The Sensitivity Gap

Culture Wars Don't Divide Us. It's Privilege Blindness and Resentment.

In a little town nestled in the Catskill Mountains, the visitor breezed into the downtown deli with her little dog on a leash. This deli is aimed at the new city folk, who come up for a destination wedding or own a second home. They offer a range of sandwiches sourced with local cheeses and a fresh aioli sauce. Across the street, there is a brick oven pizza place where you get can get a white pizza with garlic and fresh ramps.

In the forests of New York State, this area was always known for flying fishing and hunting. You can drive 40 minutes between towns seeing nothing but rusty trailers and dudes knee deep in babbling brooks looking for trout. Now, you can also see million dollar vacation home peaking through the trees on the peaks of the green mountains.

This weekend, Steve and I went up to Roscoe, NY for an anniversary weekend away from our adult children who won’t leave our home. We had front row seats watching the awkward relationship between the rich visitors and locals. One night, we sat a bar between a guy who looked a singer from ZZ Top and second homers with jobs in high fashion and real estate. Resentment and privilege is the real culture war that is at the heart of American politics today.

As the woman approached the girl behind the deli counter, she placed a sandwich order without making eye contact. Her dog barked at another Brooklyn person’s dog, but she didn’t apologize to us or the deli worker. We didn’t exist. The woman’s linen outfit and shoes cost probably cost more than the deli girl’s salary for the week.

Steve and I sat at the corner of the deli eating what was an excellent sandwich and cringed at the scene. The Brooklyn girl was totally clueless about her surroundings and that people don’t bring their dogs into restaurants anywhere outside of Park Slope. She wasn’t embarrassed, because she didn’t recognize the different social norms. The deli worker and the few locals in the deli were invisible to her, so she didn’t know that they hated her.

Yes, the locals hated her and all the other rich folks, who visited their town in impeccable white linen sundresses and Vineyard Vines polo shirts. They were not attired for an afternoon spent knee deep in a creek with fly fishing poles. These newcomers wore their privileges too prominently and ignored the locals, who actually lived there year round. Instead of $15 sandwiches at the fancy deli, the locals got the breakfast specials at the diner.

The locals showed their disgust by flying their Trump flags on their barns. They couldn’t outright tell those people to shove off, because the Brooklynites do hire them to fix their roofs and make their sandwiches. Their disgust takes a different form, a Trump sign.

It’s this clash of cultures — not library books or gay rights — that is at the heart of Trump’s popularity. The locals, who never got over Clinton’s deplorable slur, feel ignored, discounted, and irrelevant by the city people. The young people, who can’t leave the area, are stuck with limited options for work. The median individual income is around $20,000.

The city folks won America’s rigged system of education, but still think the system is fair. From high school class president to a degree from Brown to an editor job at an online national magazine in seven years, they breezed through America’s hurdles to success. They have been rewarded with pre-war apartments in Carroll Gardens and Brooklyn Heights with soaring ceilings and tall bookcases.

I started visiting Roscoe, NY back in the 80s, when I was en route to SUNY-Binghamton. The Roscoe Diner was a well-known pit stop between the New York Metro community and the colleges in the center of New York State. The parking lot in late August would be filled with stickers from Cornell, Colgate, Hamilton, and Binghamton.

We returned to that area when the kids were little, and we were looking for good camping sites. We stayed at Russell Brook farms in Roscoe, which had good enough cell phone reception for Ian, nearby bathrooms for me, and the usual camping set up for Steve. There were decent places to get a burger at the end of the day, hiking trails, and small rivers for boating and fishing. We explored the nearby towns and even started to get know the bartenders at our favorite places. Roscoe checked all the boxes. (Lots of pictures and links here.)

That area began gentrifying with a microbrews and antique stores in 2000s, but things really exploded during COVID. (I wrote about a couple of posts about the migration of New York City types to the Catskill Mountains during the pandemic.) Now, there are absolutely great places to get a meal and a cocktail. We’re kicking ourselves for not getting a place pre-COVID, because there are no more bargains on old farm houses. We would like to be second homers, but I like to think we would be nice, considerate second homers.

Ordinarily, the deli workers at Roscoe and the magazine editors from Brooklyn would never ever see each other. But because of the second home scene and the new boutique hotels, they have been shoved together. The locals get to really see what money can buy ya. And the rich city people just see big Trump signs on the barns, which makes them loathe the locals a little more.

Yes, Trump was convicted a bunch of times last week, but based on the signage and the random rant by a local, they don’t care. At the end of the day, they think Trump is one of them. They feel kinship, because his enemies are their enemies. Trump’s critics are those same New Yorkers, who bring their dogs into delis, wear rich clothes, and treat them with disdain.

So many political problems in this country could be avoided with a less less pride and prejudice. What would happen if the Brooklynites respected local customs and left their dogs at home? Wouldn’t tensions be reduced if they made eye contact with the workers? And maybe the locals could look beyond a few rude people — rude people are everywhere — and make political decisions based on policies and character.

But for those changes to happen, then we have to talk about things like privilege, class, and inequalities. We have to create a system that works for everyone. We also just have to love each other. We’re not there yet.