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Cincinnati (Special Edition Joe-Duarte.com)
America is turning into a nation of contrasts, where all or nothing, rather than
something in between is likely to be the norm for the future as far as the eye
can see.
We've been traveling for the past week, passing through East Texas, Arkansas,
Tennessee, Kentucky and Ohio to get to our final destination, Cincinnati, Ohio,
home of the Western and Southern Financial Women's Open and Masters' Series tennis
tournament.
The week has been full of nothing but contrasts. Everywhere, from the highways,
to hotels, streets, and sports arenas, we've had no middle ground. Everything
seems to be extreme, from the performance of the athletes on the court who are
for a few minutes brilliant to just awful the next, to the things we see all
around us.
It's as if America is suddenly the "Land of Stop and Go." As we Blackberried
and Twittered all week, we saw markets tumble, and we saw middling crowds all
week. Then on Saturday and Sunday it seems as if everyone came to the Lindner
Center to watch tennis. All or nothing. Same thing with restaurants. Crowds were
huge for about an hour this evening. But soon everyone went to Riverfront to
watch the Cincinnati Bengals football game and the place looked like a morgue.
The waiter told us that they'd be back after the game, hopefully.
The problems is that we were at the same restaurant a few years ago, at the same
time of day and it was packed, without a football crows. The young woman at the
hotel's gift shop told us that the hotel is "dead" unless there is some kind
of game in town or a convention at the hotel.
A food vendor at the tennis center had time to talk with us as we ordered. He
said that the first three days of the tournament sales were great. And then they
died. He thought it was the heat. We think he was in denial.
There is suddenly a lack of sustainability in business because demand in sporadic.
We seem to be going from spasm to spasm, without any real stable muscle that
can sustain activity for any period of time. We're not sprinting. We're experiencing
a seried of false starts.
And it's evident in our politics, our economy, and the way we're going about
life in general; no direction; no ability to sustain any kind of stable or consistent
performance.
Last week, the Federal Reserve, after weeks of warning investors, announced that
it was going to steadily continue to expand its balance sheet, and thus pump
money into the economy. The markets tanked.
Meanwhile, as U.S. economic statistics suggested more uncertainty ahead, Europe
seems to be stabilizing, and China may be poised to become the number 2 economy
in the world.
Things aren't good in Washington. The Democrats and the Republicans are becoming
more distant and dissonant as the election nears. And the polls are suggesting
that the public is pulling away from both of them, although Republicans may be
gaining some quasi-advantange, although it's hard to figure out why they would.
They are offering little in the way of ideas and alternatives. The Democrats,
on the other hand seem to be fighting among themselves to the point where they
may be self neutering.
And the press is screaming, nearly in agony, wanting to influence the public,
just as the polls are saying that the public is losing their trust in newspapers
and television newscasts.
In other words, what we've learned this week is that the U.S. is a country on
the rocks where things are so fragmented and disorganized that anything is possible,
and all conflicts and successes are now likely to be regional.
Conclusion
Peggy Noonan has likened the current situation in the U.S. to "Balkanization," the
process where Yugoslavia returned to being Serbia, Croatia, and the rest of the
smaller lands that once were.
In the U.S., at this point, "Balkanization" may be more about the economy and
the well being of one region vs. another. Where one county may be holding up,
its neigbor may not be doing as well. And the problem is that the press and the
natural psyche are used to dealing with the situation as a whole ecosystem, the
United States.
Yes, the Federal Reserve does regional analysis in its Beige Book. And, yes,
there are regional elections that precede or coincide with national elections.
But, at the end of the day, the U.S. has been seen as one nation.
What we're seeing on this road trip is that nothing is whole anymore. No, we're
not seeing anarchy. But we're seeing such an all or nothing reality that we can't
help but projecting that further into the future.
What's the bottom line? We're not sure where this is going, but fractionation, "Balkanazination" and
any other term you use to describe the U.S. at this point can only be interpreted
as one word, divided.
And in the most basic terms, empires, villages, families, or individuals who
are divided, are the most easily conquered.
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