Missing the forest for the trees

Mark Penn has written an interesting book with numerous examples of way in which our culture is becoming more and more disparate. As he says early on, there is no one America; “we are flying apart at a record pace”. Unfortunately, the microtrends that Penn describes aren’t necessarily new (home-schoolers), good (unisexuals), or entertaining (sun-haters) and the author ends up overlooking a large macrotrend that ironically contradicts his initial thesis. Contrary to all of the rhetoric about the infinite niches being created in this country, Penn nicely ties them into one big macrotrend: diversification. In this regard, I say Penn is missing the forest for the trees.

Another contradiction is unveiled shortly into the book. Being a pollster, Penn has much perspective on using his poll numbers to say what he wants them to say. He says that most people have a healthy mistrust of numbers because some people–in an effort to advance an agenda–misuse them. Then he explains how he used numbers to back up eloquent arguments.

Despite the glaring inconsistencies, there is a lot of good material here including insight into the general public’s mind: people don’t know the status of the economy except through biased media outlets; more people filed for bankruptcy than graduated for college (I figure the former may be caused by the latter to some extent); and how a society with too many unattached men leads to war.