American statesman Thomas "Tip" O'Neill famously said that "all politics is local" meaning that votes were cast and controlled in their own communities, subject to local political influence. Recent events in New York reaffirm that even global geography has local roots, and local geography has global branches.
Consider the so-called Ground Zero Mosque, more properly known as the Park51 Islamic Community Center: a private use of a small parcel of private property in a city where larger and more complicated real estate transactions happen every moment has taken on world-wide significance. Why? because its planned location is two blocks (or four, or further, or mere footsteps away, depending on the philosophical leanings of the person doing the measurement) from another location which has become invested with huge symbolic importance. The former World Trade Center site is "hallowed ground" some say, and therefore it is a sacrilege to let Muslims pray nearby.
The transparent bigotry which that opinion expresses is only half the point. The rest is that it comes dressed up as an argument about location -- geography -- rather than ideology. "Let them put it somePLACE else," the protesters say. "This is just too close." But where else? Is a mile away far enough away to insulate Ground Zero from the corrupting influence of nearby Islam? How about in the next county? The next state? This entire debacle presents an unusually pristine example of the power of places, the lure of locations. The people who complain that this Islamic Center does not belong near the scene of an islamic crime, would likely not want it anywhere else. But their prejudice takes traction from the fact that this place -- this tiny sliver of land, imbues their cause with a presumed geographical legitimacy.
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