Wow. Another weekend of hatred from our local newspaper. Political and personal divisions sunk in concrete and the quagmire of anger and people who should know better setting out to sabotage any possible progress.
Frankly, I'm sick of it. But that doesn't answer the question.
Like the song says: we need a hero.
The problem we all have here is that there is no agreement on anything. Those who lost in the CRC Follies have, to date, shown themselves incapable of moving beyond their crushing defeat; one of the clown princes even going so far as making everyone think that he's going to set up a PAC and that people will line up to throw money at him so he can become a major player on the political scene... as if money alone decides any election.
The hatred of those who won in the battle between right and wrong will run up against a wall of resistance from the losing side for a decade or more to come.
They lost. Those who won must be punished! We must all be assimilated; resistance is futile and the ONLY way to do things is the losing way.
How... will that... accomplish anything?
The only way out of this is for all parties to put the people and this community first... to put the people and this community ahead of their own feelings and agenda and to compromise... after all, isn't compromise supposed to be the art of statecraft?
I offer a relatively simple plan that builds on the obvious truth that it must be the people who come first: the people who come before ambition, before agendas, before party. Needed: someone that both sides of the equations confronting us can trust.
If we cannot arrive at such an accommodation then we are doomed to fractionalization, increasing hatred and increasing division.
There are dozens of problems confronting our community. There is no plan to deal with them that has substantial buy-in from the parties concerned.
Why can't we put together a list of what those problems are and at least find commonality on identifying the issues confronting us? Turf wars. Testosterone with a smidgen of estrogen thrown in. No mutual respect. Contempt all around.
I'm not talking about the obvious, glittering generalities: of course we need jobs. Of course we need more employers locating in the county. Of course we have transportation issues. We absolutely have housing issue. And infrastructure issues. And so on and so on and so on.
As a community, everyone can likely agree on that.
The rubber meets the road, however, in the arena of ideas and solutions. Merely recounting the problems is a fool's errand.
Why can't this community come together to provide direction as to what the specific issues are, how we can rank order them in importance and how we can come together to design solutions that the people can support?
Why?
Because too many people have hurt feelings. Because our daily newspaper is on a jihad of hatred against those who don't set the view of the people aside in favor of supporting the agenda of the Columbian.
Because arrogance and vengeance and agendas get in the way.
And as a result, the people suffer.
I don't believe this community should be caught in their crossfire.
With agreement on the broad-brush issues, we can begin to drill down and identify the specific issues confronting us. We can develop a master plan with timeliness and mechanisms to address each aspect of these issues.
But there's a wall that must be crossed over from both sides.
Who among us can lead the way? Who can we turn to that both sides can trust? Who has not been involved in the internecine warfare that has... and continues to... tear us apart?
There's the rub.
What will it take for those focused on the pain of the past to shift their focus to the hope for the future?
Frankly, I'm sick of it. But that doesn't answer the question.
Like the song says: we need a hero.
The problem we all have here is that there is no agreement on anything. Those who lost in the CRC Follies have, to date, shown themselves incapable of moving beyond their crushing defeat; one of the clown princes even going so far as making everyone think that he's going to set up a PAC and that people will line up to throw money at him so he can become a major player on the political scene... as if money alone decides any election.
The hatred of those who won in the battle between right and wrong will run up against a wall of resistance from the losing side for a decade or more to come.
They lost. Those who won must be punished! We must all be assimilated; resistance is futile and the ONLY way to do things is the losing way.
How... will that... accomplish anything?
The only way out of this is for all parties to put the people and this community first... to put the people and this community ahead of their own feelings and agenda and to compromise... after all, isn't compromise supposed to be the art of statecraft?
I offer a relatively simple plan that builds on the obvious truth that it must be the people who come first: the people who come before ambition, before agendas, before party. Needed: someone that both sides of the equations confronting us can trust.
If we cannot arrive at such an accommodation then we are doomed to fractionalization, increasing hatred and increasing division.
There are dozens of problems confronting our community. There is no plan to deal with them that has substantial buy-in from the parties concerned.
Why can't we put together a list of what those problems are and at least find commonality on identifying the issues confronting us? Turf wars. Testosterone with a smidgen of estrogen thrown in. No mutual respect. Contempt all around.
I'm not talking about the obvious, glittering generalities: of course we need jobs. Of course we need more employers locating in the county. Of course we have transportation issues. We absolutely have housing issue. And infrastructure issues. And so on and so on and so on.
As a community, everyone can likely agree on that.
The rubber meets the road, however, in the arena of ideas and solutions. Merely recounting the problems is a fool's errand.
Why can't this community come together to provide direction as to what the specific issues are, how we can rank order them in importance and how we can come together to design solutions that the people can support?
Why?
Because too many people have hurt feelings. Because our daily newspaper is on a jihad of hatred against those who don't set the view of the people aside in favor of supporting the agenda of the Columbian.
Because arrogance and vengeance and agendas get in the way.
And as a result, the people suffer.
I don't believe this community should be caught in their crossfire.
With agreement on the broad-brush issues, we can begin to drill down and identify the specific issues confronting us. We can develop a master plan with timeliness and mechanisms to address each aspect of these issues.
But there's a wall that must be crossed over from both sides.
Who among us can lead the way? Who can we turn to that both sides can trust? Who has not been involved in the internecine warfare that has... and continues to... tear us apart?
There's the rub.
What will it take for those focused on the pain of the past to shift their focus to the hope for the future?
1 comment:
nicely written
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