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United States
美國版塊
Lexington
萊克星頓專欄
The battle in miniature
選舉之戰(zhàn)的縮影
A small town in Pennsylvania depicts a microcosm of the election—and how Americans are handling it
賓夕法尼亞州的一個小鎮(zhèn)刻畫了美國大選的縮影，也描繪了美國民眾是如何對待選舉的。
A modern-day Alexis de Tocqueville might find talk of America’s painful divisions baffling at first blush. Up close, as Bill Bishop wrote in “The Big Sort”, the country has never looked more cohesive. The leafy suburbs of America’s fast-growing, diverse cities are so uniformly Democratic it can be hard to find two people in serious disagreement. Republicans, an older, less mobile group, live equally clustered, farther out. The country is less fractured than ghettoised—as is especially apparent at election time.
即使是現(xiàn)代的亞歷西斯·德·托克維爾，他乍一聽到有關(guān)美國痛苦分裂的傳聞，可能也會十分困惑。近觀美國，正如比爾·畢肖普在《大人物》中寫到的那樣，這個國家看起來從未像現(xiàn)在這樣如此具有凝聚力。美國快速發(fā)展、多樣化的城市郊區(qū)綠樹成蔭，當?shù)氐拿裰鼽h化程度很高，以至于很難找到兩個意見分歧嚴重的人。共和黨人是更古老、流動性更小的群體，他們同樣聚居，生活在更遠的地方。美國并不分裂，反而十分凝聚，在美國大選時，這一點尤為明顯。
In Lexington’s suburb of the national capital (where Donald Trump won 4% of the vote in 2016), local opinion is expressed in a phalanx of Joe Biden yard-signs. Drive 20 minutes into the Maryland countryside and, as if some partisan border had been crossed, “Donald J. Trump” signs are everywhere. Yet there are still places along the frontier where rivals co-exist. One is Easton, an unshowy town in eastern Pennsylvania, where your columnist went to see some weekend canvassing for the president.
筆者生活在首都的郊區(qū)（2016年，唐納德·特朗普在這里贏得了4%的選票），院子中一排排關(guān)于喬·拜登的標語牌表達了當?shù)厝说挠^點。驅(qū)車20分鐘進入馬里蘭州鄉(xiāng)村，就像是越過了黨派邊界一樣，關(guān)于“唐納德·特朗普”的標語在這里隨處可見。然而，邊界地區(qū)仍然有一些競爭對手共存的地方。其中一個是伊斯頓，這是賓夕法尼亞州東部的一個不起眼的小鎮(zhèn)，筆者曾經(jīng)前往那里觀看一些周末舉辦的為總統(tǒng)拉票活動。
A former transport hub, at the confluence of the Lehigh and Delaware rivers, the town once thrived on its strategic site—and still relies on it. It is 70 miles from both New York and Philadelphia, a just-about-commutable distance, which has brought new families to the town, attracted by its house prices, and visitors to its main attraction, a theme-park for Crayola crayons. By no means rich yet not struggling, hardly dynamic yet replenished by incomers: the town sits between socioeconomic categories and political cultures. This has helped make it one of the most contested corners of one of the most competitive states in the country.
這個小鎮(zhèn)位于萊哈伊河和特拉華河的交匯處，以前是交通樞紐，曾作為戰(zhàn)略要地而繁榮，而今美國仍舊依賴這座小鎮(zhèn)。它距離紐約和費城都有70英里，這差不多是可以進行通勤的距離，由此，許多受到房價誘惑的新的家庭涌入小鎮(zhèn)，還有很多游客們?yōu)槔L兒樂畫筆主題公園所吸引來到這里。這座小鎮(zhèn)不富有，也不困窘，沒什么活力，卻充斥著外來人口。它介于社會經(jīng)濟類別和政治文化類比之間。這使它成為美國競爭最激烈的州中的爭奪要地之一。
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