Knowing Your Way Around: the "Fractions" of America

Yesterday, in conversation with an inscrutable visitor to our city, I
had this suggestion: "if you want to understand your way around
Portland, you need to hook up with what I will call a 'fraction' -- a
group of people who are similarly oriented. It's not that they "know
each other", or that they're all-in for each other, but subgroups
share certain tastes and if you "fall in" with one of them which is
agreeable to you pretty soon you're going to find lots of
neighborhoods and things you like fine." True enough, and *true
enough* anywhere: one of the reasons to try your hand at "populist
politics" is that you get to do less, uh, "geocaching" and more
"cashing-in" on the virtues of your maxims and opinions. However, the
turn of phrase is not to be unturned: I meant "fraction" as no joke,
since it is a political term describing a discursively integrated
political subgroup and commonality of interest realized through speech
act "enables" the extension and refinement of one's aesthetic,
sentimental, and other educations. Rather than "Just So" stories told
to you by someone you obviously rather would not have talked to, at
least not in that way, with the cop present, or engaged in a game of
"presence and absence" with someone who just has problems with
Heidegger and similar "ways of caring", OK?
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