THE GREAT DIVIDE

What is really behind the flood of support for conservative ideas from the suburbs? It is all about disenfranchisement. It’s as simple as that. It is when the old Toronto suburbs vote for Rob Ford and his “Fairness for Taxpayers,” and when the Tea Party and fellow travelers vote against big government and spending. It’s all about the fear of being disenfranchised, pushed aside by more powerful players..

So we continue to agonize over the voting split between the “old city” and the “former suburbs. Their vote is what elects the demagogues, who promise comfort and “respect.”

But the election of Ford, just as the elections of all those Republicans is just a by-product of the persistent rift that exists in cities between the chic, the elite, the Chablis-sipping quiche eaters and the down-home-good-guys who eat burgers at a shopping mall. The people that Sarah Plain called “Joe Six-Pack.” I’m oversimplifying of course, but I am looking for a way to characterize the political and social rift that has been around for generations.

The shape of the rift is almost historic. In Canada it is obviously between the “two solitudes” – each with its own distinct identity and aspirations. In the U.S. even more marked. The South still detests the North and expresses it in the social and political schism that has existed since post-Civil War Reconstruction. It is exemplified in the American west and their suspicions of the eastern elite and the Wall Street tycoons. Everyone suspects The ones they think are the “haves” or worse, the ones who want to take things over.

Why does sloganeering about taxes and greedy “big” government resonate in the burbs?
The Tories always do better in outlying areas and parts of the country that feel neglected. It is not that they are really neglected. It just feels that way, especially since all the money and influence seems to be located in the centres of power – the big cities. Never mind that there is enormous political and financial power outside the big cities. It is the perception that makes dangerous politics.

Back to what happened in Toronto. The city core voted one way, the former suburbs votes the other way. The message that you have “Respect For Taxpayers” hits home because those beleaguered taxpayers in the suburbs believe they are being taxed to feed the appetites, political, artistic, and powerful, of the big city moguls. The poor benighted suburbanites pay all those taxes so the city can have its privileges. They pay taxes to keep welfare bums and subsidized housing properly fed. They pay taxes for frills like symphony orchestras and theatre and multi culturalism and everything else that smacks of “nannyism.” The suburbs are where the “real” people are. Look how far Sarah Palin went with her “real” Americans, the ones who live in small towns.

The suburbanites feel they don’t have the power so they vote for the guy who says he will give it to them. There is never any acceptance of some of the facts: the people in the suburbs could not exist without the careers they can have in the big city. The suburbanite is furious because, on account of the inner city elite, they have to spend so much time in traffic gridlock just trying to get into town to make an honest living.

Toronto has never recovered from the effect of the “shotgun marriage” the Mike Harris government used to make one big city. Before that time it may have been no better - certainly far less efficient, with five suburban governments, a city government, and a Metro government. But the people of our former suburbs feel disenfranchised. No one seems to be listening to what they want. The squeaky wheel that (or it seems to them) gets the oil is the inner city, where the big shots live side by side with the chronic poor.

There is seldom any recognition that the engine that drives the city is the strength of its major institutions: the banks, the financial institutions, the planners, the creators of urban success, the magnet for touism. In Toronto, and I daresay in most cities where the centre has not been “hollowed out” the bulk of the tax revenues come from the inner city – from businesses and residents. And when the suburbs want to go to a symphony concert or attend a big city dramatic product, or go to see big league sports – they have to come to the place they love to hate – the city.

The city draws its strength from the downtown organizations – the hotels, the subways, the department stores, and the kind of life that Mississauga can only dream of.

But I don’t want to start a city/suburb war. I just want some reality and a little common sense so that when someone claims to be “caring about you” they usually care only about getting elected.