A Driving Tour of Fairfax County With Three Days to Go

Mrs. Potomac and I were out running errands across a wide swath of Fairfax County this morning and a couple things popped out. First, the McCain-Palin and Obama-Biden presences in the county seem roughly equal, which is what makes this place one of the pre-eminent purple areas of the country. People talk about the Beltway mentality all the time but really, you need only get an inch outside the actual Beltway before this place feels like Illinois or another state where people pay more attention to their SUVs and jetskis than they do to politics. Heartening, in a way.

What really stood out with me this morning was our drive through a somewhat horsey area of the near-Beltway-abroad, land of what seems like a million gargantuan faux-estates. In Freddy and Fredricka, Mark Helprin talks about how "overdone" upper-middle class America is and how one day all that black granite counter top is going to windup in a dumpster when people come to their senses. (Are we there yet, Mr. Helprin?)

A surprising number of these places are sporting Obama-Biden signs, giving lie to the notion that people vote their economic interests. Quite the contrary, these folks seem committed to the notion of class suicide in supporting the Wealth Spreader Team. I asked a rather hard-bitten political journalist why this was, and he replied that "the numbers have just gotten so big" so that items like federal income and investment taxes are no longer interesting. I think it goes a bit beyond that. It seems to me that in addition to wealth liberating people from the consequences of their own decisions, there's a secondary factor about upward mobility relating to the life of mind. When one is no longer confronted with meaningful material limits, one is free to pursue existential angst to the fullest. Just as the nouveau-riche have stuffed their houses with over-sized furniture, they now fill their minds with ideas they regard as being equally "big" - redefining marriage, abortion rights, multi-culti social sensibilities. Barack Obama.

It could be that hard times tend will put paid to ideas that are so irrational and insubstantial that they can't sustain hungry people. I don't wish for those hard times but they seem to come to each of us in one form or another whether we wish for them or not. Perhaps at the next quadrennial political cycle, when "hope" has run its course, some of the basic truths about life, community, economcis, family and children will reassert themselves. The cost - real cost, measured in damaged lives - is likely to be high. The rich will avoid it mostly, insulated as they are by a thick wad of cash they frequently use to bail themselves out of their day dreams. The poor, as always, will be left to pick up the tab for ideas that never work and, at the same time, never fully lose their allure.