The Phantom moved to New Hampshire for reasons large and small, and has been a happy, grateful refugee ever since.
Of course, when he left Washington, DC, his friends wistfully told him, "Well, no matter how deep the snow gets up there, at least you won't be on ground zero."
The Phantom took considerable relief in that thought, until he discovered to his right, a two miles away, was the Seabrook Nuclear Plant, and 10 miles down the road, to his left, is the nuclear submarine facility at the Portsmouth Naval Yard. So, the likelihood of nuclear annihilation is, if anything, closer and more likely in New Hampshire.
Nevertheless, there is a sense up here, that problems have been left behind in Washington, DC, a town which the Phantom regarded the way a person regards his large, fractious family--it's part of you, but you are glad to have escaped, to the extent you can ever escape your own family.
Every Sunday, there is a letter from home, however. It takes the form of the Sunday New York Times, which brings news from Washington, and from New York, a megalopolis, which has merged, intellectually at least, into a single place of the mind.
This Sunday, two articles grabbed his attention: A piece by a woman leaving Germany, to move back to the States where she will place her children back in California schools, and an article by Tim Wu, about the problem of consolidation of economic and financial power in banking, the pharmaceutical industry, the internet companies, manufacturing, medical health care systems, and how this gives rise to oligarchs and destroys the basis for democracy and a middle class.
The article about schools the Phantom could read from the perspective of personal experience. The failings of public schools have been much on his mind. The idea of public schools has been perverted, undermined, by evangelicals, by identity politics and by bigness. The Phantom was told his public school was one of the best in the country, that his classmates were the creme` de la creme` and he believed it, until he got to college where he discovered everyone else, from Winnetka to Darien to Shaker Heights to Orange County, California had been fed the same malarkey, and swallowed it whole. Years later, returning to his home town, watching his kids go to the same schools, he realized, public schools had probably never been as good as he thought and had declined since then. They were instruments of public policy first and educational institutions second. The Phantom had personal experience with them and could judge confidently.
But for the Phantom, macroeconomics is not something with which he has personal experience. The idea of concentrated power, monopoly, lack of competition sounded nasty, but then again, Amazon is a monopoly of sorts and it serves the Phantom well.
Then again, the Phantom has run up against the whip hand of anti competitiveness. In his part of New England, there are simply too few health care systems and this means whether you are a doctor working for one or a patient using one, you are at the mercy of the only game in town.
Reading the Times in New Hampshire ties the Phantom to the rest of the world, to his country. That and the New Yorker and National Public Radio, and the Phantom has a new family, which reaches beyond the home town. I know those folks--David Remnick, George Packer, Jill Lepore, Ky Rysdaal, Mara Liasson, Ninatotenberg.
This is America now. The shire and the web which connects us.
Of course, when he left Washington, DC, his friends wistfully told him, "Well, no matter how deep the snow gets up there, at least you won't be on ground zero."
The Phantom took considerable relief in that thought, until he discovered to his right, a two miles away, was the Seabrook Nuclear Plant, and 10 miles down the road, to his left, is the nuclear submarine facility at the Portsmouth Naval Yard. So, the likelihood of nuclear annihilation is, if anything, closer and more likely in New Hampshire.
Nevertheless, there is a sense up here, that problems have been left behind in Washington, DC, a town which the Phantom regarded the way a person regards his large, fractious family--it's part of you, but you are glad to have escaped, to the extent you can ever escape your own family.
Every Sunday, there is a letter from home, however. It takes the form of the Sunday New York Times, which brings news from Washington, and from New York, a megalopolis, which has merged, intellectually at least, into a single place of the mind.
This Sunday, two articles grabbed his attention: A piece by a woman leaving Germany, to move back to the States where she will place her children back in California schools, and an article by Tim Wu, about the problem of consolidation of economic and financial power in banking, the pharmaceutical industry, the internet companies, manufacturing, medical health care systems, and how this gives rise to oligarchs and destroys the basis for democracy and a middle class.
The article about schools the Phantom could read from the perspective of personal experience. The failings of public schools have been much on his mind. The idea of public schools has been perverted, undermined, by evangelicals, by identity politics and by bigness. The Phantom was told his public school was one of the best in the country, that his classmates were the creme` de la creme` and he believed it, until he got to college where he discovered everyone else, from Winnetka to Darien to Shaker Heights to Orange County, California had been fed the same malarkey, and swallowed it whole. Years later, returning to his home town, watching his kids go to the same schools, he realized, public schools had probably never been as good as he thought and had declined since then. They were instruments of public policy first and educational institutions second. The Phantom had personal experience with them and could judge confidently.
But for the Phantom, macroeconomics is not something with which he has personal experience. The idea of concentrated power, monopoly, lack of competition sounded nasty, but then again, Amazon is a monopoly of sorts and it serves the Phantom well.
Then again, the Phantom has run up against the whip hand of anti competitiveness. In his part of New England, there are simply too few health care systems and this means whether you are a doctor working for one or a patient using one, you are at the mercy of the only game in town.
Reading the Times in New Hampshire ties the Phantom to the rest of the world, to his country. That and the New Yorker and National Public Radio, and the Phantom has a new family, which reaches beyond the home town. I know those folks--David Remnick, George Packer, Jill Lepore, Ky Rysdaal, Mara Liasson, Ninatotenberg.
This is America now. The shire and the web which connects us.
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