Trouble in the Heartland

Facing the politics of isolation and anxiety

In late 2000, then-President Bill Clinton, speaking at Warwick University in the U.K., proclaimed that

no generation has ever had the opportunity that all of us now have to build a global economy that leaves no one behind and, in the process, to create a new century of peace and prosperity in a world that is more constructively and truly interdependent.

Nearly two decades later, as a post-graduate student in Warwick’s department of politics and international studies, I often thought about that speech and ponder just how my home state of Arkansas—which I share with former President Clinton—is supposed to fit into the world of the 21st century.