Big cities and the global village

[England] 'doesn't have a sense of itself as a nation to be transformed and is divided between the vibrant, youthful and pro-European big cities — especially London — and the aging, stagnating and anti-European rest of the country.' English historian David Edgerton in the New York Times, a Remainer obviously.

This is the struggle across the rich, mostly white countries of the world - between cities and the rest and between young and old. 

The countryside used to be considered the heart of every country, except in Romania where the word peasant was, at least until very recently, the most contemptuous description Romanians could apply to anyone, except perhaps for gypsy. 

Once older people were respected but in the 1960s, as a kind of delayed flowering of the spirit of the Romantic Age, people began thinking young people were interesting, which, in the words of Peter Oborne, they are really not.

The young are better than the old, even though schoolchildren are often vile. The elan of youth is always appealing and moving - 'That Youth's sweet-scented manuscript shall close!' - but the young are by definition ignorant, even those who have read a lot of books. They are rarely intellectually stimulating. Older people, especially white men, who get on with things and love their country, are not only boring, but even ideologically suspect. 

In fact, the small towns and countryside are feared by the left and by progressives, as are what is now called the white working class.

Will the small town and rural people win by force of numbers or will Mickey Mouse degrees at pseudo-universities (a dreadful racket for making money from innocent 18 year-olds) make half the country into global-minded, internationalist big city mice? 

This is the political story in France (Gilets Jaunes), England (Brexit), Hungary and Poland, where outside Budapest and Warsaw the people love their governments, Romania, Russia. There is an internationalist elite in business, academia, media and politics in all those countries that is closely interconnected and not very connected with people who run shops in small towns.

These are the important legacies of the 1960s social revolution: the cult of youth,  preference for ethnic diversity for its own sake and dislike of ethnic homogeneity, dislike of patriotism and the masculine, martial virtues, dislike of tradition, hatred for war (this has no historical precedents I can think except in the 1920s and 1930s), consumerism and a love of celebrity gossip. 

The 1960s social revolution did not happen in the Communist countries, which is why they are so much nicer places in which to live than Western countries. None of the things I listed above has come to Eastern Europe, except the cult of celebrities and, for those who can afford it, consumerism.

The 1960s ideas had some precedents in the Weimar Republic and Republican Spain, both of which were crushed by right-wing strong men. 

Who will win, big cities or small towns? In the end, it comes down to demographics. Birth-rates and population movements. Immigration will play a big role. Immigrants cluster in capital cities and vote for left-wing parties. The internet is crucial too, or whatever comes after it, because the internet makes everyone who uses it a city-dweller, an inhabitant of the biggest city of all, which is the global village.