Beware the Civic-Pride-Cloaked Elitist
We here at Porter Ranch, behind safe gates and manicured lawns, have heard the clang of barbarian hooves, and we’re mad as hell.
As an original homeowner, board member and treasurer of the Heights at Porter Ranch, I’ve tracked the escalating flap over the local gentry’s refusal, from the hills above Rinaldi, to admit Wal-Mart and other undesirables. As an appraiser and real estate consultant, I have a fair grasp of real property values in the area. (Porter Ranch Development Co. is one of my clients.) I also have a law degree (from Southwestern University, the year before Marcia Clark got hers). Of course, we Porter Ranch property owners have a collective duty to maintain and enhance the value of the realty in the area. And no one should quibble over a town hall approach to political resolution.
But there is something further and more nefarious afoot here. Under the guise of civic pride and birds-of-a-feather activism, we find ourselves treading heavily into an area murky with privilege and inequity. Elitism is the keystroke, and exclusion is the program.
Gated communities in various forms go back to Sumer and Luxor, Athens and Jerusalem. “Barbarian” meant anyone who was not Greek. Gates kept the barbarians out; civic pride enfranchised citizens with a belief in self-interest and that within the walls, the greatest good was to enjoy the good things with one’s fellows, to the exclusion of those outside the gates.
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The onward rush of civilization has taken us beyond the insular city-states to national and global unification. Through worldwide instant time, a dialectic materialism that even Marx never dreamed of is quickly emerging, bringing a marriage of technology, political pluralism and market forces impelling us beyond the new millennium to a brighter and saner global family.
Meanwhile, back to Porter Ranch.
Notable is the linking by the Wal-Mart dissidents with a renewed clamor for Valley secession from the city of Los Angeles. I see both posturings as mean-spirited attempts to distance ourselves from the unforgivable intrusions of the inner city. Wal-Mart means blue collar or worse; the city of Los Angeles means roving gangbangers, crack babies and welfare fraud. The same passion that drove tax reform via Proposition 13 is now working to further insulate my fellow homeowners from the curse of the underprivileged and non-creditworthy.
It’s OK to seek privilege and be motivated by self-interest. But let us not forget that those who torched Watts and Koreatown were also motivated by self-interest, in pursuit of privilege. There is, I think, an epistemological nexus between looting by AK-47 and looting by MasterCard. The determinants, in each case, are relative and appear to be cousins.
Beware the horses of Troy.
