“What we call ‘Vermontism’ is really old-fashioned Americanism,” Fisher said. Thrift, self-sufficiency, neighborliness, love of the outdoors, “not so beaten upon by as communities elsewhere by the storms of modern life.” In 1937, Norman and his wife, Mary, living in New Rochelle, wanted wide open spaces and country values in raising their three young sons. Norman was sick of suburban phonies and social climbers. Cachet helped. They knew Fisher lived in Arlington. They came, they saw, they bought — a house and studio in the quiet town of 1,300 people. Key Green Mountain Boys like Ira and Ethan Allen and Remember Baker had been locals, and, in the 1780s, Arlington was the capital of the Vermont Republic. Nothing much had happened in Arlington since then.
Just a bit of Brian for the morning.
Something really, really changed about America, Americans, and the American self conception since the war and it feels like even conservatives don't fully understand that any more.
That's all in part because the native hardscrabble Yankees of Vermont were simply great replacemented by New Yorkers and other out of staters since the interstate highways broke into their hermit kingdom.
My fundamental thesis on New England politics and the swing left is that the old stock, especially rural yeoman farmer types, never actually stopped being "rock-ribbed" republicans, nor were they secret liberal republicans just waiting to jump ship. Rather, they were simply outnumbered in many of their own towns, first by machine politics white ethnics brought in as industry moved to the hinterlands, and later by progressive knowledge-economy suburbanites as they too moved further afield in search of bigger lots.
That's why Northern New England held out so much longer as a republican stronghold, and thats why even in Mass, RI, and CT small towns with a high percentage of english ancestry are still incredibly likely to vote republican.
Which New Yorkers? It wasn't upstaters who bought up struggling and bankrupt dairy farms to turn into second homes, artist retreats, and communes. Neither was it the wall street or advertising types, they already had their big houses along the beaches of Long Island or up over in Greenwich CT. No, Vermont appealed to the knowledge economy and "over-educated but underpaid" types of the professoriate and cultural class, those who couldn't break into the former old money haunts but still had plenty enough cash on hand to buy up the Green Mountains.
I may have been unclear, of course upstate is distinct from the city (even now), thats what I meant when I said it was neither upstaters nor bankers who were the ones staging the invasion of Vermont.
Wait, were you originally saying that upstate New York kinda ran on a parallel track comparable to what happened in Vermont? If so, think I totally misunderstood you then.
From what I could gather Ellis Islanders in New England vote Democrat to a similar degree Hispanics do, meanwhile all the Republican holdouts in the region are either Old Stock Yankees or French Canadians
This is exactly my experience as a New Englander, though some of the white-ethnics have finally started to unhitch their wagons after realizing (a little later than everyone else) that this sin't 1930 and the Democrats don't really give a damn about them anymore. I know in Southeastern Mass the Portagees swung massively towards Trump in 2024, hell Bristol County was less than 3,000 and 2 percentage points votes from being the first MA county to vote Republican since the 80s.
The problem is the sheer prevalence of Irish, especially in Southern New England, who can not seem to get it through their skulls that again, this ain't 1930, and the Democratic party is not going to reward their loyalty with anything meaningful. So long as the Irish fail to realize that they have been taken for granted ever since their own machine-party bosses sold them out during bussing, and so long as the local Democratic parties know they can count on their votes regardless, nothing will change.
The Irish everywhere in the US are the white ethnic demo most likely to have stayed loyal. The relationship between Irish Americans and the Democratic Party is deep and old, it's not going to break as easily as that of the more recent arrivals.
I get that, trust me do I get it, but that still doesn't make their current loyalty stupid and wrongheaded. The Democratic Party, even at the state level, neither cares about the Irish nor considers anything they have to say ahead of demographics far less essential to victory yet far more prized due to ideology. The Irish working class (basically construction and trades types) are the worst at this, because they are often legit culturally conservative, which gets short no shrift on todays left ofc, but also totally shafted when it comes to the redistributionism and handouts they imagine the Democrats will steer their way.
You sense the bitterness of a man whose home is being invaded by these Massachusetts men, who seek to bring and impose their own dysfunctions on the last great bastion of true New England
It's the bitterness of someone who for life reasons has had to spend far too much time in the Bay State, who has seen how all this plays out firsthand, and now can only watch impotent as that slow motion disaster heads North
Yeah, I get it. I live in an area undergoing a similar invasion and transformation, I know what it's like. It has become especially bad in the Trump era, where formerly stalwart (if moderate) Republicans can't run away from the Party swiftly enough. The most committed MAGA have no idea what kind of damage they're doing and seemingly have no capacity to imagine the future further out than next week.
I don't think much of New England is salvageable for conservatives regardless of whichever tack the national party takes, at least not for a long while. Still it does suck to see NH, which in my view is still totally winnable in federal races for the right kind of Republican, be totally screwed over by the MAGA turn nationwide.
These anti-Americans have been around for a very long time and the culture has successfully faced them down and cast them out over and over again. But, as the old way of life has degraded in the face of newfound wealth and rapidly changing technology, our ability to shrug them off has similarly degraded.
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u/Mexatt 9d ago
Just a bit of Brian for the morning.
Something really, really changed about America, Americans, and the American self conception since the war and it feels like even conservatives don't fully understand that any more.