America is a place of countless success stories, some the product of luck, but most of talent, insight, and skill. Those talents, insights, and skills require (and also create) high standards in art, science, technology, etc. They’re not standards of – or for – only a few, but ones that a person from any place might embrace (just as we can learn from so many talented people who live in other parts of the world).
We need not settle for a lesser standard, when a national and international standard is accessible to us, to most peoples, in most places.
And yet, we settle for lesser standards all the time, the fault being our own. In writing these few years, I’ve heard more than once that one shouldn’t expect expect too much of officials, as they’re not able to do better than they are doing. (Astonishingly, this is meant to be an apology of their performance, as though by defending them in this way they should be paid a compliment.)
I don’t believe that better methods are beyond our community – on the contrary, better methods are all around us. I don’t believe that some local officials can achieve no better than they have – on the contrary, it’s most often not lack of talent but unwillingness that holds people back.
Whitewater is more than able to meet a true national standard. (It’s laziness, impatience, and pride that causes officials to fabricate false honors rather than taking the time to achieve real ones.)
Of that official laziness, impatience (and pride) we have too much. We have much too much.
When bureaucrats and politicians advocate a course of action, it’s not enough to declare nebulously that some problems occur ‘on occasion,’ or that a study about injuries in one place must and necessarily apply in our case.
What number constitutes ‘on occasion?’ How is the study’s subject similar to our city’s conditions? Without showing these simple things, one cannot make an informed, reasonable calculation. I understand that those few who are ill or disabled may not be able to calculate this way, and I would never expect them to do so.
Those who voluntarily take leadership posts and offices, however, should and can answer these questions, if they would only try. They owe it to others (including those who are ill and disabled) to make that effort. It’s unfair – lazily and selfishly so – for officials to expect an easy pass from solid efforts and sound reasoning. It’s especially wrong for officials to expect an easy pass while there are so many less fortunate people among their constituents.
Officials are not owed acquiescence in the low, debilitating standard of sloppy and flimsy arguments. Many among them hold to a higher standard; those who do not have ill-served our community, and are without entitlement to a waiver from solid standards.