Bernie Sanders uses gentrification in Greenville to make national political point again

[Hekate]

114. They were all over the place in the 1970s, like wishbooks for real estate. Several things, George...

The brochures are still around -- I think they're called Homes & Land.

First, there was the residual feeling from the 1960s "back to the land" impulse. A lot of books told you how wonderful it would be to milk your own goats and spin their wool.

Second, there was a widespread fear in the 1970s that the world economy was going to crash and burn, leaving urbanites to have food riots in their dystopian environments. My sister and her first husband were a pair of young engineers who went straight from Berkeley to Oregon, got jobs in their field, and bought a farm along with his siblings. They owned a couple of crossbows and other survival gear.

Third, if you lived where land was unavailable and horribly expensive (like Hawai'i, where I was at the time) you fantasized about buying some acreage in a place where land was affordable, if not downright cheap. I used to pick up copies of Homes & Land and moon over the possibility of going to Oregon myself. I never did, but I did buy a hardcover book in 1975 called "The Homesteader's Handbook to Raising Small Livestock," which I practically committed to memory.

Fourth, I can actually sympathize with Bernie's desire to leave the megalopolis that is NYC and buy a lot of land in another state along the same coast. He had a lot of company in that desire during that era -- the difference was that he did it. He no doubt was reading the East Coast issues of Homes & Land.

My issues with Bernie are all about his preaching a one-size-fits-all economic solution to every problem. I really don't care about his choice of Vermont -- only that his worldview and philosophy didn't seem to grow and change.