Swinging Pendulums of History

I’m sorry, but when you badmouth our cities, you get on the fighting side of me. If a person had nothing more to do, no real sustaining joy in life except to make certain people feel bad about themselves, they traditionally went to the coffee shop a’mornings or became editorial writers for right-wing newspapers. Nobody paid much critical attention to them in any case.

Nowadays, though, Facebook and Twitter form the modern coffee shop, and it’s harder to ignore them. Additionally, nobody, not one person I ever met, not a single one, ever, in my life, suggested that anyone pay the least attention to what anyone, in any coffee shop in America, said.

It’s different with so-called “social media.” It is a form of media to be sure, but it ain’t social. I’ve always wondered what would happen if someone really mean-spirited, with nefarious intent, and with some degree of standing, started posting on one of those outlets? People believe that stuff. Holy mackerel.

Which brings me back to cities. I’ve studied them for nearly 50 years, at times in great detail. Here is my opinion, repeat, my opinion, based on my education, experience, and expertise, (attorney friends taught me that disclaimer). In many, if not most cases, the successes or failures of cities bear little relation to the actions of their leaders.

Lots of it derives from pure luck. For example, when I first attended college just after the Permian Extinction, the richest kids in school were from farm communities in south Arkansas. I attended school, by the way, in a remote, impoverished area described by famous architect Edward D. Stone, as “a hotbed of tranquility.” Only two short generations before me, the last leg on the way there required a stagecoach ride. Getting there when I went was only marginally easier. It was a long way from those rich Delta towns.

What occurred in these areas, and others, since my time? Success on the one hand, and failure, on the other, just happened. That’s all.

Nobody voted to mechanize farming operations, reducing the working, and supporting population, of those farming communities by over 80 percent.

Nobody voted to remove African-Americans from a community after discovering a lingering and smoldering volcano of racial bigotry still extant below the communities of America.

Nobody voted to make industrial labor so much cheaper in Third World countries than in America.

Nobody voted to make an Interstate Highway closer to, or farther from, their city.

Nobody voted to make drug-usage and drug-selling attractive and profitable, though entwined with criminal behavior, by declaring a “war” on it as we once did alcohol.

No …, no community leader usually votes for success or failure in our cities. (I say “usually’ because there was that Federal Express thing, and there was resistance to retraining farm workers for the Industrial Age. Does the term “coal workers” ring a more modern bell?) Mostly, municipal leaders just hang on in the face of impending doom or unexpected success, a success, by the way, that carries its own seeds of destruction, as someone once said.

So, when I heard that the leader of one of the two ruling political parties in America had, on behalf of his party, delivered an official statement regarding one of our country’s major, but distressed cities, I smiled and assumed that leader would offer words of sympathy, succor, and support. We need healing words so desperately these days.

No.

Now, I’m half nauseated, half pissed off, and totally ashamed of what the country—to which I gave four years of my life in service—has become.

It would be best not to speak of it to me, today. I plan to be busy trying to help some of our cities survive. Someone must.

And love. Not hate.