, Urban 1 Comment
‘The Pope of Broadway,’ a towering mural of actor Anthony Quinn in DTLA, will be restored as part of revitalization.
City vs. Country: How Where We Live Deepens the Nations Political Divide
Posted: March 23, 2014 Filed under: Think Tank, U.S. News | Tags: Church of God, Dante Chinni, Democratic, Detroit, El Dorado Springs, Laura Meckler, Mitt Romney, Rural, Saint Anselm College, United States, Urban, Wall Street Journal 1 Comment
Joe Trussell is pastor of the Church of God (Holiness), the largest church in El Dorado Springs. He has traveled to many parts of the world but says, ‘A lot of people here, if they get out of Cedar County it’s like they’ve been to another country.’ In his office is a trophy of a deer he shot himself. Catalin Abagiu for The Wall Street Journal
American politics have become increasingly divided in recent years. One reason: Rural residents are having vastly different life experiences from their big-city counterparts
This is a topic that I believe hasn’t been written about enough, or researched enough. When I saw the headline, I thought finally, I don’t have to try to write about this, because someone smarter has.
Our familiar perceptions about state political identities (red, blue, or swing) are useful, as far as it goes, but they conceal a more interesting story, about the county by county, town by town, neighborhood by neighborhood micro-regional distinctions. (and yes, I’m not the first to have this insight). And the ever-widening gulf between urban and rural America is the great underreported story.
This is a separate topic, but related: as cities continue to draw more population migration, rural America — and if you’ve driven through small towns that used to be thriving, you’ve seen it — is less vibrant than it once was. With rare exceptions, America’s urban centers are reliably blue. With outer pockets of red. One more example of long-term demographic trends that don’t favor conservatives, as city populations grow and smaller towns shrink. (though, Detroit’s historic shrinkage is the big exception, and it’s still suicidally blue) How divided is urban and rural U.S.A.? The political and cultural differences in one individual state in America can be more dramatic than the differences between distant regions in America.
For the Wall Street Journal, Laura Meckler and Dante Chinni report:
The owner of the nicest restaurant in town doesn’t serve alcohol, worried that his pastor would be disappointed if he did. Public schools try to avoid scheduling events on Wednesday evenings, when churches hold Bible study. And Democrats here are a rare and lonely breed.
“The difference in this country is not red versus blue. It’s urban versus rural.”
— Neil Levesque, director of the New Hampshire Institute of Politics at Saint Anselm College.
Older, nearly 100% white and overwhelmingly Republican, El Dorado Springs is typical of what is now small-town America. Coffee costs 90 cents at the diner, with free refills. Two hours north and a world away in Kansas City, Starbucks charges twice that, and voters routinely elect Democrats.

Ben Vickers, a 17-year-old high school junior, says he loves the farm where he grew up but looks forward to moving on: ‘Big cities are so complex and so awesome—just so many different people there.’ El Dorado, he says, ‘is a good place to be old.’ Catalin Abagiu for The Wall Street Journal
There have always been differences between rural and urban America, but they have grown vast and deep, and now are an underappreciated factor in dividing the U.S. political system, say politicians and academicians.
Polling, consumer data and demographic profiles paint a picture of two Americas—not just with differing proclivities but different life experiences. People in cities are more likely to be tethered to a smartphone, buy a foreign-made car and read a fashion magazine. Those in small towns are more likely to go to church, own a gun, support the military and value community ties. Read the rest of this entry »