I'm concerned about the future of a place I have called home for over sixty years.
Fort Smith. Sebastian County. Arkansas. The United States of America.
Take your choice.
The bottom line? None of those "places" listed above is what they were just a few scan years ago. Things have changed. Reason and logic has been replaced with agendas and ideals that are foreign to me as a common sense citizen. Up is down,, right is wrong and never the twain shall meet.
I get it. Somewhat. We cannot go on forever being what we used to be. Nor should we endeavor to continue to embrace who we were based on some sort of misguided sense of nostalgia...the thought that things were always better in the "good ol' days".
If we honestly take stock and look back on the "good ol' days" with an honest assessment of the problems, foibles, miscues and outright mistakes we have made as a society, then we find that maybe those ol' days weren't so good at all.
Maybe in the wake of what has become so tedious and burdensome --the hate-filled angst, mistrust and outright misrepresentations of people who are supposed to protect our vested interest -- we have not only lost our way but the ability to focus on any path that might get us back to where we need to be.
From a local level right up through the partisan mess that has plagued our federal government, we have lost our sense of decency, ability to compromise and the compassion as humans to see our way past anything beyond our insatiable desire for instant gratification.
For example, I am unabashedly a supporter of our President. The overwhelming resistance to his presidency --in my opinion -- is based on one thing.
His name. It's not Hilary Clinton.
No President in the history of this Republic has been put under the constant attacks and biased media scrutiny as this man, yet he endures and just keeps winning despite an unprecedented sector of the populace hoping and praying every day that he fails.
There is nothing to be gained from arguing the point. If you don't like him because he is orange, is a successful businessman, is married to a "foreigner", beat back a serious Socialist threat to our society or just because he's an 'old white guy", your argument is invalid.
The man is getting stuff done in an unprecedented and historic fashion. Just imagine his success rate and the approval of his presidency if his administration had been treated with the same kid gloves as the last one?
Statewide and locally, our politics are dominated by unrepentant crooks on both sides of the aisle (or dogma) that think nothing of lying, cheating and character assassination to further their crippling hold on Arkansas.
From General Improvement Fund abusing state senators and representatives to lobbyist-controlled self-promoting crooks who attack the freedom of the press by trying to skirt FOIA regulations and try to please their handlers by putting caps on the damages one can receive in a personal injury lawsuit, there is filth and a total lack on integrity from top to bottom.
On a more personal and local level, city officials plot and scheme, continue to sip their fermented Kool-Aid and do exactly what the Band of Seven tell them to do.
Without fail and without question.
And by "Band of Seven" I mean the seven individuals (or families) who will not allow anyone to fart in this town unless they get a smell. When one dies or get taken down, there is always a new member of the coterie waiting in the wings to pick up the baton of corruption and ill-gotten gains and dutifully run their leg of the relay.
Fort Smith is just like any other place. I've heard it stated that 98% of the wealth in the United States is controlled by 2% of the population. I would venture that 98% of the power in Fort Smith is concentrated in something like .0008235% of the population and we must like it.
Because we accept it. We continue to vote for it. And we sit back like sheep and let them have their way with us in the real world while -- in most cases-- voting for the lesser of two evils.
In a little more than a week we go to the polls for the 2018 primary process. Fortunately for us in many of the races, the lesser of two evils is still a pathetic and unappetizing choice. And in a lot of cases, it doesn't look much better come November.
Choices. We all have them or at least the illusion of them.
Make them wisely.