Good morning.
Monday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 62. Sunrise is 7:18 and sunset 5:59 for 10h 40m 50s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 65.2% of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Urban Forestry Commission meets at 4:30 PM. The Whitewater School Board’s Policy Review Committee meets at 5:30 PM. The Whitewater School Board goes into closed session shortly after 6:30 PM, returning to open session at 7 PM.
On this day in 2001, Apple Computer releases the iPod.
Typically (but not always), special interests speak deceptively in the language of good government. They will ask for cooperation, partnerships, collaboration, openness, and transparency. To get close, they will speak the language and make the sounds of those they seek to manipulate.
Their technique is effective with well-intentioned people who assume (mistakenly) that everyone else is well-intentioned.
There are other approaches special-interest men will try, if they’re denied their unjustified requests. They may express outrage (how dare you?! insane! outrageous!). This outrage has both a cause and an intended effect. The cause is, most often, an insult to their excessive sense of entitlement. It hurts them that others do not see them as special, gifted, or better than others. So they squeal and shriek when someone reminds them that they aren’t what they think they are, or they don’t deserve an extra portion of dessert, etc.
This expressed outrage often works an effect favorable to the special-interest types: others simply back down to avoid a confrontation.
If speaking in the language of good government doesn’t work, and if outrage doesn’t work, they may try to show how they are, in their view, more deserving than others. They will not do so themselves, however; they will find a catspaw who will praise how deserving they are in grandiose terms (how much these types supposedly love, care, or feel). These claims will not be measurable (one person’s love against another, for example). Indeed, how could they be? Nonetheless, grandiosity will be their starting point.
Finally, special-interest men will threaten to wreck what they cannot have. That’s a last resort, but if it comes to it, they’ll destroy what they cannot manipulate.
They start, however, with the language of good government, in the way that a wolf might approach a flock in sheep’s clothing.
A reminder: Whitewater deserves better from its common council majority; this city is better than its council majority. Whitewater deserves better from its community development authority’s majority; this city is better than that authority’s majority.
“Remember that all through history, there have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time, they seem invincible. But in the end, they always fall. Always.”
Mahatma Gandhi