08-04-2025
- Politics
- Wall Street Journal
‘American Oasis' Review: The Lure of the Desert
Hating the Southwest, particularly its burgeoning cities such as Phoenix, is de rigueur in American media. Jon Stewart has called Arizona 'the meth lab of democracy.' Hunter S. Thompson described hell as an 'overcrowded version of Phoenix.' Fran Lebowitz, the epitome of New York progressive arrogance, said: 'I don't think anyone needs Arizona. . . . Putin: here take Arizona, leave Ukraine.'
It's a tendency that Kyle Paoletta rightfully finds annoying. In 'American Oasis,' Mr. Paoletta, a journalist and critic, focuses on the region spanning California to Texas and argues that the Southwest, if not a mistake, is poised for ecological and social dislocation.
Having grown up in Albuquerque, N.M., the son of affluent professionals, Mr. Paoletta now questions whether newcomers 'who have sought to master the Sonoran Desert with air conditioning and aqueducts' can really call the region home.
Yet these are precisely the people who continue to migrate to this supposedly miserable corner of the continent, building what amounts to a new America. Budding sophistos such as Mr. Paoletta may move to the dank Northeast, but since 2010 Arizona's population has grown by more than one million—the eighth-fastest growth among U.S. states. More than two-thirds of that growth has been attributable to people moving to Arizona from other states, primarily far-more-temperate California.
